Trial In a Courtroom

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of a courtroom setting, trial lawyers, judge

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Pan Plays His Pipes

 

Description of Illustration: black and white illustrations of "Pan" playing his pipes, dance, figures of women dancing

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Girl in a brown fur collar

 

Description of Illustration: color die cut of a small girls wearing a brown fur collar

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Cauliflower

 

Description of Illustration: black and white print of a cauliflower

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Early Fire Engine

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of an early fire engine being pulled by a team of horses

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"Four horse drawn fire engines roar up a snow-covered Newark, New Jersey, street while spectators watch from the sidelines. Until the mid-19th century most fire engines were maneuvred by men, but the introduction of horse-drawn fire engines considerably improved the response time to incidents. The first self-propelled steam engine was built in New York in 1841. It was the target of sabotage by firefighters and its use was discontinued, and motorized fire engines did not become commonplace until the early 20th century."

Brown Moth

 

Description of Illustration: color die cut of a brown moth

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Miss Moggaridge's Provider, continued

       Yet as a law of ethics is the impossibility of standing still in face of the necessity of motion, either progressive or retrograde, so Miss Moggaridge went on verifying the worst prognostications of her neighbors; and it was surmised that the way in which she had raised the money to pay for having the cataract removed from old Master Sullivan's eyes eyes worn out in the service of two generations of the town's children which she was one day found to have done, was by scrimping her store of wood and coal (Bridget's departure having long left her free to do so), to that mere apology for a fire the winter long to which she owed a rheumatism that now began to afflict her hands and feet in such a manner as to make her nearly useless in any physical effort. It was no wonder the townsfolk were incensed against her, for her conduct implied a reproof of theirs that was vexatious; why in the world couldn't she have let Master Sullivan's eyes alone? He had looked out upon the world and had seen it to his satisfaction or dissatisfaction for three-score years and over; one would have imagined he had seen enough of a place whose sins he was always bewailing!

       But a worse enormity than almost any preceding ones remained yet to be perpetrated by Miss Moggaridge. It was an encroachment upon her capital, her small remaining capital, for the education of one of the Luke Moggaridges, a bright boy whom his aunt thought to be possessed of too much ability to rust away in a hand-to-hand struggle with life. Longing, perhaps, to hear him preach some searching sermon in his grandfather's pulpit, and to surrender into safe and appreciative keeping those barrels full of sacred manuscripts which she still treasured, she had resolved to have him fitted and sent to college. Very likely the town in which the boy lived thought it a worthy action of the aunt's, but the town in which he didn't live regarded it as a piece of Quixotism on a par with all her previous proceedings, since the boy would have been as well off at a trade, Miss Moggaridge much better off, and the town plus certain tax money now lost to it forever. It was, however, reserved for Miss Keturah to learn the whole extent of her offence before the town had done so to learn that she had not been spending merely all her income, dismissing Bridget, freezing herself, starving herself, but she had been drawing on her little principal till there was barely enough to buy her a yearly gown and shoes, and in order to live at all she must spend the whole remainder now, instead of waiting for any interest.

       "Exactly, exactly, exactly what I prophesied!" cried Miss Keturah.

       "And who but you could contrive, let alone could have done, such a piece of work? You show ingenuity enough in bringing yourself to beggary to have made your fortune at a patent. You have a talent for ruin!"

       "I am not afraid of beggary, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "How often shall I quote the Psalmist to you? "I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."

       "I know that, Ann. I say it over often. It's the only thing that leaves me any hope for you." And Miss Keturah kept a silent meditation for a few moments. "As if it wasn't just as well," she broke forth at length, "for that Luke Moggaridge boy to dig potatoes or make shoes, as to preach bad sermons, or kill off patients, or make confusion worse confounded in a lawsuit!"

       Whether Miss Moggaridge thought it a dreadful world where every one spoke the truth to his neighbor, or not, she answered, pleasantly, "Kitty, dear, I should have consulted you as to that"

       "As to what ? Shoes or sermons? He might have made good shoes."

       "Only," continued Miss Moggaridge, meekly but determinedly "only you make such a breeze if you think differently, that I felt it best to get him through college first"

       "Why couldn't he get himself through?"

       "Well, he's sickly."

       "O dear Lord, as if there weren't enough of that kind! Serve Heaven because he can't serve the flesh! Taking dyspepsia and blue devils for faith and works!"

        "You mustn't now, Kitty, you mustn't. I meant for us all to advise together concerning the choice of a profession after his graduation. For he has real talent, he'll do us credit."

       "Well," said Miss Keturah, a little mollified, "it might have been wise. It might have saved you a pretty penny, might have lent the young man the money he needed, and it would have done him no harm to feel that he was to refund it when he was able."

       "That is exactly what I have done, Kitty. And I never thought of letting any one else, even you though I'd rather it should be you than any one while I was able. And I'm sure I can pinch along any way till he can pay me. and if he never can pay me, he can take care of me, for he is a noble boy a noble boy."

       "And what if he shouldn't live to do anything of the sort?"

       "O, I can't think of such a thing."

       ''He mightn't, though. There's many a hole in the skimmer."

       "I don t know, I don't know what I should do. But there, no matter. I shall be taken care of some way, come what will. I always have been. The Lord will provide."

       "Well now, Ann, I'm going to demand one thing by my right as your next friend, and one caring a great deal more about you than all the Lukes in the world. You won t lend that boy, noble or otherwise, another penny, but you'll let him keep school and work his way through his profession himself."

      "No indeed. Kitty' That would make jt six or seven years before he got his profession. There are only a few hundreds left, so they may as well go with the others."

       "Light come, light go,"' sniffed Miss Keturah. "If you'd had to work for that money What. I repeat, what in the mean time is to become of you ?"

       "Don't fear for me. the Lord will provide."

"The poorhouse will, you mean! Why in the name of wonder can't he work his way up. as well as his betters?"

       "Well, the truth is. Kitty, he's -  he's engaged. And of course he wants to be married And"--

        But Miss Keturah had risen from her chair and stalked out, and slammed the door behind her. without another syllable.

       Poor Miss Moggaridge. It was but little more than a twelvemonth after this conversation that her noble boy was drowned while bathing; and half broken-hearted for she had grown very fond of him through his constant letters and occasional visits she never called to mind how her money, principal and interest and education, had gone down with him and left her absolutely penniless, save for the rent of the residue of the house where she kept her two or three rooms. But Miss Keturah did.

       Miss Moggaridge was now, moreover, quite unable to do a thing to help herself. Far too lame in her feet to walk and in her hands to knit, she was obliged to sit all day in her chair doing nothing, and have her meals brought to her by the family, and her rooms kept in order, in payment of the rent, while her time was enlivened only by the children who dropped in to see the parrot an entertainment ever new; by a weekly afternoon of Mrs. Morris', who came and did up all the little odd jobs of mending on which she could lay her willing hands; by the calls of Master Sullivan, glowering at the world out of a pair of immense spectacles, through which he read daily chapters of the Psalms to her; and by the half-loving, half-quarreling visits of Miss Keturah. She used to congratulate herself in those days over the possession of the parrot. "I should forget my tongue if I hadn't him and the hound to talk with" she used to say, in answer to Miss Keturah's complaints of the screeching with which the bird always greeted her. "He is a capital companion. When I see him so gay and good-natured, imprisoned in his cage with none of his kind near, I wonder at myself for repining over my confinement in so large and airy a room as this, where I can look out on the sea all day long." And she bent her head down for the bird to caress, and loved him none the less on the next day when Miss Keturah would have been glad to wring his neck for the crowning disaster of her life, which he brought about that very evening. 

       For the mischievous fellow, working open the door of his cage, as he had done a thousand times before, while Miss Moggaridge sat nodding in her chair, had clambered with bill and claw here and there about the room, calling in the aid of his splendid wings when need was, till, reaching a match-safe and securing a card of matches in his bill with which he made off, pausing only on the top of a pile of religious newspapers, on a table beneath the chintz window-curtains, to pull them into a multitude of splinters; and the consequence was that presently his frightened screams woke the helpless Miss Moggaridge to a dim, hall -suffocated sense that the world was full of smoke, and to find the place in flames, and the neighbors rushing in and carrying her, and the parrot clinging to her, to a place of safety, upon which Miss Keturah swooped down directly and had her removed to her own house and installed in the bedroom adjoining the best-room, without asking her so much as whether she would or no.

       "Well, Ann," said Miss Keturah, rising from her knees after their evening prayers, "it's the most wonderful deliverance I ever heard anything about"

       "It is indeed," sobbed the poor lady, still quivering with her excitement. "And, under Heaven, I may thank Poll for it," she said, looking kindly at the crestfallen bird on the chair's arm, whose screams had alarmed the neighbors.

       "Indeed you may!" the old Adam coming uppermost again strange they never called it the old Eve "indeed you may thank him for any mischief picking out a baby's eyes or setting a house afire, it's all one to him. But there's no great loss without some small gain; and there's one thing in it I'm truly grateful for, you can't waste any more money, Ann Moggaridge, for you haven't got any more to waste!"

       "Why, Kitty, there's the land the house stood on, that will bring something" profoundly of the conviction that her possession was the widow's curse, and with no idea of ever taking offense at anything that Miss Keturah said.

       "Yes, something. But you'll never have it," said Miss Keturah, grimly. "For I'm going to buy that land myself, and never pay you a cent for it; so you can't give that away! And now you're here, I'm going to keep you, Ann; for you're no more fit to be trusted with yourself than a baby. And I shall see that you have respectable gowns and thick flannels and warm stockings and the doctor. You'll have this room, and I the one on the other side that I've always had; and we'll have your chair wheeled out in the daytimes; and I think we shall get along very well together for the rest of our lives, if you're not as obstinate and unreasonable"

       "O Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, looking up with streaming eyes that showed how great, although unspoken, her anxiety had become, and how great the relief from that dread of public alms which we all share alike "O Kitty! I had just as lief have everything from you as not. I had rather owe"

       "There's no owing in the case!" said Miss Keturah, tossing her head, to the infinite danger of the kerosene from the whirlwind made by her ribbons.

       "O, there is! there is!" sobbed Miss Moggaridge. "Debts, too, I never can pay! You've always stood my next best friend to Heaven, dear; and didn't I say," she cried, with a smile breaking like sunshine through her tears "didn't I say the Lord would provide?"

Bonds of Blood Relationship.

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Miss Moggaridge's Provider, continued

A letter came to Miss Ann.

       But Miss Moggaridge did not long allow her old acquaintance to remain unaware of her return among them. The very day after her arrival a disastrous fire in the village had left a family destitute and shelterless; and, heading a subscription list with a moderate sum, she went round with it in person, as she had been wont to do in the old times, till the sight of her approaching shadow had caused the stingy man to flee. And now, with every rebuff she met, every complaint of hard times, bad bargains, poor crops, she altered the figures against her own name for those of a larger amount, till by night-fall the forlorn family had the means of being comfortable again, through the goodness of the village and Miss Moggaridge; for had not the village given the cipher, whatever might be the other figures which Miss Moggaridge had of herself prefixed thereto? True to her instincts, Miss Keturah Meteyard waylaid her old friend next day. "I've heard all about it, Ann, so you needn't pretend ignorance," she began. "And you may think it very fine, but I call it totally unprincipled. Are you Croesus, or Rothschild, or the Queen of Sheba come again, to be running to the relief of all the lazy and shiftless folks in the country? Everybody is talking about it; everybody's wondering at you, Ann!"

       "Everybody may reimburse, me, Kitty, just as soon as they please."

       'Perhaps they will, when they're angels. The idea of your"-

       'But, Kitty, I couldn't see those poor Morrises without a roof over them; and if you want the truth," said Miss Moggaridge, turning like the trodden worm, "I can't imagine how you could. Why, where on earth could they go?"

       "There was no need of seeing them without a roof. The neighbors'd have taken them in till they rebuilt the place. Perhaps that would have spurred Morris up enough to make an exertion, which he never did in his life. If he'd been one atom forehanded, he'd have had something laid by in bank to fall back on at such a time. I declare, I've no patience!" cried Miss Keturah, with nobody to dispute her. And any one would be glad of those two girls as help, " she continued. "Great lazy, hulking, fine ladies they are ! And the first thing they'll do with your money will be to buy an ingrain carpet and a looking-glass and a couple of silk gowns, whether there's enough left for a broom and a dish-cloth or not. Go?" cried Miss Keturah, now quite at the climax of her virtuous indignation. "They could go to the poorhouse, where you'll go if some of your friends don't take you in hand and have a guardian appointed over you!"

       But Miss Moggaridge only laughed and kissed her censor good by, and made up her mind to save the sum of her prodigality out of her own expenses in some way ; by giving up her nice boarding-place, perhaps, and boarding herself in two or three rooms of a house she still owned, where she could go without groceries and goodies, for instance, in such things as fruit and sugar and butter and eggs and all the dainties to be concocted therewith; for bread and meat and milk would keep body and soul together healthily, she reasoned, and acted on her reasoning. But instead of making good, by this economy, the sum she had extracted from her hoard, she presently found that the saving thus accomplished had been used upon the outfit of a poor young minister going to preach to the Queen of Madagascar. Miss Keturah was not so loud in her disapproval of this as of some of Miss Moggaridge's other less eccentric charities; but as giving away in any shape was not agreeable to her, she could not help remarking that, if she were Miss Moggaridge, she should feel as if she had lent a hand to help cast him into a fiery furnace, for that would undoubtedly be the final disposition of the unfortunate young minister by the wicked savages of the island whither he was bound. She herself only bestowed upon him some of her knitted socks to walk the furnace in. What she did cavil at much more was the discovery that Miss Moggaridge was living alone. "Without help, Ann Moggaridge! "she said, laying her hands along her knees in an attitude of fine Egyptian despair. "And pinching yourself to the last extremity, I'll be bound, for these Morrises and young ministers and what not" What would your father say to see it ? And if you should be sick in the middle of the night and no one near to hear you call."

       "The Lord'll provide for me, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, for the thousandth time.

       "He won't provide a full-grown servant-girl, springing up out of nothing."

       "But there's no need of worry, dear, with such health as mine."

       "It's tempting Providence!"

       "Tempting Providence to what?'

       "Ann!" said Miss Keturah, severely, "I don't understand how any one as good as you for you are good in spite of your faults"-

       "There is none good but One," Miss Moggaridge gently admonished her.

       "As good as you," continued Miss Keturah, obliviously, "and enjoying all your lifelong privileges, can indulge in levity and so often go so near the edge of blasphemy, without a shudder."

       "Dear Kitty,'' said Miss Ann, laughing, "we shall never agree, though we love each other so much; so where is the use? For my part, I think it blasphemy to suppose Providence could be tempted."

       "Ann! Ann!" said Miss Keturah, solemnly. "Don't indulge such thoughts. They will lead you presently into doubting the existence of a personal Devil! And now, " continued she, reverting to the original topic, "I shan't go away till you promise-me to take in help, so that you needn't die alone in the night, and be found stiff in the morning by a stranger' " And poor Miss Moggaridge had to promise, at last, though it upset all her little scheme of saving in groceries and firewood and wages, and went to her heart sorely.

       It was not very long after this expostulation of Miss Keturah's that a stout-armed serving-woman having been added to Miss Moggaridge's family another more singular addition made itself on the night when a ship was nipped among the breakers behind which the town had intrenched itself, and went to pieces just outside the cove of stiller water, at whose head stood the house in which were Miss Moggaridge's rooms. Of all the freighting lives on board that doomed craft, one thing alone ever came to shore a bird, that, as Miss Moggaridge peered from the door which Bridget held open for her, fluttered through the tumultuous twilight air and into her arms. Miss Moggaridge left Bridget to set her back to the door and push it inch by inch, till one triumphant slam proclaimed victory over the elements, while hastening in herself to bare her foundling before the fire. It was a parrot, drenched with the wave and the weather in spite of his preening oils, shivering in her hands, and almost ready to yield to firelight and warmth the remnant of life that survived his battling flight. Miss Moggaridge bestowed him in a basket of wool in a corner of the heated hearth, placed milk and crumbs at hand, and no more resumed her knitting -and soft-voiced psalm-singing, but fidgeted about the darkened windows and wondered concerning the poor souls who, since they never could make shore again themselves, had given the bird the liberty of his wings. She was attracted again to the fireside by a long whistle of unspeakable relief, and, turning, saw the bird stepping from the basket, treading daintily down the tiles, and waddling to and fro before the blessed blaze, while he chuckled to himself unintelligibly, but quite as if he had practiced the cunningest trick over storm and shipwreck that could have been devised. Bridget would have frowned the intruder down, and did eventually give warning "along of the devil's imp," as she called him ; but Miss Moggaridge was as pleased as a child; it was the only thing of the sort in the village, and what a means to attract the little people, whom she loved, and at the same time to administer to them diluted doses of the moral law! Had she chosen, to be sure, it would have been one of the great gray African things she had read of, that spread a scarlet tail and seemed the phoenix of some white-washed brand in which the smouldering fire yet sparkles. But this was a little fellow with scarlet on his shoulders and his wings, a golden cap on his head, and it would have been hard to say whether the glistening mantle over his back were emerald crusted with gold or gold enameled with emerald, so much did every single feather shine like a blade of green grass full of flint. While she looked, and admired, and wished, nevertheless, that it were gray, another door was pushed gently open and Folly entered Jack's slim white hound, as much a miracle of beauty in his own way made at the bird with native instinct, then paused with equally native cowardice, and looked at Miss Moggaridge and wagged his tail, as who should say, "Praise my forbearance.""

The ship went to pieces.

       But the parrot, having surveyed Master Folly on this side and on that from a pair of eyes like limpid jewels, opened his mouth and barked. Nothing else was needed; the phantorn of the gray parrot disappeared whence he came; more intelligence no child could have shown. Miss Moggaridge caught him up, received a vicious bite for her 'pains, but, notwithstanding, suffered him to cling upon her fingers, tightly grasping which, he looked down upon the hound, flapped his gorgeous wings and crowed; then he went through an astonishing series of barn-yard accomplishments, finally ending in a burst and clatter of the most uproarious and side-splitting laughter. Having done this, he had exhausted his repertory, and never for all the time during which he delighted the heart of Miss Moggaridge and forced Miss Keturah to regard him as a piece of supernatural sin created by the Evil One in mockery of the creation of man, so that had she but been a good Catholic she would have crossed herself before him, and, without being an ancient Persian, did frequently propitiate him after the fashion of the Ahrimanian worship never during all that time did he catch a new sound or utter an articulate syllable to denote from what nationality Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch he had received his earliest lessons. But he had done enough. Folly, never particularly brilliant in his wits, and not more strongly developed in his affections, was given hearth-room on sufferance for his lissome limbs, and on general grounds of compassion for himself and Jack together; but the parrot, luring one on with perpetual hopes of new attainment, and born of the tropical sun that made a perpetual mirage in her imagination, became cherished society, and had not only a shining perch, but a nest in Miss Moggaridge's affections as well a nest that cost her dearly some years afterward.

       But before the town had much more than done wondering at Miss Moggaridge's parrot, and telling all the gossiping of his deeds and misdeeds of the way he picked the lock of his cage, walked up the walls, tearing off the papering as he went, bit big splinters from the window-blinds, drove away every shadow of a cat, and made general havoc Miss Moggaridge gave such occasion for a fresh onslaught of tongues, that the bird was half forgotten.

       It was when her name was found to have been indorsed upon her brother Luke's paper, Luke being the resident of another place and in his failure the larger portion of her earthly goods was swept out of her hands. One would have supposed that Miss Moggaridge had been guilty of a forgery, and that not her own property, but the church funds, had been made away with by means of the wretched signature; and a particular aggravation of the calamity, in the eyes of her towns-people, seemed to be its clandestine character; if they had been consulted or had even been made aware that such a thing might possibly be expected, much might have been condoned. As it was, they were glad, they were sure, that she felt able to afford such fine doings, but they had heard of such a thing as being just before you were generous, and they only hoped she wouldn't come upon the town in her old age in consequence, that was all; for much that close-fisted Luke would do for her, even if he got upon his feet again Luke who had been heard to remark that the loss of a cent spoiled the face of a dollar!

       But Luke never got upon his feet again, and during the rest of his life he struggled along from hand to mouth, with one child binding shoes and another in the mills, a scanty board, a thread-bare back; and though Miss Moggaridge was left now with nothing but a mere pittance of bank stock over and above the possession of the house in which she reserved her rooms, yet out of the income thus remaining she still found it possible now and then to send a gold-piece to Luke a gold-piece which in his eyes looked large enough to eclipse the sun, while she patched and turned and furbished many a worn old garment of her own, in order that she might send a new one to her sister-in-law, of whom Miss Keturah once declared that she put her more in mind of an old shoe-knife worn down to the handle than of anything else in the world.

       "As if it would make the least difference in her appearance, " said Miss Keturah, who had a faculty of mousing out all these innocent crimes against society on Miss Moggaridge's part, "whether she wore calico or homespun? Dress up a split rail ! And you rigging yourself out of the rag -bag so as to send her an alpaca. Why can't she work? I work."

"Bless you, Kitty, doesn't she work like a slave now for the mere privilege of drawing her breath? What more can she do?"

       "That's no business of mine, or yours either. Your duty, " said Miss Keturah, "your bounden duty's to take care of yourself. And here you are wearing flannels thin as vanity, because you've no money left to buy thick ones; and you'll get a cold and a cough through these Luke Moggaridges that'll carry you out of the world; and then," exclaimed she, with an unusual quaver in her piercing tone "then I should like to know what is to become of"

       "The Lord will provide for me, Kitty."

       "So I've heard you say!" she snapped. "But I was talking about myself. He won't provide me with another Ann Moggaridge." And there Miss Keturah whisked herself out of sight, possibly to prevent any such catastrophe as her friend's seeing a tear in those sharp eyes of hers unused to such weak visitants.

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Miss Moggaridge's Provider

       The way in which people interested themselves in Miss Moggaridge's affairs would have been a curiosity in itself anywhere but in the seacoast town where Miss Moggaridge lived. But there it had become so much a matter of course for one neighbor to discuss the various bearings of all the incidents in another neighbor's life, and if unexplained facts still remained to supply the gap from fancy in addition to the customary duty of keeping the other neighbor's conscience, that it never struck a soul among all the worthy tribes there that they were doing anything at all out of the way in gossiping, wondering, conjecturing, and declaring this, that, and the other about Miss Moggaridge's business after a fashion that would have made any one but herself perfectly wild.

       But Miss Moggaridge was a placid soul, and as the fact of her neighbor's gossip implied a censure which perhaps she felt to be not altogether undeserved, while, on the other hand, their wonder was not entirely uncomplimentary, she found herself able to disregard them altogether, and in answer to query, complaint, or expostulation concerning her wicked waste, which was to make woeful want, always met her interlocutor with the sweet and gentle words, "The Lord will provide."

       Poor Miss Moggaridge's father had been that extraordinary phenomenon, a clergyman possessed not only of treasure in Heaven, but of the rustier and more corruptible treasure of this world's goods an inherited treasure, by the way, which he did not have time to scatter to the four winds in person, as it was left to him by an admirer (to whom his great sermon on the Seventh Seal had brought spiritual peace), but a few years before his death, which happened suddenly ; and the property was consequently divided according to his last will and testament between two of his three children, giving them each a modest competency, but leaving the third to shift for himself, as he always had done. The first thing which Miss Moggaridge did with her freedom and her money was to imitate the example of the "fearless son of Ginger Blue," and try a little travel, to the great scandal of souls in her native borough, who found no reason why Miss Moggaridge should want to see any more of the

world than that borough presented to her, and never shared her weak and wicked desire to see what sort of region it was that lay on the other side of the bay and the breakers.

       "The idea, Ann!" said Miss Keturah Meteyard, a well-to-do spinster whose farm and stock, and consequently whose opinion, were the pride of the place "the idea of your beginning at your time of life to kite round like a young girl. The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth," quoted Miss Keturah, with a long sigh. "For my part, the village is good enough for me!"

       "And for me too, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "I am not going any great distance; I - I am going to see Jack."

       Now Jack was the scapegrace Moggaridge, who had run away to sea and therewith to the bad; and the stern clergyman, his father, having satisfied his mind on the point that there was no earthly reclamation possible for Jack, had with true, old-style rigor commenced and carried on the difficult work of tearing the boy out of his heart, that since Heaven had elected Jack to damnation there might be no carnal opposition on his own part through the weak bonds of the flesh; and Jack's name had not been spoken in that house from which he fled for many a year before the old man was gathered to his fathers. For all that, every now and then a letter came to Miss Ann and another went from her in reply, and her father, with an inconsistency very mortifying but highly human, saw them come and saw them go, convinced that he should hear from Ann whatever news need might be for him to hear; and so it came to pass that Miss Ann knew of Jack's whereabouts, and that Miss Keturah, hearing her intent of seeking them Miss Keturah with one eye on the community and one on her old pastor held up her hands a brief instant in holy horror before memory twitched them down again.

       "Ann!" said she, solemnly "Ann, do you know what you are doing?"

       "Doing?" said Miss Moggaridge. "In going to see Jack, do you mean? Certainly I do. A Christian duty."

       "And what," said Miss Keturah "what constitutes you a better judge of Christian duty than your sainted father, a Christian minister for fifty years breaking the bread of life in this parish?"

       "Very well," said Miss Moggaridge, unable to answer such an argument as that for Miss Keturah fought like those armies that put their prisoners in the front, so that a shot from Miss Moggaridge must necessarily have demolished her father the clergyman "very well," said his faithful daughter,

"perhaps not a Christian duty, we will say not; but, at any rate, a natural duty."

       "And you dare to set a natural duty, a duty of our unregenerate condition, above the duties of such as are set apart from the world?"

       "My dear Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, "I am not sure that we ever are or ever should be set apart from the world; that we are not placed here to work in it and with it till our faith and our example leaven it."

       "Ann Moggaridge!" said the other, springing to her feet, with a lively scarlet in her yellow face, a color less Christian perhaps than that of her remarks, "this is rank heresy, and I won't stay to hear it!"

       "O pooh, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, listening to the denunciation of her opinions with great good-humor, "we've gone all through that a hundred times. Sit down again we'll leave argument to the elders I want to talk about something else.

       "Something else?" with a change as easy as Harlequin's.

       "Yes, I want to talk to you about that corner meadow. It just takes a jog out of your land, and I've an idea you'd like to buy it. Now say so, freely, if you would."

        "Humph! what has put that into your head, I'd like to know? You've refused a good price for it, you and your father, every spring for ten years, to my knowledge. You want," said Miss Keturah, facing about with uplifted forefinger like an accusing angel in curl-papers and brown gingham "you

want the ready money to go and see Jack with!"

      "Well, yes. I don't need the meadow and I do need the money; for when you have everything tied up in stocks, you can't always get at it, you know."

       "That's very shiftless of you, Ann Moggaridge," said Miss Keturah. "When the money's gone, it's gone, but there the meadow'll always be."

       "Bless your heart, for the matter of that, I've made up my mind to get

rid of all the farm."'

       "Get rid of the farm!'

       "Yes. I'm not well enough nor strong enough to carry it on by myself, now father's gone, and his means are divided. Your place would make me blush like a fever beside it. No, I couldn't keep it to advantage; so I think I shall let you take the corner meadow, if you want it, and Squire Purcell will

take the rest."

       "And what will you do with yourself when you come back from from Jack, if you really mean to go?"

       "O, board with the Squire or anywhere; the Lord will provide a place; perhaps with you," added Miss Moggaridge, archly.

       "No, indeed," said Miss Keturah, "not with me! We never should have any peace of our lives. There isn't a point in all the Westminster Catechism that we don't differ about, and we should quarrel as to means of grace at every meal we sat down to. Besides which, you would fret me to death with

your obstinacy when you are notoriously wrong as in this visit to Jack, for instance."

       "Jack needs me, Kitty. I must go to him."

       "It is your spiritual pride that must go and play the good Samaritan!"

       "Jack and I used to be the dearest things in the world to each other when we were children, you know," said Miss Ann, gently. "We had both our pleasures and our punishments together. The severity of our home drove him off I don't know what it drove him to. I waited, because father claimed my first duty; now, I must do what can be done to help Jack into the narrow path again."

       "The severity of your home!" said Miss Keturah, who had heard nothing since that; "of such a home as yours, such a Christian home, with with"-

       "The benefit of clergy," laughed Miss Moggaridge.

       "Ann, you're impious!" exclaimed Miss Keturah, bringing down her umbrella hard enough to blunt its ferule. "Much such a spirit as that will do to bring Jack back! It isn't your place to bring him back, either. You've had no call to be a missionary, and it's presumption in you to interfere with the plain will of Providence. You will go your own gait, of course, but you sha'n't go without knowing that I and every friend you have disapprove of the proceeding. And it's another step to total beggary, for the upshot of it all will be that Jack coaxes and wheedles your money."

       "My money?" said Miss Ann. "There will be no need of any coaxing and wheedling; it's as much his as mine."

       "His!"

       "I know father expected me to do justice, and so he didn't trouble himself. I should feel I was wronging him in his grave if I refused."

       "And what is Luke going to do, may I ask?" inquired Miss Keturah, with grim stolidity.

       "Because Luke won't give up any of his, is no reason why I shouldn't." 

       "Luke won't? That's like him. Sensible. Sensible.  He won't give the Lord's substance to the ungodly."

       "So he says. But I m afraid not to the godly, either. I'm afraid he wouldn't even to me if I stood in want, though perhaps I oughtn't to say so."

       "Not it you'd wasted all you have on Jack, certainly."

       "I shall divide my property with Jack as a measure of simple Justice, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, firmly " It is as much his as mine, as I said. "

       "And when it s all gone," continued Miss Keturah, "what is to become of you then?"

       "When it's all gone? O, there's no danger of that."

       "There's danger of anything between your butter-fingers, Ann. So if it should happen, what then?"

       "The Lord will provide," said Miss Ann, sweetly.

       *"The Lord "helps them that help themselves," said Miss Keturah. "Well, I'm gone. I'd wrestle longer with you if it was any use you're as set as Lot's wife. I suppose," she said, turning round after she had reached the door, you'll come and see me before you go. I've I've something you might take Jack; you know I've been knitting socks all the year and we've no men-folks," and then she was gone.

       Poor Miss Keturah a good soul after her own fashion, which was not Miss Moggaridge s fashion once she had expected the wicked Jack to come home from sea and marry her; and the expectation and the disappointment together had knit a bond between her and his sister that endured a great deal of stretching and striving. The neighbors said that she had pious spells; but if that were so, certainly these spells were sometimes so protracted as almost to become chronic, and in fact frequently to assume the complexion of a complaint; but they never hindered her from driving a bargain home to the head, from putting royal exactions on the produce of her dairy, from sending her small eggs to market, and from disputing every bill, from the tax- man's to the tithes, that ever was presented at her door. But somewhere down under that crust of hers there was a drop of honey to reward the adventurous seeker, and Miss Ann always declared that she knew where to find it.

       So Miss Moggaridge went away from the seacoast tor some seasons, and the tides ebbed and flowed, and the moons waxed and waned, and the years slipped off after each other, and the villagers found other matter for their gossip; and the most of them had rather forgotten her, when some half dozen years later she returned, quite old and worn and sad, having buried the wretched Jack, and a goodly portion of her modest fortune with him. and bringing back nothing but his dog as a souvenir of his existence a poor little shivering hound that in no wise met the public approbation.

*"The Lord "helps them that help themselves," a misnomer, a wrong or inaccurate use of a term people often attach to holy scriptures. Nowhere in the Bible does this construct, sentence or sentiment exist. In fact the opposite is more frequently presented as truth. The Lord helps those who rely on Him alone or who love Him.

• Just Thinking, "A Sure Word"

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"Great Chief" cigar label

Description of Illustration: fully restored, colored cigar label, "Great Chief", teepees, cactus, mountain range, feathers, headdress, buckskin, Native American, Old West

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"Road House" cigar label

 

Description of Illustration:fully restored, colored label for "Road House" cigars, Victorian and Western town, horse-drawn carriages, American flag

 
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"Our General" cigar label

 

Description of Illustration: fully restored, color cigar label,  "Our General"

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Strange Haberdashery

 

Description of Illustration: black and white advertisement of a couple riding in an old-fashioned carriage with a large bowler hat serving as the roof of the carriage, Text reads, W. D. & Co. Montreal, For Stylish Dressers

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Garlic Cloves

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of cloves of garlic

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About Garlic: Recipes, Health Benefits, & History:

• Harvesting, Curing, and Storing Garlic 
• 11 Proven Health Benefits of Garlic
• How garlic became the undisputed king of the British kitchen

Gilbour's Antiseptic Hand Cleaner

 

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of a hand holding Gilmour's Hand Cleaner

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So Goes The Battle

 

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of tank and army men on the battlefield

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Fancy Sewing Cabinet

 

Description of Illustration: grayscale drawing of a Victorian lady standing behind a sewing machine, curved cabinet

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George Melford's "Burning Sands"

Description of Illustration: black and white advertisement of "Burning Sand is a 1922 American drama silent film directed by George Melford and written by Olga Printzlau and Waldemar Young. The film stars Wanda Hawley, Milton Sills, Louise Dresser, Jacqueline Logan, Robert Cain, Fenwick Oliver, and Winter Hall. The film was released on September 3, 1922, by Paramount Pictures. Its survival status is classified as unknown, which suggests that it is a lost film.

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The Brumswick Phonograph

 

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration of a phonograph in a Victorian parlor, fringed reading lamp, chair, pillow, window and curtains

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A Boy's Velocipede from 1891

 

Description of Photograph: black and white photo of a boy's velocipede, 1891, very Victorian

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Warner's Rust-Proof Corsets

 

Description of Illustration: advertisement for the rust-proof corsets by Warner's, Illustration of a nude child seated on a corset rowing it down a stream, very odd and frightening, really.

Text Reads, "Rust-Proof Boning Doubles The Life of A Corset -  Light, Pliable Prevents Staining of Corset and Under Linen, Made only in highest grade, materials, exquisitely trimmed - Shapes To Fit All Figures

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"The Guest"

 

Description of Illustration: full color illustration, 1922, two gentlemen converse with a lady, he pulled up a seat

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Maple Leaf Woolen Mills Co.

 

Description of Illustration: full color label for All Wool Flannels from Toronto, Canada

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Blowing Bubbles

Description of Photograph:  delightful photograph of a little boy blowing bubbles, pipe, bubbles, large straw hat, button trousers

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"Many years have gone by . . ."

Description of Photograph:  stunning sepia photograph of an elderly gentleman, white beard, old eyes, wrinkles

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"Our Joy" Trade Card

Description of Illustration: full color illustration of a trade card by Scott's Emulsion of Cod Liver Oil, boy in blue sailor suit, brown curly locks, blue eyes

Text reads, "Whose picture appears on the other side of this card, is a perfect type of health and beauty. It sis a delight to look upon such a beautiful picture; but how sad to behold the suffering of the mother when her darling is smitten with disease, and his rounded dimpled cheeks become pale and wan, and the bright eyes lustreless, and she sees day by day her little one wasting away. Unfortunately in every household some of the little ones are the victims of a wasting disorder. For some reason their food fails to nourish them, and they finally fade and die. We are glad that we have a food and remedy of unequaled potency in all conditions of wasting, of whatever character, in children as well as in adults. Scott's Emulsion of Cod Liver Oil With the Hypophosphites of Lime and Soda is really a marvelous remedy etc. . . "

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Man's Majesty

      There are, however, those who call themselves philosophers to whom selfreverence, in any high degree, seems as futile as any of their early hopes and dreams, since they consider the human race and its concerns to be only among the smaller affairs of the universe. These people declare that there is something a little mortifying to their vanity in the sense of the insignificance of the human race which almost invariably overcomes them when they see it in a mass. Not, be it understood, when they see it in the roaring, turbulent mass of an infuriated mob; then it assumes, indeed, some of the greatness of elemental forces, and swells and surges like the sea, with one wave fortifying another; but in the common stream of population going to and fro upon a thousand pitiful small errands along some thoroughfare. Watching this stream for any length of time, it irresistibly occurs to them that just so the ants go and come with their little burdens, their wealth of grains of wheat and barley bigger than themselves, just so their soldiers march to battle, just so their slaves toil on at home; and they half wonder if to any superior eyes that chance to rest on us we can be of more consequence than these ants are in our own. At the same time they confess that it is odd that recurrence and  multitude should make small and common that which in the single and isolated instance is often found to be grand and uncommon in the great senator, mighty soldier, singing poet, lovely woman. Yet we have only to take the separate features of any of these isolated instances of humanity say, the malcontents to find the same sensation recurring, and to feel assured that if man be made in the image of any thing

To every earnest, striving soul.

divine, it is his inner and spiritual body, and not all the varying eyes and ears and noses. For if it were one of these, even so much as one ear, for example, which one, of all that we meet? This little curled, pink-rimmed, and shell-like ear of the maiden, with its jeweled tip, this pair that stand out on either side of the head like vase handles, these that remind one of the answer of the worthy who, on being asked if the story he was about to relate was fit for the auditor's ears, replied that they were long enough, or those where old age, as it too often does, has smoothed out all the charming whorls and creases, and left only a large flat surface of cartilage, those that hold themselves pricked up, alert companions, as if they meant no whisper should escape them, those pinned back so flatly that what goes in on one side may easily come out at the other, those that wag as the scalp moves, those that have the pointed segment of the faun's ear, those that are lobeless, or those that project themselves into space like a trumpet? Yet when one can find so much in the mere outward guise of so small a portion of the frame, so tiny a member as the ear, and is aware that its inner construction is so complicated and delicate with vibrant membrane and labyrinthine passage, it is not easy to recur to such a fancy as that of the insignificance of the owner of such an instrument. No! Man 'who has dared, and who has been given the power to dare, to search almighty secrets, to weigh the sun, to catch the colors of the elements from which stars are made, is a being of importance in the creative eyes, and he owes a debt of selfrespect to the Power that made him. "Your body," says Rutherford, "is the dwelling-place of the spirit, and therefore for the love you carry to the sweet Guest give a due regard to His house of clay, for the house is not your own." We read in the "Records of a Quiet Life" that it is one of the hardest things in the world to be true to one's self in one's intercourse with others. "There is scarcely anything that requires more real courage. How little is there of true freedom from all put-on conversation and manner! The more truly Christian is our spirit, the more truly shall we rise out of this bondage, which is of the earth earthly, to preserve our truth and uprightness of character, to be in all places and at all times and with all people one and the same, not equally open or equally communicative, but equally free from what is artificial and constrained, and steadfast in keeping fast hold of those principles and feelings which are known to be according to God's will and law." The great poem of the "Happy Warrior" does not apply to the soldier merely, but to every earnest, striving soul on earth. 

"Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he

That every man in arms should wish to be?

It is the generous spirit, who, when brought

Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought

Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought;

Whose high endeavors are an inward light

That makes the path before him always bright;

Who, with a natural instinct to discern

What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn,

Abides by this resolve, and stops not there.

But makes his moral being his prime care.

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which 'heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

Is happy as a Lover, and attired

With sudden brightness like a man inspired;

And through the heat of conflict keeps the law

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

Or if an unexpected call succeed,

Come when it will, is equal to the need."

      I have thought that the story of Miss Moggaridge's Provider was an illustration of that sweet self -reverence which implies absolute belief and truth in Providence, and of the truth of the saying of Thomas A Kempis that, "From a pure heart proceedeth the fruit of a good life." 

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A Mutual Dependence

      Although we must stand alone in the spiritual life, we can not stand alone in the material one, for life is like a great interwoven fabric where one thread holds another. Think of the way in which all the relations of our social life are complicated, so that no one lives in the civilized world who is not doing something for some one else, either physically or intellectually or spiritually, paying rent, it might be said, for the lease of life. The bad are pulling down the good, the good are lifting up the bad, the poor are working for the rich, the rich are spending for the poor, and even the baby of the pauper is creating a demand that some one must supply.

The good are lifting up the bad.

      The wealthy woman stepping from her stone mansion to her carriage is an illustration, in her mere material affairs, of the way in which all humanity works together, and works for each member of itself. To say nothing of those influences that have shaped her heart and soul, how many workers have

contributed to send her abroad in the guise in which she appears? to how many workers has she contributed a fractional support? The quarry-man has wrought the stone for the mansion; the kiln-man has burned the brick; the woodman has felled the lumber; the miner has sent the iron and lead; carpenter and turner, mason and blacksmith and marble-worker and plumber, and all the kindred trades, have been at her service. The watchman has patrolled the street at night for her soft slumbers in that mansion ; the laborer has made that street, and has cleaned it; the lamp-lighter has lighted the gas before it; powerful officials, learned doctors of the boards of health, committees of the city government, have seen that all this was properly done, and she has paid her stipend to assessors, recorders, and receivers of taxes for having it done. Slaughterers, leather-dressers, carriage-makers, again, have afforded her the coach into which she steps ; some one of the old countries, or rather the influences working there, have probably sent her coachman and footman; the farmer, who supplies much on her table, has raised her horses. And for that same table has the vaquero driven the herd of steers that came sweeping up from bayou and prairie of the far New Mexican and Texan regions; have flocks of fowl been brought from the Northwest ; have fruits been pulled in the tropics, and sweetmeats been sent from the East; has the fisher in the Columbia taken salmon, and the Hindoo on the bank of the Ganges sent hot sauces; has the peasant of the Rhine tended his grapes, and pressed the must. Look then at her array: the farmer has bent under the sun picking the cotton that enters into some portion of it; the flax-raiser has been in her employ; the Irish girl at home has turned the woven linen for her in sun and dew; the maidens of France have tended the silkworms for her, and reeled the cocoons; the shuttles have tossed to and fro for her in the looms of Lyons; industrious Orientals have squatted at their rude frames embellishing the rich stuffs she folds about her; while minors in the diamond mines have dug and delved for her at one side of the globe, and fishermen have stripped the seal at the other. For her, too, have the keels of ships been laid, to bring her these silks and cashmeres and furs and jewels; for her have sailors braved the mid-ocean storms, have pilots gone out to bring the ships to port through curling breakers; for her the watcher in his solitary sea-washed tower kindles the light-house lamp each evening on the edge of dark. For her, too, have the shining lines of railway steel been laid, and the trains led thundering over them by engineer and fireman, bringing her fineries and dainties; for her has the daily paper been struck off, with editor, reporter, and printer on her payroll; for her delectation did the morning news run at midnight over the telegraph wires; for her safety has the sentinel paced all night on the lonely seawall in the harbor defense, and have bodies of troops been moved up and down on the frontier haunted by the tomahawk: For her pleasure has the inspiration of the musician come, has painter painted, and statuary carved; has the performer spent weary hours of practice with his instrument; has the actor plodded through his lines, the dancer through her steps, before the curtain rises on the scene where all joy and suffering are fused in swift sparkle and beauty For her the judge sits on his bench to administer justice; for her even the chief of the nation holds the reins of power, and one might say that for her all the nations of the earth exist, and kings and queens and emperors sit upon their thrones. And to each and all of these, from peasant to prince, who thus work for her she pays tribute, and is, in turn, their feudatory. She can not do without them, as they can not do without her; her life is their life, her wishes give them their wishes. And what is true of the rich woman is true of the poor woman as well. For although she have not a dollar but what she earns with her hard and pitiful laundry-work, she does not spend it without receiving service and paying tribute also to all the crafts and trades that supply her needs, and the radius in which she is felt is just as the circle of her wants is wide or narrow; and the rich woman is her "bound woman" again, for one furnishes the other with the clean linen that she wants, and one furnishes the other with the money that she wants! With the unequal fortune of the two there is also a mutual dependence.

      And if the dependence is so intimate in purely material things, how close is it in things of the spiritual domain, in the mental and moral world. What surmise and suspicion of evil does not swing from one to another in scandal, till it mows down its swath before it? What theft, in the simple injury of the loss of the loser, does not entail trouble passing again from one to another, and in the injury of the crime to the taker does not entail other trouble on all with whom his degradation comes in contact, not only in his diminished power to do good, but in his increased aptitude to do evil? What wicked thought can prompt the speaking of a wicked word that its vibration shall not cause the air to thrill, and make some other voice its echo? For we can neither do nor think wrong without injuring, in degree as the cuttle-fish darkens the water about him all those within the limit of our influence. Let us be ever so much accountable to fate and to our consciences as separate individuals, we are yet more certainly congregated and bound together in one great circulation and interchange than the atoms of some vast polyp building its coral reef in the South Pacific, and every one's self-respect and reverence must have its effect upon the individuality of every other soul.

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