The Lambertville Record

THE TROUBLES OF LOVE.

A Peculiar Meeting Which Old Mr. Peterson Adjourned With His Boot,

"You have broken my heart, Vivian."

It was a fair-haired girl who spoke these words, and as they came from her lips Vivian Mahoney, the young man to whom they were addressed, leaned tenderly over Ferida Peterson and strove to kiss away the tears that were welling up in her beautiful, dreamy, brown eyes.

"I do not blame you," she continued in a broken voice. "She whom you will one day wed is fair to look upon, and when her warm kisses melt upon your lips it is not strange that you forget all else but that she would gladly be your wife and that her father owns a coal yard. But I love you with a mad, deathless passion that will burn out my life in the intensity of its flame. You have won my Scandinavian affections unwittingly, but you have won them all the same. In the years that are to come, Vivian, when your children are playing at your knee and life seems like a fair dream, you will sometimes think of me—sometimes let a tender thought lie in your heart for the little flaxen-haired girl that knew no happiness so great as to hear your voice and see the gleam of the matinee tickets in your vest pocket? Tell me this, and when the leaves have turned brown under the blighting touch of autumn's chilly hand, and I shall have been put away forever in the little dell beyond the meadow, you will lead to the altar a happy bride and never know the sorrow I have felt."

"By yon bright moon I swear," said Vivian, taking another kiss on the fly, "that your memory shall ever be enshrined in my heart. Though my life be one of tempest and storm, or a succession of sunny days, I shall always remember that you were my first, my only love." He was about to impress another kiss on the rosy lips upheld to his, when a dull thud was heard at the rear of his pants, and Vivian lay senseless on the sidewalk.

Old Mr. Peterson had opened the front door and adjourned the meeting.