The Passing of Mother's Portrait

I DO not exactly remember when I came to understand that the little old lady sitting opposite me in the studio was my model. Portraits, you know, like children, have their slow process of mental development, and I cannot say precisely when my period of infancy came to an end, and was followed by unbroken consciousness. It seems to me that the artist was tinkering with a flesh tint on my right cheek when I first began to experience the joy of living, and to take notice of things around me. Certainly from that moment I grew greatly interested in the little old lady, and watched her with the keen delight that led me to suspect there was a bond of the most cordial sympathy between us. I fancy that even the artist himself could not have been more solicitous for her physical condition, or the requisites for a successful sitting. Instinctively I seemed to know when things were not going right, and often I have said to myself : “ This is our off day,” or, “We are not keyed up to it,” or, “ We shall have to do this all over to-morrow.” If artists only had a little of our sensitiveness, our perception of wrong conditions, how much time and fruitless labor might be saved !

The little old lady was not beautiful, although she had a certain dignity and strength of bearing that greatly impressed me at the time. She was then about seventy years of age, and I remember that she wore a funny old cap on her head, tied under her chin with black strings, and that her gray hair was brushed rather severely down over her temples. Her dress was of black silk, and a bit of lace was around her throat, fastened with a cameo brooch, which seemed to me then the most beautiful of all possible ornaments. I recollect with what a thrill I felt the artist painting in the lace around my throat, and decorating me with the gorgeous cameo. Everything was new and joyous to me, and I had that feeling of intoxication which comes to every picture firmly persuaded it is a masterpiece.

Notwithstanding the gentle dignity of the little old lady and her general air of reserve, there were times when she was loquacious, and then I became familiar with our family history, and picked up points of extreme value at a later day.

And as the work progressed, her daughter Caroline and her son-in-law George dropped in to make suggestions; and daughter Martha from the country and a son from the West, and various other relations of near and remote degree, were summoned for consultation ; and among them all I was subjected to many alterations. The artist bore patiently with these suggestions, and I have never ceased to regard his profession with a feeling of the highest respect coupled with the sincerest pity. But there is an end to all trials, even in a studio, and at last I was pronounced perfect, and borne triumphantly to my new home.

George and Caroline lived, as I am now aware, in a pleasant but unfashionable quarter of the city. To me, unacquainted with any habitation save the studio, the dwelling seemed a palace. George was a young man of excellent business habits, steady and industrious, and fully able to support in comfort his wife, her mother, the little old lady, and the two young daughters, Elizabeth and Bertha. To my inexperienced eye and modest taste, there seemed nothing left on earth to be desired.

Ah, those were happy days! The memory of them remains to cheer me, now that my gilt has gone, my lustre has vanished. Whenever a visitor would come to the house, Caroline would march her up in front of me, and say proudly, “ Did you ever see a more perfect picture than this of mother ? ” And the little old lady would look up at me and shake her head, and say deprecatingly, “ Now, Caroline, if I were you, I would n’t say anything more about it.” George — he was a jovial fellow, was George — quite fastened himself on my affections; for he often passed through the parlor when he came down to breakfast, and called out to me, just as cheerily as if I were the real article, — which, of course, just then, I was not, — “ Hello, grandma ! ” How I smiled at him at those times !

I suppose things must have run on like this for about a year. One morning the little old lady did not join us as usual, and all that day and the next day, and through the week, there was a great stillness in the house. And one night I heard the sound of weeping upstairs; and very soon Caroline came down, and threw herself on the sofa just under me, and gave way to her grief, until George came in, and gently led her away. And two days later all the neighbors and friends assembled at the house ; and when they left, I heard the nurse tell the girl next door that they had taken the little old lady with them on her long journey. You see I did not know at that time what death was, and I thought it very kindly and beautiful to take such an interest in the journey of a friend.

With the passing of the little old lady the gravity of my new duties began to appeal to me more strongly. I noticed with some perplexity that I had aged considerably in my feelings, and that I seemed to be governed by a familiar spirit and to possess an unaccountable knowledge of the past, a phenomenon in psychology I am unable to explain. This sense of responsibility was materially intensified when Caroline, in her first moments of loneliness and grief, would stand before me with clasped hands and say mournfully, “You are all that is left to me of her.” At such moments I tried to comfort her, and I really believe that in a great measure I succeeded.

We were all very happy together, and it was pleasant for me, after the children had gone to bed, to be in the little parlor with George and Caroline, and hear them discuss our brightening prospects. The sight of so much domestic bliss was a perpetual pleasure, and often I have confided to my little crewel friend and neighbor, God-Bless-Our-Home, my conviction that a happier group of persons and pictures never existed in the world.

I shall not attempt to dwell on the eight happy years I spent in the little parlor, though it is true that I thought I saw an occasional tendency to get away from the old traditions, and I gathered from the conversation of the ladies who called in the afternoon that Caroline had become a woman of considerable importance in the neighborhood ; but I freely confess that I did not understand a word of their talk about clubs and papers and conventions and federations, and a hundred things that were never heard of when I was a girl. It was all very hollow and profligate to me, and God-BlessOur-Home quite agreed with me that mothers and wives could be much more profitably employed in their domestic duties. One night — I think it was the first evening in six since we were together in the little parlor — George said to Caroline, “Well, my dear, I closed the bargain to-day for the house on the avenue.” Such a scene of congratulation ! Elizabeth said, “ Thank Heaven, I shan’t be ashamed now to receive company! ” I could not understand what the child meant, for it seemed to me that nothing could be more beautiful than our parlor, with its new furniture and its spick-span rugs. I said as much to my neighbor on the left, A Cloudy Morning on Lake George; but Cloudy Morning rudely laughed at me. He was a supercilious fellow.

That period of moving ! Shall I ever forget it ? For twenty-four hours I was lost in a blinding dust, and then for three whole days I stood up against the baseboard of the dining room, with my face pressed against the wall, utterly unable to see a thing that was going on. What I suffered during this period of retirement only a woman can understand. Another day of torture would have led me to disgrace myself before the household effects. It had never occurred to me that I should not occupy my old position on the parlor wall of our new home, and I was much surprised when I heard Caroline say : “ What shall we do with mother’s picture? Of course it will never do to hang it in the drawing-room.” I did not know then what they meant by the drawing-room, but the imputation that any place was too good for me was not to be passed over without resentment.

However, it was finally decided that I should be hung back in the library; and I found, to my great pleasure, that it was a most cheerful and inviting room, relieved of that terrible primness that characterized the parlor, or, as they called it, the drawing-room. For a week or more I was quite happy and contented with my new surroundings. Once or twice I thought I saw the old love light come back into Caroline’s eyes, as she looked up at me smiling down on the library table, but I dare say I was mistaken. One evening —George and Caroline had gone upstairs, and I had composed myself for the night — who should follow Elizabeth into the library but young Mr. De Vivian! Now I never could abide De Vivian, and why Elizabeth tolerated him I could never understand, for in my day he would have been laughed at for a fop and a dandy. I caught him staring at me several times in the most impertinent manner, and you may depend upon it I returned his gaze with a haughtiness that would have rebuffed a fellow less presumptuous. After one of my most scornful looks, he turned to Elizabeth and drawled : —

“ I say, Elizabeth, who is the queer old party on the wall, in the cap and sackcloth ? ”

Conceive, then, my amazement, my chagrin, my discomfiture, when my own grandchild positively blushed, and, fingering a paperknife nervously, stammered, for the words must have choked her : —

“ That ? Why, that, I believe, is one of mamma’s distant relations.”

And this from my granddaughter, whom, when a little child, I brought through the croup after the doctors had given her up, the baby I had watched and petted, the girl I had loved and guided! I suppose I was an old fool, but, do you know, at that moment something seemed to swim before my eyes ; the whole room was blurred, young De Vivian had vanished, and I was back in the nursery, crooning to a little babe, and thanking God that so fair a child had been given to comfort us and make us happy. And I thought of the little old lady lying peacefully under the snow in the silent city, and I wondered if it is spared to her to know what is sometimes said of us after we are gone by those we have loved.

Well, I thought it all over during the night, and came to the conclusion that my granddaughter would be much ashamed of her conduct, so I was prepared to forgive her at the first genuine manifestation of repentance. But Elizabeth was in a frightful humor in the morning. She looked at me viciously by way of preparing me for the worst, and then she said :

“ Mamma, why don’t you take that awful daub out of the library ? ”

“ I don’t think I should call it a daub, Elizabeth,” answered Caroline, “ but perhaps it is out of place. It may be more respectful to put it where it will not excite derision. I think I’ll have William hang it in my room. Family portraits are more in keeping with bedrooms.”

“ Mrs. Benslow does n’t keep her mother’s portrait in the bedroom,” spoke up little Bertha. “ She has it hanging right in the front hall, where everybody can see it the first thing.” I could have hugged the child for her brave words.

“ Mrs. Benslow’s mother was a Colonial dame,” said Elizabeth ; “ that’s quite another thing.”

“ I don’t see what difference that makes,” replied the stout little Bertha; “a grandmother’s a grandmother, is n’t she ? ”

“Yes, and a child’s a child,” said Elizabeth angrily ; “ and when you have grown a little more, you will appreciate a good many things you know nothing about now.”

I fancy that Bertha saw the way I smiled upon her, and I believe that, somewhere near, the spirit of a little old lady was hovering to guard her from knowing that sort of world that cherishes its ancestors merely from pride of place and pomp of condition.

After William had hung me up over Caroline’s bed, I discovered, to my annoyance, the crayon portrait of George’s uncle Ben grinning at me from the opposite wall. Ben Chisholm and I were children together, and we had quarreled from the very moment we met. Up to this time Ben had occupied an inferior position in the family, and I think would not have been tolerated at all had he not left George quite a sum of money when he died. It gave me a terrible shock, after all these years, to see him grinning and chuckling to himself.

“ Well,” said Ben, after William had gone away, “ you’ve come to it, have you ? I guessed it was only a question of time. Of course it was natural enough for you to suppose that the fate of an obstinate and disagreeable bachelor uncle could never overtake a nice, considerate, amiable mother, but I knew it was sure to come.” And he laughed so uproariously that he jarred a Madonna and two Magdalenes off their level.

“ I do not know,” said I shortly, “ what you mean by this gibberish about ‘ fate ’ and ‘ time ; ’ and you will oblige me by stopping that grinning and chuckling, and by behaving like a reasonable being.”

“ Then I shall have to explain,” he continued, with such a frightful leer that the two Magdalenes shivered and huddled together, and the Madonna humbly cast down her eyes. “ It came easy to me. I started in the back sitting room two months before the funeral, and went up on the second floor shortly after the will was read, notwithstanding my efforts to do what I could to help along the family. Is n’t that amusing ? You observe that I do not spare myself, and run the risk of spoiling a joke.”

“ It is very likely,” said I, “ that the family was anxious to put you out of the way; for anything that would remind anybody of you must be necessarily painful.”

“ Yes, I was somewhat trying, I dare say; but their disposition of me does not explain, so far as I can see, why dear mother should be shunted first into the library, and then into an upstairs bedroom. That is what is worrying me, dear friend.”

Happily for me, the conversation, humiliating as it was in the presence of the three strange ladies, was interrupted by the entrance of the maid ; though I must say for the ladies that their sympathy was wholly with me, and that they have since acknowledged that for many weeks Ben Chisholm had kept them in a condition of terror by his ribald jokes and boisterous laughter. But it would be useless to deny that the poison of Ben Chisholm’s discourse had entered my system. I could not divest myself of the suspicion he had excited, that I had been put out of the way because I was no longer acceptable to a family that had made such advancement in the business and social world. Caroline barely noticed me, although I employed every artifice to attract her attention; and she was continually away from home, taken up with her worldly prospects, her clubs, receptions, and never ending round of evening gayeties. The Madonna never ceased to give me admirable counsel from her wonderful storehouse of knowledge. She spoke long and earnestly of the evils of wealth and fashion, of the temptations that beset the worldly rich, of the quickness with which a life of frivolity dries up the human heart; and she besought me to be prepared at all times for such changes in fortune as might be appointed.

For this reason I was tranquil, even cheerful, when Caroline, suddenly pointing to me one morning, said to the maid, “ Mary, you may take that picture down to-day, and hang it in the sewing room.” This was somewhat startling; but I soon gathered from the conversation of the servants that Caroline was preparing for a grand evening reception, and that the room was to be given over to the women for the removal of their wraps, and the putting on of the final touches. It came over me all at once that I was banished not merely because, in my sober garb, I did not fit in with such splendor, but because Ben Chisholm was right, and my family was ashamed of the comments of these worldly fashionables. Time was when I might have wept for such unfilial conduct, but how would idle tears have availed ? And so I bore myself bravely, with just that old dead pain at the heart I have never quite succeeded in banishing.

I was vastly cheered, as Mary bore me to my new stopping place, to observe, smiling at me from above the closet door, my little crewel friend, God-Bless-OurHome, whom I had not seen since we were neighbors and cronies in the oldfashioned parlor. I had mourned her as dead, and here she was, — a trifle weather-beaten, perhaps, but otherwise as cheerful and stimulating as ever.

“ I know it is unbecoming to complain,” said my little crewel friend, with a sigh, “ but, as you are aware, it is hard, when one has presided over a parlor, and stood for as much as I represent, even on my face value, to be exiled, without a word of apology or explanation, to a back room upstairs. Ben Chisholm was here for a few days, and he dwelt, rather maliciously, I thought, on the fact that my old place in the parlor is now given up to a painting wholly unscriptural, and, I fear, not altogether decorous. But I prefer to believe that the shift was not so much the result of a change of heart as of the recognition of things in their proper places.”

“ And that is why you are over thecloset door in a back room ? ” said I, with a touch of bitterness.

“ Wherever I am,” answered GodBless - Our - Home very sweetly, “it is enough for me to know that I am not responsible for any failure of my mission, and that it is not my fault that there are other things more beautiful and alluring to the world than myself.”

I was ashamed of my outburst, and begged my little friend to forgive my hasty words. And I asked her to tell me about the sewing room ; whether Caroline and the girls assembled there for family consultation, and worked and talked together, as in the good old times when I was a girl just learning the domestic arts.

God-Bless-Our-Home smiled, but, it seemed to me, a little sadly. “ Times have changed, my dear old friend, since you were young, and you forget that necessity for labor with the needle no longer exists in your family. It is true that I do see your daughter and the girls occasionally ; for they come here to be fitted, and then the telephone is always a source of distraction. I must say that I have no special fondness for gossip, and yet I cannot help overhearing much that is said, pleasant and unpleasant. You know that it is through the sewing women, who work by the day or week, that our fashionable ladies pick up much, if not all of their general information on personal matters, and in this way I have acquired a stock of knowledge surprising in its extent, if not in its accuracy.”

And with this introduction God-BlessOur-Home proceeded to regale me with the choicest bits of family information. I heard how Caroline had become a woman of the most tremendous importance in club and fashionable life, and how she constantly berated George for his indifference to social affairs, and bewailed his indisposition to play an active part in the gay world in which she moved. I learned that George had accumulated a vast fortune, which served only to make him more restless and dissatisfied than ever, and that while Caroline and the girls gave themselves up to their pleasures he became more engrossed with his business, finding in the pursuit of wealth his greatest happiness. That Elizabeth had given her troth to young Mr. De Vivian pained but did not surprise me, but that the wedding had been put off until the family moved into the new house gave me much disquietude. I dreaded the thought of the fate in store for me, and with trepidation I communicated my fears to my friend.

“It is true,” said God-Bless - OurHome, “ that our family feels that it has outgrown this house and its surroundings, and that it has made preparations to move into a more elegant home in a still more fashionable quarter of the city. I have heard Caroline say as much to her friends, over the telephone ; and George has frequently come in at night to call the architect and contractors, to hurry them along with the work. I do not know what will become of us, but I try not to think of unpleasant things.”

Much more, from time to time, GodBless-Our-Home told me of the family doings, and often I picked up interesting matter from the gossip of the sewing women and the frequent conversation over the telephone. For Elizabeth was accustomed to spend many moments, idly it appeared to me, in calling up young Mr. De Vivian and speaking of things of a most frivolous and empty character, such as I was ashamed to hear discussed in the presence of my little friend.

Thus several months went by without special incident, and we were beginning to think that possibly we were settled for the winter, when one morning Mary entered the room, bringing our former companion, the Titian Magdalene. My pleasure at the sight of her was somewhat tempered by the discovery that she was in unusual depression of spirits, and seemed to be laboring with the most painful emotions. As often as I tried to ask the reason of her coming my courage failed; but I was not long kept in suspense, for, having partly recovered from her agitation, she spoke with great frankness.

“ Everything is in confusion,” said the Magdalene. “ The house is torn up ; my sister, the Correggio, has been carried I know not where, and the Madonna is lying, face downward, on the bedroom floor. Strange men have entered the house, laying lawless hands on what they could reach; and it was through their carelessness that I received this abrasion of the skin on my right arm. I know that a great upheaval has come into our life, and I shudder for the consequences to us all.”

“ Let us not be discouraged,” replied God-Bless-Our-Home, with the utmost cheerfulness, “ but let us hope for the best, even when we naturally fear the worst. Perhaps it will not be so bad as we think, and perhaps we shall all come together in our new abode. For I see from what Magdalene tells us that another period of restlessness has come, and that we must shortly go to another home.”

The time was even shorter than she thought; for hardly had the words escaped her, when the strange men broke into the room, and laid violent hold on us, and tore us from the wall, and bore us away downstairs, where lay the Madonna in the shameful condition described by Magdalene, with certain secular and low-class prints and engravings piled ignominiously on her frame. I shall not linger on the disgrace and confusion of those awful hours ; nor shall I dwell on the humiliating manner in which we were all jumbled into a moving van, wholly regardless of propriety and dignity, and jostled about in a most agonizing journey. I remember that the Madonna, covered with dirt, and hardly recognizable in the accumulation of two days’ dust on the littered floor, never lost her admirable composure, but earnestly besought us to be patient and to bear our misfortunes with humility. However, I could not refrain from crying out against the inhuman treatment to which family portraits and old and constant picture friends are so wantonly subjected.

When we had come to our journey’s end, and had been carried roughly into the house, which was indeed a palace in beauty and extent, the Madonna warned us to prepare ourselves for any indignity. “ For I perceive,” said she, “ that this dwelling is on a scale of grandeur far beyond our condition.” A malignant chuckle greeted this remark, most humbly and piously uttered, and, turning, we saw for the first time that Ben Chisholm had been put down in our corner, whereat we all shuddered.

“You ought not to expect anything,” said he coarsely, “you and those two women there, for you are only copies. But look at me. I’m an original. And yet I dare say that I have as little to hope for as any of you. But I don’t complain. I ’m used to it, and I know the people. You ’ll allow me to add that it’s about time for you and dear mother to scrape up a fair knowledge of our precious family,” and he grinned so diabolically that we turned away, sick at heart. There is nothing so terrible, in periods of wretchedness, as a malicious philosopher.

For thirty-six hours we lay on the floor, while one by one our companions were picked up and borne away. I was at the bottom of the heap, with my face resting—not inappropriately, all things considered— on a scrubbing brush, and bearing many grievous burdens, of the nature of which I knew nothing, on my back, when George contemptuously punched me with his foot, and asked : —

“ What are you going to do with all this truck ? ”

(Think of that! Mother’s portrait, a Madonna, a Titian, and a Correggio, —; truck !)

“ I really don’t know,” answered Caroline. “ There is so much I wish we had destroyed or thrown away before we left the old place. Most of it is fit only for the ash barrel.”

“ Here is grandmother’s picture,” said Bertha, vainly endeavoring to rescue me from the pile. “ I recognize the frame. Certainly you don’t mean to throw that into the ash barrel ? ”

“ No,” replied Caroline, “ I cannot throw it away, though I sometimes wish I could. It’s an atrocious likeness, — always was; positively too frightful to hang where anybody can see it.”

“I thought you used to like it,” said Bertha innocently. I believe I have said that Bertha was my favorite grandchild, and a girl of uncommon penetration.

“ I never liked it, though I admit that I have tolerated it before.”

“ Before she became rich and fashionable,” said I to myself bitterly ; “ why does n’t she finish her sentence ? ”

“ So I think, for the present,” continued Caroline, “ we ’d better stow it away in a safe place. William, suppose you carry this picture up to the top floor and put it in the trunk room. And while you are about it you may as well dispose of the rest of these old traps.”

Indeed ! So hereafter I was to be regarded a part of the “ truck ” and “old traps,” — a pretty ending of my dream of a happy and honored old age! As William took me out of the room, I could not forbear calling out, in my indignation, “ Remember, Caroline, I am all that is left to you of her! ” But if she heard me she gave no indication; and, in truth, I am inclined to think that my reproach would have carried little weight, so completely had her nature been changed by the vanities and pomp of her new life.

Behold me, then, in the trunk room, a good-sized but dark and poorly ventilated apartment, just off the ballroom, at the top of the house. The room was fairly filled with a great variety of household effects, which, I recall, were groaning and complaining loudly as William threw me, somewhat contemptuously and very roughly, into a corner, behind a large box. I lost, through this treatment, quite a section of gilt from the right of my frame. It was altogether too dark to recognize my neighbors ; still, I knew that the Madonna and the two Magdalenes and God-Bless-OurHome were my companions in exile, and it was not many minutes before I discovered that Ben Chisholm was in a distant corner, mercifully held down by two dress-suit cases and a steamer trunk. But nothing could repress that fellow’s malevolence of spirits.

“And so we are all together once more,” he piped up, in his shrill, squeaky voice. “ Well, if this is n’t real pleasant and homelike ! I am sorry you ladies cannot get a better look at me, — the lighting arrangements here are execrable, — for I think this new hole in my left arm would interest you. And just to think that after so many days and months of separation we should be reunited ! Was n’t it thoughtful of George and Caroline to arrange for this charming meeting ? Do you suppose there is any danger they will tear us apart again ? ”

We were too much occupied with our own grief to answer, and, after chuckling to himself a few minutes, he went on : —

“ So this is the trunk room and rubbish closet. Is n’t it cosy in here ? A trifle warm in summer, perhaps, but think how comfortable we shall be in winter ! I hope you ladies don’t mind mice,” — the Correggio gave a little scream, — “ for I distinctly heard a mouse gnawing over by my right hand. Personally I don’t bother about mice; but I have understood that women are afraid of them, and I deem it my duty to warn you in time. It seems rather strange that we should have everything possible up here except a mouse trap. Perhaps, if mother would speak about it to her thoughtful and loving daughter, she would provide one.”

This sarcastic reference to my unfilial child gave me a more bitter sense of my misfortune, and excited the indignation of my companions, who violently reproached Ben for his ill-timed levity.

“ What’s the use of pretending to so much virtue?” he grumbled. “ You all know that we are in the last ditch, and have nothing to look forward to except the ash heap or kindling box. Let us make the best of it while it lasts. At the worst we are next to the ballroom, where we can hear the music, and at other times we shall have plenty of leisure for reflection over a giddy and more or less exciting past. I’m going to be philosophical, but I must confess that this steamer trunk is uncommonly heavy.”

There was a good deal of sense in what Ben said ; and while I do not wish to give him credit for anything useful or helpful, he did, however unwittingly, cheer us up. He was right, too, in his conjecture as to the music; for Caroline began straightway a series of lavish entertainments, and three or four evenings of every week the strains of the dance came plainly to us, and the chatter of voices and the sound of laughter made us forget our isolation. At times I thought I could detect Caroline’s voice, and her tones invariably set me to thinking of the quiet evenings in the little front parlor, when God-Bless-Our-Home was the ruling spirit, and when life seemed the brightest and happiest and best of all possible conditions. At these times I think I should have wept, had it been possible for me again to weep.

But it must not be thought that we had seen the last of Caroline. I remember the first day she opened the door, and, entering the room, began to peer around. My heart gave a great leap, and I thought, “ Perhaps she has come for me ! ” In this I was mistaken, for after rummaging eagerly a few minutes — barely giving me a glance — she seized an old teapot of lacquered tin, and bore it away triumphantly. Another day she came again, and this time she carried out an old-fashioned gilt mirror of the preceding century. To these succeeded a dingy pewter plate and a rusty sword which, I remember hearing, her great-great-grandfather wore in the war of the Revolution. Then we realized that Caroline had become infected with the craze for antiques, and great hopes sprang up in the trunk room, and there was much speculation as to our respective chances. Ben Chisholm, however, refused to be dazzled by the prospect. “ Whatever happens, there’s no show for you or me, old mother,” he said gruffly ; “ for we ’re neither one thing nor the other, and we ’ll be lucky if they let us stay on here. When we go out, we go to the garbage can.”

I was not to be discouraged by this dreary croaker. It came to me how, when I hung on the wall in the library, my neighbor (he was one of the old masters ; I cannot remember which one) told me he had lain many years in a dismal attic, wholly forgotten and unrecognized. And one day a strange man, prowling about, picked him up, and carried him to the light, and detected his almost priceless value. In a few hours he was in a brilliant room, eagerly stared at by hundreds of admiring connoisseurs of art. Whereupon I thought: “ Why should I not have similar fortune ? Why should I give way to dejection and hopelessness ? It may be true that Caroline is dead to me or I am dead to her, and that she, and Elizabeth and Bertha, and their children, and their children’s children, may pass away while I am lying forlorn and forgotten and covered with dust in this dark corner. But may it not be that in generations to come I too shall have a part to play, and shall begin a new life? May I not be recognized as a forbear of a distinguished house, a Daughter of the Civil War, a Dame before the Empire, and be carried proudly to the drawing-room or the most illustrious chamber, to be venerated by my descendants, and admired by their friends and kinsmen ? ”

In this timid hope and expectation I am living. When the house is quiet, and grumbling Ben has sulked off to sleep, and those of my companions who are left have found the sweet oblivion which comes to us all alike, I try to picture the glory that awaits me, and to content myself with the belief that I shall be great and famous and happy. But my heart keeps asking me, Will it pay ? Is the flattery of future generations worth the few years of love that should now be mine ? Will all the exultation I may feel in the ages to come atone for this bitter pang of knowing that those who were dearest to me rejected me ? And constantly in these sad moments I am traveling back to the old-fashioned parlor, and I see the peaceful face of the little old lady as she looked that afternoon when they bore her away on her long journey. And my heart tells me that it would be far better to have gone with her and passed beyond while love was strong and faith was unshattered.

Roswell Field.