The Charlotte Journal

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Newspaper.

The old farm house wore a quiet pleasant look, as the setting sun gilded its small windows over which the luxuriant grape vines were carefully trained. In the open door sat a farmer, with a little morocco covered book in his hand, on which his attention had been fixed for the last half hour.

He was a man of method and order—old Richard Heath—and aside from his regular account books, which he kept with scrupulous care, he always set down in the little book in the simplest manner possible, all his expenses, (no very complicated account, by the way.) and all he had received during the year, "in the real metal," as he said, "not by the way o' trade."

The last account he had just reckoned up and the result was highly satisfactory, if one might judge from the pleasant expression of his face, as he turned to his wife, and addressed her by her pretty old fashioned name.

"Millicent," said he, "this has been a lucky year. How little we thought when we moved to this place twenty five years ago, that we should ever get five hundred a year out of the rocky, barren farm."

"It does pay for a good deal of hard work," said she, "to see how different things look from what they did then."

"Now I am going to figure up what we've spent," said Mr. Heath, "don't make a noise with your knitting needles, cause it puts me out."

His wife laid down her knitting in perfect good humor, and gazed over the broad rich fields of waving grain which grew so tall around the laden apple trees that they looked like massive pillars of foliage. Hearing her own name kindly spoken, led her thoughts far back to the past; for after the lapse of twenty five years, the simple sound of the name she bore in youth means more to a wife than all the puling epithets of dearest, love, and darling, so lavishly offered in a long past courtship.

Very pleasant was this retrospect to Millicent Heath. The picture of the past had on it some rough places, and some hard trials, but no domestic strife or discontent marred its sunny aspect. There were smiling faces on it—happy children's faces, without which no life picture is beautiful.

Soft blue eyes shone with unclouded gladness and wavy hair floated carelessly over unwritten foreheads. She forgot for a moment how they were changed and almost fancied herself the young mother, and tiny hands stole lovingly over her bosom, and young heads nestled there as of old. The illusion vanished quickly, and she sighed as she thought of her youngest boy, the reckless boy who had left her three years before, for a home on the sea. Once only had tidings reached her of the wanderer.

The letter spoke of hardship and home sickness, in that light and careless way that reached the mother's heart more surely than pining and complaint. To know that he suffered with a strong heart, with noble unyielding resolutions, gave her a feeling of pleasure, not unmixed with pride.

"He will surely come back," murmured the affectionate mother, to herself: "and I read the paper so carefully every week, that if it says any thing about the ship Alfred sailed in, I shall be sure to see it—"

"Mrs. Heath," said her husband, interrupting her meditations somewhat rudely, "we've spent thirty dollars more than usual this year; where can it have gone to?"

"The new harness," suggested Mrs. Heath, "that don't come every year you know."

"Well, there's twenty dollars accounted for."

"We had the carriage fixed up when you bought the harness," continued his wife.

"Well that was eight dollars, that's twenty eight dollars we don't spend every year—but the other two—where can they have gone?" (glancing his eye hastily over the memorandum book, he continued;) "I'll tell you what tis, the newspaper costs just two dollars and we can do without it. It isn't any thing to eat, drink or wear. I don't do any thing with it, and you only lay it away up in the chamber. It may as well be left out as not, and I'll stop my subscription right away."

"Oh," said the wife, "you don't know how much I set by the newspaper. I always have a sort of glad feeling when I see you take it out of your hat and lay it on the kitchen mantlepiece, just as I do when some of the children come home. And when I'm tired, I sit down with my knitting, work and read. (I can knit just as well when I'm reading,) and feel so contented. I don't believe Queen Victoria herself takes more solid comfort than I do sitting by the east window of a summer afternoon reading my newspaper."

"But you'd be just as well off without it," answered her husband for want of anything else to say.

"I never neglect anything for reading. Do I?" asked Mrs. Heath, mildly.

"No, I don't know as you do," answered her husband; "but it seems to me an extra like. I shall stop it;" he added, in a tone that showed plainly enough he wished to stop the conversation.

"I shall take the paper," remarked his wife, "if I have to go out washing to pay for it."

This was not spoken angrily, but so firmly that Mr. Heath noticed it, though by no means remarkable for discernment in most matters. It sounded so different from her usual quiet "as you think best." that he actually stopped a moment to consider whether it was at all likely she would do as she said. Mr. Heath was a kind husband, as that indefinite description is generally understood: that is, he did not beat his wife, and always gave her enough to eat.

More than this, he had a certain regard for her happiness which already made him feel half ashamed of his decision; but like many other men who have more obstinacy than wisdom, he couldn't bear to retract anything, and above all to be convinced he was wrong by a woman.

However, with a commendable wish to remove the unhappiness he had created, he suggested that as the papers were carefully filed, and as she had found them interesting, she could read them all over again, beginning at January, and taking one each week: clear through the year—they would just come out even, he concluded, as if it were a singular fact they should do so.

Notwithstanding this admirable proposition, he still felt some uneasiness. It followed him as he walked up the pleasant lane to the pasture, and it made him speak more sharply than was his wont, if the cows stopped while he was driving them home, to crop the grass where it looked greenest and sweetest on the sunny slope.

It troubled him till he heard his wife call him to supper in such a cheerful tone that he concluded she didn't care much about the newspaper after all.

About a week after this, as Mr. Heath was mowing one morning, he was surprised to see his wife come out dressed as if for a visit. "I'm going," said she, "to spend the day with Mrs. Brown—I've left plenty for you to eat." And so saying, she walked rapidly on.

Mr. Heath thought about it just long enough to say to himself, "she don't go visiting to stay all day once a year hardly, and it's strange she should go in hay time."

Very long the day seemed to him; to go in for luncheon, dinner and supper, and have nobody to speak to; to find everything so still. The clock ticked louder than usual, he thought; the brood of pretty white chickens that were almost always peeping round the door, had wandered off somewhere, and left it stiller yet; he even missed the busy click of the knitting needle that was apt to put him out so, when he was doing any figuring.

"I am glad," he said to himself, as he begun to look down the road at sunset, "that Millicent don't go a visiting all the time, as some women do—there, she is just coming."

"How tired you look," said he, as she came up: "why didn't you speak about it, and I'd have harnessed up and come after you."

"I'm not very tired," she answered, but her looks belied her; indeed, her husband declared she looked tired like for a day or two after.

What was his amazement to see her go away the next Tuesday in the same manner as before, without saying much about it before she started.

To his great dissatisfaction everything seemed that day to partake of his wife's new propensity for going away from home.

"A man don't want cold feed in hay time," grumbled he, as he sat down to dinner. In the same grumbling mood he recounted the mishaps of the morning which seemed to have been much after the manner set forth in a certain legend of time, for he embellished his recital by allusion to

"The sheep's in the meadow,
The cow's in the corn."

adding that they wouldn't have been there if Mrs. Heath had been home, because she'd have seen 'em before they got in, and hollered. She would have seen the oxen, too, before they got across the river, and saved him the trouble of getting them back. But after tracing all these untoward events to her absence, he said to himself consoling ly, "I guess she wont go any more—she always was a home body."

Mrs. Heath did so again and again, and the day she went for the fourth time, her husband took counsel with himself as to what he should do to "stop her gadding."

Seated on the door step, in the shade of the old tree, he spent an hour or two in devising ways and measures, talking aloud all the time, and having the satisfaction of hearing nobody dispute with him. "It's hard to think of her getting to be a visiting woman," said he, "and it's clear it ain't right. Keep her at home," I've read the Bible, (old Richard's Bible knowledge was somewhat confused, and his quotation varied slightly from the scriptural phrase, "keepers at home,") but it says, too, he added, with the true sincere man, "that husbands must set great store by their wives and treat 'em well. I won't scold Millicent," I'll harness up and go after her to-night, and coming home I'll talk it over with her, and tell her how bad it makes me feel, and if that don't do, I'll try something else."

In accordance with this praiseworthy resolution, he might have been seen about sun set hitching his horse at Mr. Brown's door; for strangely enough, Mrs. Heath's visits had all been made at the same place.

Going up to the door he stopped in amazement at seeing his wife in the kitchen, just taking off a great woollen wash apron, and turning down her sleeves, which had been rolled up for washing. He hastened and heard her say, as she took some money from Mrs. Brown, "It won't be so that I can do your washing again,"

"It has been a great favor to have you do it while I have been so poorly," said Mrs. B., and I'm glad to pay you for it. This makes four times, and here's two dollars. 'Tis just as well that you can't come again, for I think that I shall be well enough to do it myself.

"Two dollars—just the price of the newspaper," exclaimed Mr. Heath, as the truth flashed upon him. Rather a silent ride home they had, till at last he said, "I never was so ashamed in my life."

"Of what?" asked his wife.

"Why, to have you go out washing": I ain't so poor as that comes to."

"Well, I don't know," replied his wife, "when a man is too poor to take a newspaper, his wife ought not to feel above going out washing."

Nothing more was said on the subject at that time, though some ill feeling lingered in the hearts of each. The "making up" was no mawkish scene of kissing, embracing and crying, such as romance writers build their useless fabrics with, but as Mrs. Heath was finishing her household duties for the night, she said quietly.

"I don't think I did quite right, Richard."

"I don't think I did either," responded the husband; and so the spark was quenched which might have become a seething flame blighting all domestic peace under their humble roof.