Pittston Gazette

              ESTABLISHKlD IS5U. I VOL. XUI. SO. 44. » Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. I'lTTSTOX, LUZERNE CO., I'A., FlilDAV, ,11'NE 1892. A Weekly Ltna! and Family Journal. » *1.50 |»ER ANNUM, C IN ADVANCE. Tti* First Fly of Summer. Ti» the first fly of smnnter ('times buzxiuit alone. All its million companions Will com? later on. No Ix-asl of its klwlml. No insect is nigh To axwK-iate with it— This one touely fly. possessed, and by the license of the magistrates. who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be set out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plyiqg her needle at the cottage window, o7 standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led town ward: and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear. up into a terrific legend. They averred i that the symbol was not mere scarlet1 cloth tinged in an earthly dye pot, but was red hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night time. And we must needs say it seared Hester's bosom so deeply that perhaps there was more truth in the, rumor than our modern incredulity may ; be inclined to admit. the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp. whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney. within their clunky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human halrita tion into which death had DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND. BET KAYED, UILI, NYE A FAIIMKR. it is because they do not approve of my style of farming and regard it as a sort of reproof to them for their lack of taste and artistic sense. "Art thon my child, in very truth?" asked Hester. The Man with the lDulnt on Hl« Coat IHdirt l ike tlie Idea, He TVad Stood It Long Kuougti, Bo lie Put tlie Crowd On. As the train stopped at a small station in Kentucky it was discovered that a switch engine had run off the track just beyond and a wrecking crew was at work getting her off. The conductor said we would be detained half an hour, and many of us went up to see the wreckers at work. There was a crowd of fifty around the spot when a fat, stood natured looking man. who had a mouth big enough to take in half a pumpkin pie, came sauntering up and •sowed and smiled to everybody. He was just getting ready to say something when a little skinny man with a piping voice cried out at him. "Don't vo' do it, Sile Davis—don't yo do it! If yo' do I'll give yo" dead away." The good natured man fell back ai this, and I saw him wink and motion to the skinny man to draw aside for a confab.The stranger was leaning against a Ixiard fence looking dreamily into space, when the proprietor of the place came whistling around the corner with a paint pot in his hand. He stopped his whistling when lie saw the stranger and hesitatM a moment, apparently undecided whether to be angry or not. NORTH CAROLINA WELL DiGCiNG IS Now, for instance. I regard it as a liltle bit unneighborly to take hold of a literary man and fill him up with facts and statistics that cannot be demonstrated. 1 hate to be fooled with in that way. Why should a man whom I have treated with the utmost kindness ever since 1 came here go to work and tell nie that here in North Carolina four crops of lambs from the same set of parents was and lias been the regular thing, while on a good year, when the mean average rainfall can see its shadow on groundhog day, the yield runs up to five and sis. Nor did she put the question altogethei idly, but for the moment with a portion of genuine earnestness, for such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence that hei mother half doubted whether she wai not acquainted with the secret spell of her existence and might not now reveal herself. never en STILL IN ITS INFANCY. tered. * * * They approached the door, which was of an arched form and Hanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal. Hester Prynne gave a summons, which w:i; answered by one of the governor's bond servants, a free born Englishman, but now a seven years" slave. During that term he was to be the projwrty of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or joint stool. The serf wore the blue coat, which Was the customary garb of serving men of that period and long before in the ohl hereditarv halls of England. PilUnn's Literary Ijibor* Interfered w ith I'll not leave thee, thou lone one. To lay all thy eggs. I'm on to your system. Your on your last legs. Thus gently 1 scatter The powder around. Ami soon in the duMi»in Thy bodj-'U be found. *5 -T*r iltural Aggravations—Hunting 11 xDD uamlte for Miles Around—How He Is Made an Ass of by the Neighbors. CHAPTER V. PEARI* "Yes, 1 am little Pearl!"-repeated the child, continuing her antics. "Excuse me sir." ho said finally, "that paint is fresh." iCopyriglit, ISO}. by Kiltrar \V. Xy.] Buck Siioals, N. C. Recently I have been digging a well on my estate and the sound of the premature blast and the wail of the widow can be heard all over the place on a still daw The word "well" comes from the. Anglo- Saxon tceallan. moaning to gush out. It originally meant to flow, or a naturally flowing spring, like the German word brunnen. 1 have one living spring on my place, and one that lias passed oti to a better land. 1 judge. Some savants who remained over night with us last "I don't want no track with yo". Sile 1 an(l sweetened their coffee iu a Davis," was the reply. "1 told yo* last reckless way, 1 thought, said that there week I'd do it, and so 1 will: yo' jest j was sulphur in this spring. keep shet." Possibly that is it. One of the savants The language aroused nr / / "veT) w©ht so far as to say that it was as a matter of course, aud we were anx- water. Possibly it is in a trance, ious for the explanation wlieti it came, j® * The fat man walked around for a minute or two, and when he thought the other was not looking he slipped up to one of our crowd and softly remarked: "Stranger, would yo' mind lendin me a chaw of ping tobacker fur a day or two, till I can git twenty-neven dollars as is owin me on a job?" "Here, yo'l" shouted the skinny man, who had kept an eye open all the time, "I warned yo' I'd do it and now I will! Gentlemen, I want to tell yon aboat tins | critter. He chaws mo' tobacker than j any fo' men in Kentucky and he begs every bit of it!" "I only borrows it," protested the other. "Fresh!" exclaimed the stranger, suddenly waking up and jumping away So soon nD*D they follow Thy brothers and friends. I'll treat them to powder. And compafw their ends. When screens fail to *top them I And vicious tbey tcrow. J I'll give tbeii: a dove that Will lay tlx 111 all low. — Ih-troit Tribiia*. _•] * 1 We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant, that little creature whose inno cent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and im mortal flower out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman as she watched the growth and the beauty that became everyday more brilliant, and the intelli gence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this childl Her Pearl—for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned luBter that would be indicated by the comparison. "Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the mother jialf pla\ fully, for it was often the case that a sportive influence came over her in the midst of her dee|Dest suffering. "Tell me. then, what art thou and who sent thee hither." from it Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, incurred no risk of want She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art—then as now almost the only one within a woman's grasp—of needlework. She bore on her breast, in the embroidered letter, a specimen her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. • • • "Yes, sir—fresh," returned the proprietor, looking ruefully at the spot that the stranger's coat had made. "I put it 011 not half ati hour ago myself." This sort of thing not only makes me feci unhappy and bitter toward my neighbors, but it has fostered a miserable spirit in ray breast aud caused my relations with my domestic animals to become strained. At first 1 laid it to the weather, but finally 1 began to regard my sheep with distrust. I felt that they were neglecting their duties and taking advantage of the fact that I am not an experienced farmer. So I consulted Mr. Vanderbilt. who has farmed it sis weeks longer than I have, and who therefore knows the ins and outs of the business pretty well. He tells me that one crop of lambs per year is all that they get lien_D under the most favorable circum- "You didn't put any sign on it that I can see," said the stranger sarcastically, as lie tried to look over his shoulder at the back of his coat. THE SCARLET LETTEK. •• .'ell nie, mother!" said the child seriously, coming up to Hester and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell me!" "Is the worshipful Governor Celling ham within?" inquired H°ster. "Sign! sign!" exclaimed the proprietor growing excited. "Of course 1 didn't! I hadn't finished the job. and any one but a blamed fool with a cold in  can smell fresh paint anyway," "Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" an swered Hester Prynne. Bj VATQASIEL HAWTHORNE. "Yea. forsooth," replied the bond servant, staring with wide open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a newcomer .n the country, lie had never i,cforC} seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he bath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not 5ee his worship now." {CONTINUED. | But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put np her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter. "Smell it!" roared the stranger., "Do you »Dxpei t a mau i_i this ■ •rilight«ued age to go around sniffing the air? Do you expect him to try to smell of every fence he wants to lean against or doorstep that he wants to sit down on when ho is tired? Do you expect him to go abroad in this world with a suspicion that every one is as unscrupulous an idiot as you are? No, sir; it won't do! It"-  CHAPTER IV. HKRTKU AT HER NEEDLE. But &!Ce named the infant "Pearl," a« being of great price, purchased with all she had, her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, savejt were sinful like herself. God, as consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a Idvely child, whose place was on that surne dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith therefore that its result would lie good. Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. ?D#•:.- 3®' ■.'/feig A'X^- Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now* at an end. Her prison door was thrown open and she came-forth into the sunshine, which, fallin? on all alike seemed to her sick and morbid heart as it meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph "He did not send mel" cried she posi tively. "I have no Heavenly Father!" By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now he termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny, or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things, or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then as now sufficient to bestow on some persons what others might seek in vain, or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant, it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself by putting on for ceremonials of pomp and state the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on the ruff of the governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and tlie minister on his band: it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut np to be mildewed and molder away in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that in a single instance was her skill called in to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless rigor with which society frowned upon her sin. "Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother, sup pressing a groan. "He sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or if not, thou strange and elfish child whence didst thou come?" "Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne, and the bond servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air and the glittering symbol in her bosom that she was a great lady in the land, offered no opposition." stances. Plnni Levi also tells me that while timothy and clover often yield two and three crops, he never harvests his lambs over once a year. "Look here!" broke in the proprietor. "When a man comes along and spoils an artistic piece of work like that"—— So the mother and little Pearl wore admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations suggested by the nature [Df his building materials, diversity of climate and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingliam had planned bis new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house nnd forming a medium of ger-sral communication, more or less djrectly, with all the other apartments. * * * It hurts the country to misrepresent these things to strangers and capitalists like myself—men who wish to build up the country and add to its wealth. Why not be fair and truthful in the start, and Hi us invite the good, the true and the beautiful to oame and settle among us? Last year niv plug tobacco was a complete failure, and an old resident oL Sandy Mush allowed that it was because 1 did not plant the plug with the tin tag end downward. 1 have since learned that one should not plant the plug at all. It will not reproduce itself even if the tiu tag end be planted downward. Tobacco grows from the seed and is made into plugs afterward. "Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl no longer serionsly, bfct laughing and capering arvut the floor, it is thou that must tell me!" "Artistic nothing!" cried the stranger. "You have this coat cleaned, understand! You get some benzine and clean this coat or"-— But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself iu a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile a iu 4 a shudder—the talk of the neighboHng townspeople who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring. * * • Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Belli nghan with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasibn of state, for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy. "You paint over that spot again!" broke in the proprietor. "You fix np what you've ruined or I'll fix von." I "Only borrows it! And never pays! j Gentlemen, look at this memorandum book. Here's his account all put down I and figured up to date. He begun bor! rowin chaws of me the 9th of May, 1870. I and in the fifteen y'ars has borrowed ; jest exactly 54,002 chaws and never paid one of 'em back. Don't no man in this 'ere crowd pull out no plug fur any rich critter to bite on." "I don't want uone—I'm achawiu on sassafras," replied the fat man. as-he : tried to brace up under the shook, but : he didn't hold his nerve over a minute, , and went off to hide himself l»ebind a I freight car.—Detroit Free Press. , a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call u] the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned her—a giant of ■tern feature*, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in bis iron arm—had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the' very same that was now so unutterably grievous to bo borne. It wan. He put down the paint pot. took ont the brush, ami lDegan a war dance around the stranger, "Hold on!"' cried the latter in dismay, as he backed away. '"I'll fix the fence if you'll fix the coat." At about the center of the oak panels that lined the hall was stisi»ended a suit of mail, not like the pictures—an ancestral relic—but, of the most modem date, for it had been manufactured by a skillful armorer in London the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel headpiece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a. sword hanging lDen?ath, all. and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. Tliis bright pane ply was not meant for mere idle show, but had tH*en worn by the governor on many a solemn master and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noyeand Finch as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as a statesman and ruler. Certainly there was uo physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried liuibs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to he the plaything of the angels after the world's tirst parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty: its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. ••I'll fix the coat!" exclaimed the proprietor, already beginning to gloat over iiis victory. "You fix the fence!" nun.UNO, Last week my well diggers ran out of explosives, and I had tCD go oHt among the neighbors to get dynamite and j«nvder for blasting. Well digging in North Carolina is still in its infancy and needs a good deal of encouragement and capital. My well diggers furnish nothing except their clothes. They clothe them selves while digging the well. 1 do the rest. Why would it not be as well to tell a stranger those things instead of allowing him to make a large fluted ass of himself with a Watteau back? "Give ine the brush," said the stranger. W hen he had secured it he stopped and asked, "llow are you going to fix My well is down now to porphyry rock and schist with a hemalite stain in it. Neighbors tell ine that even if I do not strike water it will make a good cool place to keep vegetables in. my coat?' "Paint the rest of it," replied the pro prietor gl"efully. Whisli, swish! _ The proprietor went down the street tallowed by the paint ';rush. Then the stranger took the paint lDot and sprinkled paint over the fence, the sidewalk and the lawn. He got away lDefore the proprietor returned with a revolver, and he is never seen on that street now. - -Chicago Tribune, Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence of the plainest and most ascetic description for herself and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most somber hue, with only Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Hester at this time to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the sottlement. It had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and government to deprive her of her child. A Busy Man, I learned yesterday that the former owners of the place have each dug a dry well 200 feet deep on this farm and then sold it out at a sacrifice. Can it be that I -am elected to contribute also a 200 foot root cellar? Oh, heavens! Oh, heavens! It cannot, must not be. Just as a Cass avenue man turned into his gate he met a tramp coming out. I had to borrow dynamite and carry it to the works in my lap. 1 also had to get eighteen feet of hose,' as the well digger said he only had a few left. Hose, as well as molasses and license; is used in the plural number here. We speak of those hose, those molasses and those license. "Here," said the gentleman, "you're the very man I'm looking for." "I hain't done nothing, sir," pleaded the tramp. that one ;he scarlet letter— The days of the far off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up and bear along with her, but never to fling down, for the accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honorable jarents; at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman: at her, who had once been innocent—as the figure, the body, the realitv of sin. And over her grave the Infamy that she must carry thither would be her onlj monument which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served indeed to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. A Narrow Kirape, During a session of a West Virginia court a darky was tried for cutting a white man with a razor. His counsel wished to prove that the white man was the aggressor, and that the darky was physically unable to defend himself without a weapon. Being duly sworn. "Oh, I don't suppose you have. I don't imagine you ever did, but 1 want you to now." Since the above was written I have beeu out all day on horseback hunting for more dynamite among the neighbors. I borrowed four large cartridges of a kind hearted neighbor and carried them in my coat tail pocket aboard a fractions horse twenty-nine miles over a mountain road. When I got there the hair in the butter of my sandwich had turned white. This is the first well 1 have ever dag. Yon get a mind reader or water witch first before digging a well. lie divines by means of a hazel crotch the location of the vein. Then you secure a well digger, who does the actual digging at so much per foot aud found. One man who dug a well here years ago on my farm at three dollars per foot and found got down eighty feet and then the well caved in on him. His widow has since sued the owner of the place on the ground that her husband did his part of the coutract faithfully, but was not 'found according to agreement. It in- So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild flower prettiness of a peasant baby and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost, and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these "What is it, sir?" trembled the tramp. "Will you do some work for me oat there in the back yard right away?" Rood people not ibly argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then surelv it would  all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the design Governor Bellingham was said to bo one of the most busy. * * * Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.The wanderer's face lost its lines of care, for he felt that he was safe. •'Uncle Jim" was asked whether he had ever lteen injured in any way. "I'd love to, sir," he said, "love to the best in the world, but really I can't do it now, fer I'm bnsy." "Yes, sab." "Well, sah, it was down in Cliat'noogy. Is a-wukkin down dab. an I done fell cfFn a derrick—fell sixty feet. I broke dis hyali lai.,', an I fractured dis hyah ahm in two places, an I knocked ouY dem two teef, an my collah bone was broke, an I had ♦hree ribs busted; dis hyali yeah was tore off an hatter be sewed on aj?in; an de fac' is, gent'men, ef it hadn't l»eeii for a pile of, bricks dat sort o' broke mj- fall, I'd 'a' been liable to lDe hnrt serious."—Harper 's Magazine. Tell the jury all alDont it." "Busy?" And the gentleman's surprise was manifest in his tone. "Mother," cried she, "I seo you here. Look! Look!'' "Yes, sir; busy." Heater looked, by way of humoring the child, and she sav. owing tu the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, bo as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward also, at a similar picture in the headpiece, smiling at her mother with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That ~ look of naughty merriment was likewise inflected in the mirror with so much breadth and intensity of effect that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl's shape. "Busy at what, I'd like to know?" "Bu*y tryjp to git a bite, sir. I have not had anything to eat since last night, and I've been to fifty houses. Your cook refused mo not five minutes ago. and I've got to hustle er go hungry. I'm dead sorry, sir, but you'll have to get somebody else to work. Bye bve." And he shied around the corner and got away,—Detroit Free Press. volves a very fine legal point indeed It is probable that there was an idea wtmncfl in this mode of nnmmtinn and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, ori- In selecting a site for a house, 1 find that I have placed it so high that the well is going to be unusually massive. In order to have the house where it would easily command a view of Mr. Vahderbilt's tennis court, thus giving us the benefit of the game without the fatigue of playing it, 1 have placed my well at such an elevation that water will be my most expensive drink this summer. Pull of concern, therefore, but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other, Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of *au age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and constantly in motion from morn till sunset could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in amis; but was soon as imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway with many a harmless trip and tumble. it may seem marvelous that with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birthplace or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity nnder a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into auother state of being, and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildnees of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—it may seem marvelous that this woman should ■till call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime, and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. ental taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which save in the exquisite productions of her needle found nothing else in all the possibilities of her life to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong, beneath. • • • to be herself—it would have been no lonarer Pearl 1 It Hurl 1 In* Oilier Distressing Ignorance. A young lady graduate of Vassar college got married not long since ;uul the young couple moved into the country She Baid she wanted a cow so that they could have good, reliable inilk. Her husband bought the cow and hired a man to milk it. This outward mutability Indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too. as will as variety, but—or else Hester's fears deceived her—it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenat le to rules. In giving her existence a g.oat law had been broken, and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amid which the point of variety and arrangement was dLScult or impossible to be discovered. • • • My valet, whose duty it is to carry the water, press tny trousers and do the chainberwork at the ham, took one look down the well yesterday and handed in his resignation. The well was opened in March, and the cornerstone laid with suitable ceremonies atul a speech made by Mr. Depew, bnt the work has seemed to drag some, owing to the fact that the Tar Heel well digger does not own a set of tools, neither does bo furnish powder, caps nor hose. Just as 1 would seat myself in the library and proceed to work on my great posthumous job, to be called "The Great Detective Series, or the Tedious Task of Inspector Byrnes in Unearthing and Bringing to Justice the Man who Struck Billy Patterson," my farming superintendent would rush in and, making a low salaam instead of wiping his feet, state that the well sinker was out of powder. "Are you satisfied now, my dear, now that you have plenty of good, fresh milk?" he asked her one morning at the breakfast table. "HAVE YOU ANY HOSE?" "Come along. Pearl," said she, draw When I handed my cartridges over to the well digger after my day's work in securing them and heaved a sigh of relief, feeling sure that now the work could go on, he took them and looked at them for quite a spell, and then he said, sort of slow and easy like: ing her away. "Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there, more beautiful onetil an we find in the woods." "No, Charles; I want another cow. but not one like this one." "What sort of a cow do you want?" "One that will supply us with nice, frnsb bnttpr "—Tptiu MifHncrs We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints: a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which in after years would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated off shoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth. But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form—had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing many hours of morbid ingeuuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But in truth Pearl was the one as well as the other, and only in consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her appearance. Julius—Wliad's de matter wid yo' (eets, Mose'f Pearl accordingly ran to the bow window at the farther end of the hall aud looked along the viata of a garden walk carpeted with closely shaven grass and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hojieless the effort to terpetuateonthis side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight, and a pumpkin vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New England earth would offer him. Moseby—Dad done hit me on de head ,vid a club when 1 was er staudin on «um old iron.—Truth. Her imagination was somewhat affected, and had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fiber would have been still .more so by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester—if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted—she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or must she receive those intimations, so obscure, yet so distinct, as truth? 4 Man In the House. "That's—hit. Now—if—we—had — some—hose—we—could — put— in —a— blast." Be was Jim among cho boys, Jeems to his grandfather, Jimmy to his mother. James to his father and "bub" to his sisters. He thought if the time ever came when he would be Mr., there could be no greater happiness beyond. How mot—with what strange rapidity, indeed l~4»d Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's ever ready smile and nonsense words! And then what a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, birdlike voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unraveled her own darling's tones amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and prodnct of sin. she had no right among christened infanta Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to other children. Not to He Caught. ••Haven't you got-anyuhose?"'I asked in loud, parliamentary tones. Twas at the Sabbath school picnic. Two maidens of uncertain age were struggling in the water. "No," he said. "I—lied—a—few—yesterday — but— 1 — ain't — got—a—one— Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had strnck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first,, had converted the forest land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and vaaderer, into Hester Prynne's wild dreary bnt lifelong home. All other gce.VN of earth—even that village of rural' England, where happy infancy and st, maidenhood seemed yet to be in h.v aether's keeping, like garments pnl off WDng ago—were foreign to her in oomparV. 011- The chain that bound her here of iron links and galling to her imast soul, but could never be broken. "Merciful heavens!" cried the pastor. "Will no one save them? Is there no swimmer among us?" His father overlooked him, hia mother coddled him, his sisters snubbed him. but there came a day when he had hi? revenge. now." 1 would then dismiss the farming superintendent, telling him to return to his duties. 1 call him mv farming superintendent because it has a more prosperous air to it. As a matter of fact, he and his horse Lydia E. Pinkham constitute the farm force and entire pornological staff. He is a good staff, he and Lydia. Together they are farming eleven acres of Venetian red soil this year, and putting a molding on the lower edge to keep the potatoes from falling out of the ground and injuring Mr. Vanderbilt's cotton crop and pajama plants, which are growing on the farms just below us. So 1 put in the following day getting hose. This sort of thing makes my literary work disconnected, and I have always wanted my posthumous work to be my very best. "God bless you," said a lady friend of mine the other day, "especially for your posthumous work." "Ls there a jestice of peace in the crowd?" asked Tattered Stuyvesant, the tramp, emerging from the bushes. "I hold that office," answered a gentleman. "But will"  The day was like any other ordinarv Aay to the rest of the world, but to our James it was the dawning of a new era. If anybody has said that before the writer forgives them. "Well, then, ladies," shouted Tattered 6tuvvesant to the struggling maidens, "hold up yer hands an let the jestic* swear ye that' I don't have to marry either of ye an I'll plunge in. I'm heroic, but not foolhardy. This is leap year!" —National Tribune. 1 am having the usual trouble peculiar to domestic animals in the spring. I bought a donkey last year for the children. This year we had him clipped, as he was getting most too woolly and the hens got to burrowing into his foliage and liiding their nests, so we got a clippist to clip him. He is about 80 years of age and never had his hair cut before. We found a good many things which the neighbors had missed. They were in the stubble after the clipping had been done. The family were seated at the breakfast table, when James plunged down stairs, opened the door of the breakfast room and threw this bomb in among them; There were a few rosebushes, how- ever, and a number of apple trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the lirst settler of the {teninsula; that half mythological personage who rides tlirongli our early annals seated on the back of a bull. The ltitter Truth "There's a man in the house!" It might be, too—doubtless it was so, although she hid the from heraelf and grew pale whtneia-r it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole—it might be thafcanother feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trod the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment and make that their marriage altar for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized and then strove to cart it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe—what finally she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of New England—was half a truth and half a self delusion. Hare, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul and work out another purity than that which she had lostmore saintlike, because the result of Clcverto.1— Old man, I should think yon would wear a silk hat with a dress "Goodness gracious me!" gasped his mother, running to hide in the china closet. Next vear we will clear three more Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe in arms and afterward as the little girl small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of-three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nature would permit—playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourg ing Quakers, or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witch craft Pearl saw and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. * • • Pearl, seeing the rosebushes, began to cry for a red rose and would not lie pacified. suit "Where is he?" gasped the sisters, crawling under the table. acres of white oak, leaving the stumps finished off artistically with a large carved acorn or some such design, so that the held will not be so unsightly, as is too often the case with newly cleared land. One field will also be cleared of tulip and sourwood trees, the stumps, however, to be "cliampered off" like a neWel jDOat of the Fifteenth century, and on each one of these chaste stumps a piece of rustic china or plain wlute ware will be set with enough soil in it to sustain geraniums and other  so that instead of a miserable mid unsightly field covered with blackened and repulsive stumps we will have an ornament of some kind wherever the eye rests. Dashawav (sadly)—Yon can't hire a silk hat.—Clothier aud Furnisher. But he caught cold, for we clipped him too early. One should not prune a donkey in March. It is risky. He is likely to get pneumonia. Ever since that I've had to cover up this donkey ot nights, and two or three times in the night 1 must go and see if he has kicked the covers off. He is often feverish at night, and his feet are hot and dry. Once they were, anyhow. That was the onlv time I felt of them. "D-o-n-'t be g-e-e-s-e!" chattered .'ho father. "W-h-o-'s a-f-r-a-i-d?" and he Beized the carving knife and rose to the occasion. In all her miserable experience there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed as well as shocked her by the irreverent "Hush, child, husli!" said her mother earnestly. "Do not cry, dear little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The governor is coming, aud gentlemen along with him!" Cutting Down HU Income. Beaver—Robinson tells me that his salarv hits been reduced. Melton—For what cause? Beaver— He has just been taken into the firm.—Cloak Review. Meanwhile James had kept on to the kitchen, where he continued sir uling: "There's a man in the house!' "Lawd a massy, we'se be all killed dead!" quavered the cook. inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age cf antique reverence looked up, as to a moral man in fellowship with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eves, there would be nothing unman wltmn the scope of view save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, m she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were seen approaching toward the house. * * * Wanted Nothing fast Inning I.ent. Rubicund Passenger—Have you the Then she rushed out and shouted "Police!" and soon she had the patrol wagon at the door. |to be continued.) time? I am going into the guinea hens this summer. I bought eighteen before I paused to ask myself what the guinea hen is good for. Will any reader of this paper who knows what the guinea hen is good for please write me at Fletchers, N. C.. stating what if anything she is good for except to oat if hard pressed or to make a loud and long continued noise at 4 o'clock a. ro.? Trouoletl Over a Definition Sanctimonious Passenger—! stopped my watch dtiring Lent No. sir. 1 As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town the children of the Puritans looked up from their play, or what passed for play with those somber little urchins, and spake gravely one to another; "Papa," said the hoy, shaking his head dubiously as he looked up from his book, "I'm afraid I never can tinderstand all these words." Rubicund Passenger — Stopped your wntch during Lent ? "Where is the man?" inquired the minion of the law when he had been informed that there was a man in the house. Sanctimonious Passenger (emphatically) -Yes, sir. My watch is fast, sir.—Jewel "Tut, tut, my boy," returned the father laying aside his paper, "you mustn't get discouraged. Once you learn the definitions you will have no trouble at all in understanding how to use them. Take any word you wish"  »i»' Circular. "Here," cried James, as he winked at his frightened family, "I am twentyone years old today, and if I ain't a man I'd like to know who is?"—Detroit Free Press. When I bousrht the farm it was surrounded by a rounil and most uufiglitlj rail fence. 1 have taken these rails, and placing them in groups of three and standing them on end to form a sort of tripod, have hung therefrom an jron jKDt, giving the farm tlie appearance of a gypsy cam]), as it were, for here and tbere all over the place may be seen these tripods with a kettle attached to each and a beautiful hollyhock or nasturtium growing out of same at a great rate. Nut an Kiiemy in the World. "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side. Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them." When Narvaez, duke of Valencia, lay oti his deathbed the archbishop of Granada stood by his side, endeavoring to prepare him for the great change. In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands, but whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark and covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. •'Child, what art thou?" cried the mother. About the Kight Ratio. Building goes on quietly on my new slosh on tli© French Brook river. I will write more about it as we progress. I am sorry now that 1 allowed myself to be drawn into this foolish rivalry with Mr. Vanderbilt in the matter of building. What I should have done is perfectly plain to me now. Instead of straining every nerve to equal or excel his residence, 1 should have waited till he completed his house and then profited by his experience and avoided his errors. " 'Fast,' papa," suggested the lxDy The little girl sounded her father on the financial situation. "Papa," she said, "I want five dollars.""Yes, of course. 'Fast* means rapid, speedy. Understanding that you can't make any mistake." "I trust that yon have pardoned all your enemies, that yon also may receive That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom and the burning shame on Heater Prynne's—what had the two in common? Or, once mora, the electric thrill would give her warning—"Behold, Hester, here is a companion t"—and looking up she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter shyly and aside and qnickly averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks, as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty and man's hard law that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow mortal was guilty like herself. But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot and shaking her little hand with u variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies and put them all to C'ght. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence—the scarlet fever or some such half fledged angel of judgment— whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which doubtless caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother and looked up smiling into her face. forgiveness. "A fast horse is one that runs, isn't I have no enemies," said the dying "Great Scott, child!" the father exclaimed, "what do you want with so much money?" it?" man "Well, yes, sometimes. You're beginning to understand." "But, your excellency, a man who has been so long in office as you have"  "1 haven't one, I tell you." "Still, it is just possible"  "Not one, I repeat." One reason, I think, why boys leave the farm is that the farm is not made attractive. It is too prosy. Boys love art. They love to see beautiful colors and simple, artistic decorations. We moan over the fact that year after year less American boys go into agriculture, while our farms are gradually falling into the hands of the foreigner. martrrdnrn Hester Prynne therefore did not flee On the outskirts of the town, within th# verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by ao earlier settler and abandoned because the soil about it was too Bterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore looking across a basin of the sea at the forest covered hills, toward the west. A clnmp of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not bo much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little, lonesome dwellin* with »nrofl slender means that she "But, papa, a fast man generally rides, doesn't lie?" "I want to buv a doll." "But a doll doesn't cost five dollars!" "Um. well, my boy." and tho old gentleman looked nt him over t he tops of his glasses, "you're beginuing to get technical." "Oh, no, the doll only costs five cents, but it takes the rest to buy her clothes." "Pardon me, your excellency" The father rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a minute. 7, Losing his patience, Narvaez raised himself up with what strength he hail left and said to the archbishop: "And a fast color is one that won't run, isn't it?" "My dear," he said soberly, "you have the ratio about right, but 1 haven't the five dollars. Here's a dime "—Detroit Free Press.  "Look here. 1 have no enemies; I had them all shot, and there's an end of it!" —Illustration. 1 believe that 1 have solved the great question. Boys go to the city, where they find beautiful things and efforts toward art. My boys shall never throw it up to me in future years that I failed to make the farm attractive. "There, there; that'll do' Suggestive. "But, papa, I want to know An Englishman traveling in California was much impressed by a specimen of American humor. "Run out and play, and don't l»other nie any more when I'm reading the pa- A Careful Nephew "The painting marked 'No. 542, Footprints of the Ages,' has not the name of the artist affixed to it," wrote the art critic, "but in its broad and generous treatment of the subject, its colossal grasp, so to speak, of the ideal in the real, it reveals its own identity. In the 'Footprints of the Ages' we recognize the earmarks of the eminent artist, Mr. Algernon Brushwell" etc. — Chicago TriVune. Yet His Intentions Were Good Without further adventure they reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns; now moss grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have hauuened and passed away per." An old countryman was in extremis; his last struggle seemed long beyond measure, as though the poor man could not make up his mind about starting on He was going down a dangerous monotain road in a coach when he saw these ominous words branded in black letters upon' a white board nailed to a wayside tree: And so the lesson came to an end.— Chicago Tribune. My only sorrow is that the neighbors in Buncombe county and those who live near me at Buck Shoals mislead me regarding agriculture. They speak lightly of my efforts at art and misrepresent . things to me regarding the business. They do it in a spirit of raillery—a sort of fesre raillery. I presume—but I think ( A Largt* Order. "Yes." said the Chicago drummer pensively. "she kissed me on my cheek." the distant journey. One night his nephew left a lighted candle on the little table, and said as he went off to bed: The vulgar who in those dreary old times were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations had a story about the scarlet letter which we misht readilv work How would you like to Hare a Broken Neck and a Dirty Shirt on? Go to thf Pioneer Lacndby. tW —Youth's Companion. "Oh,) am your little Pearl!" answered the child. •Sufferin# Moses!" said the other man. "Uncle, when you feel that it is all "What a inouth that girl must have."— over with you. you can blow out the Yarmouth Register. caudle.''—Motto per Ridere, But while she said it Pearl laughed and beean to dance up and down witfc