Herald Of The Times

THE
WOOD-ENGRAVER
Or, the Odd-Fellow's Claim.
BY J. H. INGRAHAM.

"Where this evening, Charles?" asked a lovely married woman of her husband. The tone was slightly sneering, though she smiled as she spoke.

"I am on the visiting committee and have to make a call on a sick brother," answered Mr. Preston as he put on his gloves.

The lady pouted.

He took up his hat, and approached her with a playful smile.

"Ah, Mary, I fear you will never overcome your hostility—it is no longer prejudice but hostility to the Lodge.

And I do not wish to. Here you were away from me Tuesday night until nine o'clock and now on Thursday you are off again!"

"But I have duties I owe to others as well as to yourself, Mary! I give you five evenings and oftener six in every week, besides a great portion of my time during the day. We must sacrifice something for others. As members of the great community, we have duties external to those due our immediate families."

"But you had no such duties until you became an Odd Fellow."

"I did not till I became an Odd Fellow see so plainly the duty I owed to my fellow creatures as I now do. Becoming an Odd Fellow has enlarged my views of benevolence and opened to me a field for its exercise."

"And pray what are you to exercise it upon to night. Who do you visit?" she asked, with a toss of her pretty head.

"A young married man by the name of Pellon who joined the Lodge a year ago, I learn by a note I received from the N. G. while I was at tea, is discovered to be quite ill. He has been absent from the Lodge for several meetings but as no one reported him ill, I was not aware of it till just now. As he lives in the next street I must go and see him."

"What is he?"

"An Odd Fellow—I mean his trade?"

"That is, you mean how respectable is he?—We Odd Fellows, Mary, know no distinction of trades within the Lodge. We are all brothers and friends. He is a mechanic—a wood-engraver. I believe. I have several times spoken with him and like him. He is quiet, unassuming, and quite interesting in conversation. I have heard him speak in the Lodge with great fluency and eloquence. His health has been delicate of late."

"You seem to feel very much for such a sort of person. It seems to me! Well, go! I will try and pass the evening as well as I can: as I do those when you are at the Lodge!" and the lady pouted and looked ill-pleased.

"Why not let me call and ask lively Amy Otis to drop in and pass the evening?"

"I had rather not have her."

"Why not go to your father's. I will see you there and call for you when I come back."

"No."

"Then pass the time reading Frederica Bremer's last."

"I shall go to bed."

This was said so very positively and angrily that her husband said no more, except "good evening!"

She waited till she heard him close the door, and then sprung up and began to pace the room.

The cricket was in her way, and she kicked it out of her way. The piano stool was an obstacle to the free exercise of her limbs and she tilted it over. For full five minutes she continued in this amiable mood, during which annuals strewed the floor, chairs were laid upon their backs, and the poker and shovel took a turn or two of cachucha about the room. At length she threw herself upon a sofa and played the devil's tattoo with her little left foot upon the carpet till she was tired.

She then pulled a feather fan to pieces and cast the fragments around her; took up a book, glanced into it and flung it to the further end of the room, greatly to the peril of a splendid French mirror, and to the utter demolition of a cologne bottle that unluckily lay in its progress.

The fragrance of the spilled cologne, or perhaps exhaustion, calmed her, and after venting a few gentle epithets at the Odd Fellows in general and her husband in particular, she rang for an ice-cream to be brought her from the next confectioner's; a very excellent cooler in such cases.

Mrs. Preston, was not a simpleton, nor a vixen, nor a fool. She had good sense, a cultivated mind, and knew a great deal better than to act as she did.

But she was jealous: jealous of the Lodge not of a woman: for she had too just an appreciation of her own beauty if not of Charles' constancy to be jealous of any lady. No. The Lodge was her rival, it robbed her of a part of his society all of which she felt it was her right to monopolize.

She was like a stingy child with a sweet apple. He must enjoy it in a corner lest somebody would want a bite.

She had from the first, openly shown her hostility to the Lodge; and many had been the scenes of tears and recriminations between them; he being too firm to yield to her weak entreaties to withdraw from an institution he knew her own selfish love for every hour of the time, this refusal etc would re-

You pretended to friendship, love and truth!—Where is your friendship, for we! Where is your love for me!

Where is your truth, when you refuse this my love, after you solemnly pledged- yourself when you married me, Charles, to love and honor me! Is this loving and honoring me. If you think so, I do not!"

While Mrs. Preston was eating her ice, Amy Otis came in: and being now in better humor, (ices are an unailing prescription in these matters) she managed to receive her husband very amiably, when at half past nine he returned.

He looked gratified at the change in her: but made no remark before Miss Otis. He was grave and thoughtful.

At length he said, smiling, as he looked at his wife—

"Miss Amy, my wife has scolded me a little for being an Odd Fellow, you know. She tried to have me stay in to night. But as I was on the sick committee I could not very well.

I am thankful I did not," he said impressively

"Would you like to hear," he added, addressing the young lady, "where I have been"

"Yes." she answered laughing

"Let us hear, Sir, of some of your great benevolent doings!"

"After I had walked five minutes from my door I turned into --- Lane, and with some difficulty found the house I sought. It was small and of humble exterior, I knocked, and a poor, thin, pale young woman came to the door. I asked if Mr. Pollen lived there? She said that he did. I told her I had come to see him, having just heard of his illness

"He is indeed ill, Sir. I am glad you have come to see him, Sir. Are you an Odd Fellow?" she asked with an eager look.

"Yes."

"Then all is well for us!" she answered gratefully. "He is my husband, sir. He has not been well this six months. And the last six weeks he has not been able to work for the dengue in his fingers. This worried him and wore upon him and made him right sick at last. Well, sir, as his daily earnings were eat up by the four children and us two as fast as it came in, if he lost a day it was robbing the mouths that depended on him; and he has been paid low of late, there are so many engravers that are not married that work for very little. So he grew sick and took to bed with fever!"

"And how long has he been so ill?"

"Four weeks, sir."

"And why has he not made it known to the Lodge?"

"So I told him: but he said no. He said he would keep from the funds of the Lodge till the last minute. So he made me sell this and that for food and to buy medicine."

"This sensitiveness was all wrong," I said to her. The fund was in part his own contribution. He was entitled to it as a right. It is never regarded in the light of an alms."

"But he felt it was, sir; and he is proud. well, sir, we struggled on till to-day, when he proving worse and nothing to sell and nothing to eat, I made him tell me who was the 'Grandee' of the Lodge: and so I puts on my bonnet when he was asleep and goes straight to his store. He received me kindly, said my husband should at once be attended to; and that's only an hour since; and here you are already sir, come to see me!"

She pressed my hand with tears and expressions of the deepest gratitude.

I entered the sick man's room. He lay upon a bed reduced to a skeleton

He turned his large glazed eye upon me and smiled as he recognized me.

"You have come to a poor man's house, sir," he said, as if mortified at his poverty. I did not expect I should so soon call on the charity of the Lodge.

"You are claiming of me only your right and my due." I said. No Odd Fellow can be regarded as an object of charity: He is looked upon as a distressed brother, and the duties extended to him are those of love. We owe each other only love. It is this that has brought me here.

He smiled gratefully and pressed my hand with his skeleton fingers, which were hot to the touch. I found that he and his family were perfectly destitute.

There was no cooling medicine for him: no food for them. His wife told me that the children had eaten nothing since dinner and were gone to bed crying for food, and she had for their sakes eaten nothing since the night before."

"Oh horrid! Dreadful!" exclaimed both Amy and Mrs. Preston, in tones of pity and sympathy.

I instantly went out and hastened to the nearest grocery. There I filled my handkerchief with bread, cheese, cakes, oranges for the sick man, a paper of tea and sugar; under my arm I placed a bottle of wine, and in my hand bore a quart of fresh milk. With these treasures I hastened back to the scene of affliction and wretchedness. My presence soon cast sun-shine upon the gloom

In less than a half an hour things wore a new face. I despatched a note to two of my fellow committee men, with instructions to bring a physician, and come prepared to stay for the night, as my wife would by no means give me permission to be out"

"Charles! Charles! this, is too, too severe!" said his wife bursting into tears.

"Nay then Mary. I did not write so to them of you! I withdraw the words"

"I deserved it if you did! I have been all, all wrong! Forgive me!"

"Freely!" he said kissing her hand

"I remained until they came with Dr-. By the time I came away every thing around the invalid was comfortable: clean bed linen for himself, and plenty of food in the house. The doctor said with careful nursing he might recover. I took leave of him a little while since, leaving the two Odd Fellows watching by his bedside. When they leave him at dawn their place will be supplied by two others. I ought to be one of them; but—"

"Charles! Charles! Go! Go! Be one of them? From this moment I speak only of your Order with honor and affection?"