Pittston Gazette

              i m* s"s* t ' J / ;1 rl ' / I3 DD " } mjm* HSTABMSHKl) t#RO. i vol.. XJu.II. N«». 17. D Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. PITTSTOX, LUZERNE CO., 1\V., FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1892. A Weekly Local and Family Journal. ; 91.50 I*ER Asxuii. 1 IN ADVANCE. c had beeu summoned to make a prayer, she learueil that lie had gone the day before to visit the Apostle Eliot among his Indian converts. He would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon pf the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day Hester took little Pearl, who was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, however inconvenient her presence, and set forth. quarters of an acre. 5Tun have doubtless heard Tif the cotton bcjlt. I want to have one myself, if possible, raised right here on the pWo. I haven't worn one since I was aelml. LOVE. bated whether or no, with safety to the common weal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith!" « other—faithiully tor tne advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was 1 not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself—kind, true, just and of constant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?" that were the choicest liavo become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!" ail. nor ever once turned away ner hrm, sad eyes. Heaven likewise had frowned npon her and she had not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful and sorrow stricken man was what Hester could not bear and live. WELCOME TO ALL. gan, but who lias since moved; to Oakland. Cal.. to open a dental office, according to a local paper published in the interests of tin trade at $3.50 per year, with the understanding that it is to he paid for in advance or as soon thereafter as may be, though this is no way to publish a paper, as Isaiah *so truly said, for the laborer is indeed worthy of his hire, and this is found to be the case especially among workingmeu, and in the language of EDr. Bartle, speaking of the Alliance itself, and especially of Euripides, where he tells of Antisthenes, who was one day working in the new lot back of the M. E. church with a pair of restless steers and a quarterly meeting going on at the time. 845 that he could not address the steers as he would have liked, and the place being a trifle rocky, as also was Antisthenes, and the briers having swathed his bare legs below the toga, which did not amount to much anyhow. "And what are you driving at?" says Euripides, who had just got a poem into a Greek magazine with the understanding that it was to be paid for as soon as it was published, if nothing happened, and to be used anyway in case of his death, so he was feeling pretty well. • Driving at?" says Antisthenes; "I am driving at these pesky steers and doing si little more work to get a little more money to buy a little more food to give me a little more strength so that I can do a little more work and get a little more money to get me a little more food to give ine a little more strength so that I"  CTith at an evening party that they met in January, And in the following month he knew he loved "The people reverence thee," s;rtd Hester. "And surely thou workest good among them! Doth this bring thee 110 comfort?"' BILL NYE WRITES OF TICKTOWN The Richmond and Danville runs roar my place, and is a good road. I have been trying to sell it the right of way over my farm so that I conM tell one of my boarders to }«ick his stuff and go elsewhere, but the road says that a right of way over my place would lengthen the line eight miles, and it is feared also that I would drive my feeblest stock on the track to get killed. In March he swiftly pressed hi* suit, he dhl not dare to tarry. Lest some one else should win the girl he hoped "Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated over and over again. "Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?" AS A SUMMER RESORT. "It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this badge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport." "More miser}*, Hester!—only the more misery!" answered the clergyman, with a bitter Bmile. "As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined 8011I like mine effect toward the redemption of other souls?— or a polluted soul toward their purification? And as for the iieople's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand np in my pulpit and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light ot heaven were beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—and then look inward and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And satan laughs at it!" some day to marry. Some Piscatorial Observations and the Home and Hannt* of the Bed Bag I»e- In April she showed iuterest in his words, deep and tender, And acknowledged that she Blight perhaps love some one of hi» gender. In May he longed to ask her, but feared he'd be rejected. But In June, with sudden courage, he proposed and was accepted. "I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister at length, with a, deep utterance out of an abyss of sadness, but no •inger. "I freely forgive you now. May God forgive 11s both! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in tlio world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest. That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the eanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so." scribed—How Tlcktown Looks and How "And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made me so?" "All this and more," said Hester. It Is Beached, The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that to Hester's mind it imaged uot amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and somber. [Copyright, 1892, by Edgar W. Nye.] "Nay, then, wear it if it suit you better," rejoined he. "A woman must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her person. The letter is gayly embroidered and shows right bravely on your bosom!" TlCKTOWN, N. C. Ticktown, N. C., fifty years ago had never been thought of as a summer resort, yet even then it was considered remarkably healthy, and the vital statistics showed that no one had ever died there except poor people, and death can hardly be regarded as a calamity to people who have no means. A good stead}" boarder with lung difficulty and a couple of blankets of his own could find a pleasant home at my house, with meat on the table whenever we butcher. Now they were promised man and wife, their warm love knew no tether. And through the hot month of July it kept pace with the weather. In August, at the seaside, they were on the the water mooning: In September, at the mountains, they spent their time in spooning. "It was myself!" cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thvself on me?" All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked as well as wonder smitten to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the last seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older, for though the traces of advancing life were risible he bore his age well and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and Quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played him false and flickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smoldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was blown into a. momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily as possible and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. /A "I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger Chillingworth. "If that have not avenged me I can do no more!" He laid his finger on it with a smile. "It lias avenged thee!" answered Hester Prynne. "Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it'." Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze, so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now aud then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight— feebly sportive at best in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scenewithdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier because they had hoped to find them bright. But when October's dainty touch hail turned the green leaves yellow. He discovered, to his horror, that she loved another fellow; "Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground. "No; I have not forgotten!" P. S.—The climate here is like that Qf Turin. People who have them sleep under blanket 1 the year round. In that way they get a good deal of re3t. But he found it quite an easy task, through next month and December, To put his foot down and stamp out love'B last remaining ember. "I judged no less," said the physician. "And now, what wouldst thou with me touching this man?" They sat down again, side by side and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trankof the fallen tree. Life"liad never brought them a gloomier hour. It was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending and darkening ever as it stole along, and yet it inclosed a charm that made them linger upon it and claim another and another and after all another moment. The forest was obscure around them and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads, while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath or constrained to forebode evil to B. N. And bo they'd sailed from pole"to pole, and basked 'Death love's equator, At which spot he'd have won instead of losing her as later. Moral: Young jnan, marry before your ship has foundered. While the latitude is lero and the temperature two hundred. "I must reveal the secret," answered Hester firmly. "He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy hands. Nor do I—whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red hot iron entering into the soul— nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him—no good for me—no good for thee! There is no good for little Pearl! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze!" "Yon wronged yourself in this," said Hester gently. "You have deeply ami sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace:" HOW IT ENDED. ■9-  The Modern Courtship of Caleb Binklej and Maria Sutton. For fifty years Caleb Binkley and Maria Sutton had lived neighbors in a double house on a pleasant street of a little old New England village. They had grown up together there, and they had seen all the members of their families carried to the graveyard on the hill, leaving them alone in their houses. For twenty years they had lived thus, and their days went by peacefully and happily. One morning in May, Caleb was in the garden back of his house, prodding away with his hoe, and Maria was in hers fixing a flower bed. "It's a fine morning, Maria," called Caleb across the fence. —Harvard Lampoon. "Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. it runs away and hides itself because it is afraid of something on your bo6om. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. 1 am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet," THE SCMF imm "No, Hester, 110," replied the clergyman. "There is no snbstance in it. It is cold and dead and can do nothing for me. Of penance I have had enough. Of penitence there has been none. Else I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom. Mine burns in secret. Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what 1 am. Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy—to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself and be known as the vilest of all sinners, raethiuks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me. flat now it is all falsehood—all emptines death!" Dr. Bartle says that he and Euripides both came away and left | the old man sitting on the plow beam vaselining his brier beswatted limbs and going over and over in the midst of his quaking beard with this same old. old grievance, which is bothering every workingman today, dear reader, you aiid I and all of ns, and no member of congress can help ns out of it. No Republican or Democratic platform or hoarse campaign resolvers can take this mighty burden from our aching shoulders. Only God's kindly hand, when the day is done and the drowsy crickets review the beautiful torchlight procession of fireflies, can with gentle touch take qff the heavy, galling burden that he put there when the world began, when even- man was told to eat with one hand and wipe his brow with the other. By IATSAXIEL HAWTHORNE, (continued. ] CHAPTER XL corns, HESTER AND THE '•Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Heater. (to be continued.] In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergymen reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It groveled helplees on the ground even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy which disease only could have given them. . With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had fteen brought to bear and was still operating on Mr. Dimmeedale's well being and repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which be had appealed to her—the outcast woman —for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, more over, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrdng by any standard external to herself, Hes"*r saw—or seemed to see—that there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that naitod her to the rest of human kindlinks of flowers or silk or gold or whatever the material—had all been broken. Here waa the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. * * * Now", however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister straggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that whatever painful (#cacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the "And why not, mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "Will not it come of its own accord, when 1 am a woman grown?" Even the Druggist Despaired. In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil if he will only for a reasonable space qf time undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over. A straight wisp of faded hair stuck out from the small coil at the back of her head. NYE LANDS A CARP. Forty-eight years ago Colonel (now General) West, of Cane Creek, this state, visited Ticktown while on an equestrian trip aboard his justly celebrated trick mule Mary, and was delighted to notice how hungry he was on arriving there, and also how much more so he was when he came away. "Woman, I could well nigh pity thee!" said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration, too, for there was a quality almost majestic in tne despair which sue expressed. "Xiioq hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee for the good that has been wasted in thy nature." "Beautiful," said Maria. "Seems ez ef the sun was shining jest for our benefit, don't it?" remarked Caleb, dragging a tangled weed from his hoe handle. "Yes, Caleb, I guess it shines down on my side about like it does on yours." Caleb looked up at the bine sky for a moment and then walked ovfer to the "Run awtfy, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine! It will soon be gone." "Air \'ou the druggist?" she asked. "1 am, madam," he replied. "Leadin druggist o' the city?" "Without doubt, madam." "Keep all the uioderndest remerdies, I s'pose?" feari set tortii at a great pace, and, as Hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by ite splendor and scintillating with the vivacity excited bv rapid piotion. * * * When her eh' child had departed, flester Prynne made a step or two toward the track that led through the forest. but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the path entirely alone and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble and betrayed a nerveless despobduncy in his air which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was woefully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessjiess in his gait, as if he saw PO reason for taking one step farther, ppr felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree and lie there passive forevermore. The leaves might bestrew 14w aud the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hjllapk ever frwp, no matter whether there were ]ife in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided. He also detected what the other citizens had not before noticed, as there were no scientists then living in Ticktown, that the place had a mean annual rainfall and a view of Pisgah and the Rat. These facts, together with the appetite he acquired while there, led him to consider the feasibility of making Ticktown a Mecca for the "invalid. Here, said he, wealthy men who have no appetite may come and get mighty hungry, if they stay long enough. "Got any o' this yer bichlorate o gold?" "Certainly." Is it not so? fence. The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her. "And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and j at can to A Send! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own. Forgive, at)4 leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it. I said, but now, thaf there could be no good event for him or thee or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?" "We have the bichloride: yes, madam We are Dr. Keeley's exclusive agents." And yet Ticktown, as I was saying, is free from malaria. Sewer gas anil civilization are unknown here j except among the better classes, and as the promoters have removed all fatal cases to another county early the death rate is low. Capital and a bag of fioni are all that we need here now to make things lively. Buckwheat flour would 1m best. Ticktown is the homo of the red Img. which has recently beconjie such an industry here. If time should be hanging heavily on your hands this summer, sit lown on an old log at the corner ol kmdan and Coon streets, where the sitf or the new opera honse is patientlj vaiting for the capitalist, and after ai tour or so of gentle thought you wil NV V," . "I say, Maria," he said, "I've been hinkin about takin down this fence, four pa and mine put it up here forty 'ear ago, but 'twan't never much usa SV hat do you say to takin it down?" "Might ez well ez not, I guess, Caleb." issented Maria, without changing her josition. A minnte or two later Caleb, with an is in his hand, was back again. "Maria," he said, "I guess ef a thing hez got to be done it might ez well be done right off, hadn't it?" "I guess it might, Caleb." Maria went on with her digging, whil« Caleb hewed and chopped at the wooden 'ence, and at last the work was done. "It'll make good firewood, Maria," he aid, as he surveyed the wreck, "and if Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to sjDeak. Yet, uttering his long restrained emotions sc vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears and sjioke. "Same thing they gives to drunkerds to break 'em o' drinkin?" "Precisely." "Docs it cure drinkin?" "Makes a man hate it." "Will it cure tits?" "Certainly," "What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?""Something that would make me weep if there were any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. "But let it pass! It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak." "And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth eagerly, as if he loved the topic and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely, and I will make answer." That was only forty-eight years ago, or near that. In fact, last Christmas they tell me was forty-eight years ago. The governor, in speaking of it to me the other day, said that it struck him that was a good while between Christmases, but we will let that pass. "Such a friend «s thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with whom to weep over thy sin thou hast in me the partner of it!" Again she hesitated, but brought out the words, with an effort, "Thou hast long had such an enemy, and d wellest with him under the same roof!" "Our guarantee goes with overy bottle. and there is a hypodermic syringe in ever)- package." "Go 'way!" "Cure a man o' chawin terhacker?" "Yes, indeed. This is a most wonderful discovery. There have been thousands of cases"  The altitude of Pisgah, which may be seen from the hill just back of Ticktown, is 5,757 feet. The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath and clutching at his heart if he would have Un a it out of his bosom. "Does it make a man come home reg'lar o' nights?" "Peace, Hester, peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness. "It is not granted me to pardon. 1 have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me anC1 explains all that wo do and all we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil, but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiendlike, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man." "If it does not we will cheerfully refund the money." Craggy mountain may be seen from the top of Pu-gah, is 6,000 feet high. From the top of this mountain one may see Mount Mitchell, which is 8,717 feet high, and from the top of Mount Mitchell one may see Mr. George W. Vanderbilt's magnificent place with a powerful glass; also what his idea was in building same. ,, \ fa •5. 1 fou'll tell toe where you want your halt , \ \\ Y'j I" v | put I'll pile it up for you handy." \ \J / V "It looks summat strange not to see a i 4 dividin line between us, don't it, Caleb?" \ fi «. J rfie remarked as sbo stood up and looked F jf1 k" A across both gardens. , 1 VD-*\V ' "I waa noticin thtetTnySfrlf, Maria," he i '"Twan't no use," was it?" she in' , A l I) quired, doubtfully gazing at the fence \ I I A wmhi ,Dprone on the earth. / ,Ml; §L ' ' "Never was," he answered. Tlien hC "When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as tonching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands; there seemed no choice to me save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty toward other human beings, there remained a duty toward him, and something whigpered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart. Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!" "Ha! What savest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! and under mine own roof! What mean you?" "Jest nacher'lly breaks a man o" every bad habit he ever had?" 4"Madam, the moral renovation ex perienced by patients submitted to thi* treatment is comparable only to the absolute purification and rejuvenation o( the entire physical man." Pester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which ~!i" w.:-. a - sponsible to this unhappy man in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than The very eontignrtty of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or perhaps in the misanthropy of her own trouble she left the minister to bear whar she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her tympathies toward him had been both toftened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not that the continual presence of Roger Chilling worth—the secret poison of his malignity infecting all the air abynt him—and his authorized interference as a physician with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities—that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result on earth could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter that eternal alienation from the good and true, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type. "Dear me snz!" The best way to visit Ticktown is by diligence from Asheville, N. C. You will arrive there about noon. Then by the time you can gather your strawberries and catch a cow you will be right hungry. No place can furnish such an appetite with so few facilities for quenching it as Ticktown. "Most cases yield to a few bottles, but it is well to bo safe, and take along about"  To Hester's eye the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale pxhibited no symptom pf positive and vivacious suffering efeiept that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart. :ame nearer. "Ain't much more use in ;wo people livin in two houses either, is there, Maria?" he said. "None that I can see, Caleb," she responded, with a faint glow of color in her cheeks and neck. Caleb seemed to be trying to swallow something that would not go down. He attempted to speak and failed, and then he tried to go to her and that was an ignominious failure also. At last ha made a successful effort at speech. "Maria," he said, pulling himself up straight, "where do you want your half of the old fence pied?" "Caleb,* she almost whispered as she came ami laid her hand on his arm, "pile it up with yours."—W. J. Lampton in Detroit Free Press. i  Hot Much If one makes a slip of the tongue, through embarrassment or haste, it is generally beet to let it go rather than call attention to what might otherwise have been, almost unnoticed. A young clergyman, newly settled over a large parish, had occasional fits of embarrassment when standing before his congregation. One £unCiay, after reading h notice ol a woman's missionary meeting to be hek • « n a. 11 ■■ "I'll take six bottles ef you think it'll help my husband." "Madam, what is the matter with vonr husband?" Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At length she succeeded. He waved his hand and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. * » • "Mutter with him? Say, man, do I look like you could insult me? I guest I orter know him." The French Broad river is only a short drive from Ticktown, and furnishes rare sport during the fishing season. All sorts of game fish, such as the r$d horse, the hog sucker, the stone toter and the maltese catfish are abundant in the French Broad, and are caught with a club or dynamited when the gTand jury is not in session. These fish are all rich and nourishing, especially when put on a cucumber bed. "Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne bitterly, as she still gazed after him, "1 hate the man!" Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said faintly at first: then louder, but hoarsely, "Arthur Dimmesdale!" "Yes; but what is the trouble with him?" "Trouble? I gr.ess 1 orter know. He's more trouble than the hull rest oi the fambly, an they's nine of us now. Trouble! 1 sh'd t'link he wuz!" She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so she thought of those long past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the firelight of their home and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. She marveled how such scenes could have been. She marveled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him. She deemed it her crime most to be repented of that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offense committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which liad since bei'ii done him that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had ijersuiuled her to fancy herself happy by his t-ide. "Who speaks!" answered the minis- THE RED BUG8. think of something, and it will not be what you came there to think of. It will be something else. It will jog yonr memory, and you will find when it is too late that memory is not where yon thought it was at. (lathering himself quickly up, he stood more «jrect, like a man taken by surprise in h mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses, Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, be indistinctly beheld a form under the trees clad in garments so somber and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a specter that had stolen out from among his thoughts. "But what is his complaint?" "Complaint? Look at here, now, man, do 1 look like a woman 'at'd stand talk like this? , Complaint? He ain't got no mortal complaint in the world, not with a wife like me! It's me that's got the complaint!" "What choice had you?' asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger pointed at this man would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon—thence, peradventure, to the gallows!" The German carp is also to be found here in great abundance, and seven of the mamma carp on a pleasant summer night will easily lay eggs enough to stop navigation. With them it seems to be a sort of gift. delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. The red bug was the very first white child born in Ticktown. He could tell us some strange tales, I wot, if he would, of northern people with whom he has associated—She young, the fair, the aged and the venerable—but he has spared none of them. The young, the joyous and the gay, the crumbling wreck of former grandeur, he has speckled them all. Hester could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage and loyalty on her own part in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and "It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne. "But what's wrong with your husban—what does he do? Does he us€ tobacco?" The sportsman during the carp season provides himself with a twig with which to scare her off the nest and then a sled stake with which to take her life. It is very exciting. Yon also take along a small colored boy. It is his duty every time you land a fish to burn a rag. "What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. "1 tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough! What art can do I have exhausted on him. that he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!" "Wuss'n that." "Drink?" nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and half maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison chamber. She had climbed her Way since then to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. "W uss'n that." "Gamble?" "Wuss'n that," "What?" He made a step nigher and discovered the scarlet letter. ••Hester! Hester Prynne!" said he. "Is it thou? Art thou in life'/" He lives in old logs that are a little soggy and still have the bark on them, but he does not live on the same. He lives on the health seeker from Boston, Charleston and Tompkins ville, S. I. He buries all past differences and every day i« fVcoration Day with him. I wish you oonld have seen me yesterday evening, but possibly you might not care to. I was as spotted as a trout, and I felt like leaning up against a tree and rubbing the bark off the tree by means of myself. . The hog sucker, or stone toter, as it is also called by ornithologists, is so called because it has a flat place on the head on which to carry stones for the purpose of building wing dams for a nest. Some call him the free and accepted mason, because he lays such a beautiful wall around his nest. The stone toter makes good eating, but does not resist arrest like the trout or the bass. I have caught everything most, but nothing that reminds me of the stone toter. Catching him reminds me more of catching the mumps than anything else. "Goes him tin!" "Even to!" she answered. "In such life as has been mine these seven years past: Aim tnou, Arthur Uimmesaaie, dost thou yet live?" Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man once—nay, why should we not speak it—still so passionatelj loved! Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had already told Roger Chilling worth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have lain down on the forest leaves and died there at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet. The druggist heaved a long sigh. "Madam," said he, "I fear the case ii hopeless."—Forest and Stream. — . o - ■ the chapel a few days later, he en-ored to add a special appeal of his for a large attendance. After stating that it was to be a meetg of great interest and importance, he •i, "We, the women of this congrega- M det own It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence and even doubted of their own, So strangely did they meet in the dim Wood that it was like the first encountei in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately conr nected in their former life, but how stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost and awestricken at the other ghost! They were awestricken likewise at themselves because the crkis flung back to them their consciousncss and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does except at snch breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear and tremulously, and. as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dinimesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chili hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what wae dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves at least inhabitants of the same sphere. Stumping the Country. sa tion With a flushed countenance he stopped and retraced his steps. "We, who nre the women of this congregation," ho began. "Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne. "Yes, 1 hate h;m!" repeated Hester, more bitterly than before. "He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!" The red bug was made for a purpose, but I wish I had a dollar for every time I have wondered what that purpose was. Still I suppose that the finite should not seek to sneak under the great tent to harn the purposes of creation or get into Hie infinite, as Sam Jones was so truly laying the other day when he saved Unite a number of souls and turned away money besides. "Yea, woman, thou sayest truly?" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all in in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew by some spiritual sense—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him which sought only evil and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged—and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed—he did not err—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man with once a human heart has become a fiend for his especial torment!" This was no bettor, and he beat a blushing retre.it by saying, "Let us sing the 401st hymn."—Youth/% Companion. The hog sucker is so called because he has been very often fed to the hog. But the native or Sarah Bernhardt hog will not eat the hog sucker. Only the northern hog does it. He says: "Oh, how lovely! Isn't it nice to look at Mount Pisgah and eat hog suckers? And it makes one feel so all fired well and so vigorous txD. I could live here forever if I could just smell the magnolia and eat the hog sucker." Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, wliich they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years under the torture of the scarlet letter inflicted so much of miserj- and wrought out no repentance? "O Arthur," cried she, "forgive me! In all things else I have striven to lie true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast through all extremity, save when thy good, thy life, thy fame, were put in question! Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what 1 would say? That old man, the physician—he whom they call Roger Chillingworth—he was my husband!" A Reput-ition to Maintain. ' Prominent M rniber of Society for tH& Prevention of Cruelty to Animals »((# neighbor's boy}--Johnny, do yon  to earn a quarter? la fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husbaad, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicines withal. Times are a little quiet at Ticktown this season, owing to low prices in both cotton and cods' heads and tins. Yankees are many of them going to Bar Harbor, hoping to see Mr. Blaine's place, while the guests from the south have not yet arrived for the summer at any of tt 9 mountain resorts. Johnny—Snrel ,di tl "Then you may go to the drpft gtora and get miC a pouiid of insect kill cockroaches. Here's And say, Johnny- -don't who sent yoa."—Chicago TriMij*. A Model Wlf*jl*9T * ol OWlit Toinson—Does yo*ir ytitk* letters, Johnson? used evarf l«sw nrii Johnson—Never,  marked private.-Se^tt.^ Bat the native or Goldsmith Maid hog says nothing, bnt saws wood. He fills himself up on acorns and such things, takes a tarn or two around a kite shaped track, sleeps an hour, eats a bushel of corn on the ear, goes over to the depot and eats the packing oat of a couple of sleeping cars, trains an hour or two to keep his flesh down and then yoes to bed. In this way he becomes a favorite with the life insurance companies while the northern hog dies soon of heart failure, and early in November you will see him with a chip in his mouth and *pnth«r holding his chest open so that you can see the nice hard finish ou tho inside of his thorax. —Truth. '•I spurn you with contempt," exclaimed fho proud, imperious girl in haughty tones. Spurned. What we need at Ticktown is really capital and a sack of flour. There is no race feeling here at all. Though the town is entirely settled by colored people, the white race is cordially invited to come and settle here. A hotel with a poste cochere and printed menu is very innch needed here; also a horse team to do odd jobs about town. The minister looked at her for an instant with all the violence of passion which—intermixed, in more shapes than one, with his higher, purer, softer qualities—was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed and through which he sought to wiu the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much enfeebled by suffering that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the ground and buried his face in his hands. The spnrnee was a base born clerk in her father's ninety-nine cent store. His head fell upon his breast at her cruel words. Hester bade little Pearl ran down to the margin of the water and play with the shells and tangled seaweed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a fall stop, and peeped curiously into a pool left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her out of the pool, with dark, glistening curia around her head, and an elf smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her baud and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say: "This is a better place! Come thou into the pool!" And Pearl, stepping in midleg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out of a * Bpth came the gleam of a mentary smile, floating to j agitated water, her mother had accosted The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw n dark light on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not oth • trwise have acknowledged to herself. jm sdt Without a word more spoken—neither he nor she assuming the guidance, bnt with an unexpressed consent — they glided back into the shadow of the woods, whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they found voice to speak it was at first only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might have made about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm and next the health of each, Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold. But for an instant only. Then be hoisted it aloft once more, defiantlv.Gtis Snol He being gone, she summoned back lor child. * • » Charlie Knickerbocker • cold)—All I shaid wastrttijti the gap of ling/^rraSSff; "All right," he said coldly. "That's better than being spurned with your father's boot." A good live paper could be started here in connection with the regular bill of fare at the hotel. CHAPTER XII. PASTOR AND PARISHIONER. OT9vinrM oJ about j .ta He had tried both. Press. — Detroit Free Most any one around here can tell yoti where Ticktown is. It is a pleasant ride from Ebenezer to Ticktown past Potato Hill. It is also pleasant to ride back again. Ebenezer consists of an old church with a thrifty graveyard annex. It is a quiet place. Hester Prynne remained constant in aer resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain □r ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of adlreasing him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking along the shores of the peninsula or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There would have tDeen no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame had she visited him in his own study; where many a penitent, ere now. had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chilling worth, and partly that her conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in while they talked together— for all these reasons Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky. There is another fish that one finds in the French Broad river, called the Pride of Perdition, I think. It has legs on it, and when a man catches one he throws down his pole, gives two blood curdling Bhrieks and hunts for a Keeley institute. A Had Stralu. airuK( t&odl IA 'i The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, ho had never before viewed himself as he did now. "I might have known it," murmured he. "I did know it! Was not the secret told me in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I not understand? O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!—the indelicacy!—the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou are accountable for this! I cannot forgiv© thee!" S hf « ft\ v ) 4 y The superintendent of my farm told, me about it. He caught one a few weeks »go and didn't feel like working for two or three days after that. The mouth was made at a time when it was thought there was going to be more material than there really was, and so the body is »light and the legs are badly bowed from trying to carry the mouth around in search of more things to eat. Possibly the reader has doubts about the existence of Ebenezer and Ticktown, but if he had faith like a mustard plaster or would drive out here for a day he would find that they are to be seen with no great difficulty, together with some hound dogs who will betray considerable pleasurable emotion when he heaves in sight. to'} w a kind i After awhile the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne's, "Hester," said he, "hast thou found peace'/" "Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the old man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?" "Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. "Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!" What Ticktown needs is a good hotel. At present it is sadly deficient in hotels; also everything else. But a good hotel is needed first. Also a large, powerful, urbane man to stop people who unconsciously pass through the town and never come back. Last year a man talked of starting an ox yoke industry at Ticktown, but he had to go home to Fort Dodge, Ia.f and is doing time now in that state. Id apeak a word with you," "a word that concerns us "No! no! He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician; and as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer characteristics and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember me, Hester, as 1 was nine years agone? Even then I was in .the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life bad been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. * There was some agitation here also eight years ago about having the county seat at this place, but owing to the red bugs the legislature said it would hurt the place as a county seat, so it was abandoned. la! and is it Mistress HesteT that t word for old Roger Chillintri?" answered he, raising himself his stooping posture. "With all sart! Why, mistress, I hear good ;■ of you on all hands! No longer lan jester eve a magistrate, a wise odly man, was discoursing of your s, Mistress Hester, and whispered at there had been question conur you in the council. It was de- "Hast thou?" she asked, With Budden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around him and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her—for seven long years had it frowned upon t.hia lonely woman—and still she bore it Mrs. BmSh^^fH mittee decideU dM Brush—Yea# lo i Mrs. Brpsfcjrotae pw-ySf! ']A I^TT' tOhdeL* WttJ l*Ddfltt«j Weired 200 pounds. "None—nothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were I an atheist—a man devoid of conscience—a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts—I might have found peace long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it! But as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there oriarinallv wan in me all of God's sifts - T.J#, It is quiet. It is only two miles from the main road and miles from Plum Levi's Vi«£. Good neighbors can always be found by coming to my place. Street cars are contemplated «tso by a man who has been that way ever since he fell out of a hammock that was hung on his piazza in the fall of 1871 by a son-in-law who then lived in Michi- 'Che Very Tiling. Corn is looking a little pallid} bnt root crops are doing very with good growing weather i» ai'cuwjriu:. of boarder» T Khali niik£ ta.irfttf#! falrtUwW' "Porter, I want you to put me into a carriage wher» there's no smoking or talking, and wliero the passengers do not keep getting in and out," 1 i "Well, sir, their'-* the dog compart fcientl"—Hecht. tteif sustaining this year. I'Arif 'tttymg'tf little patch of cotton this y««j—1Dhxee- At last, while attending in a sick chamber- whither the Reverend Mr,