Montgomery County Sentinel

An Over-True Tale

Near one of the pretty villages with which Saratoga county (N. Y.) abounds lived a pretty girl named Lisette. She was the only daughter of loving and too well loved parents. About four miles from the residence of Lisette lived a young man named Frank, who had graduated from college with honor and was respected by all who knew him, notwithstanding some stories reflecting on his moral character that were told of his life while absent at college.

When and where Frank first met Lisette is not pertinent to the story. But Lisette's mother heard the stories against Frank, and she conceived a great antipathy against him: so much so as to forbid him the house, and finally to bid her daughter cease all intercourse with him. But up to this time the mother's injunction had been disregarded. The lovers met whenever opportunity offered, and had the parent lived the pair would no doubt have been happily married. But fate ordained otherwise. The mother sickened, and when on her deathbed laid her dying injunction upon her daughter to discard Frank altogether.

The mother passed away, and Frank, little dreaming of the cruel blow that awaited him, attended the funeral of the mother of the girl he loved, hoping by his presence to soften her sorrow. The mother was laid in her grave and as the pair walked from the new made mound to the cemetery gates, where the carriages awaited them, Lisette told him of her mother's dying commands and of her intention of obeying them. There was no time to soften the blow by further explanation or protestation, and at the cemetery gate they parted never to meet again in life.

A year passed away, and in that year Lisette, from a happy, buxom lass, had become an invalid. Physicians said it was consumption. Perhaps it was, but she well knew that sorrow had been the messenger to bring the life destroying agent. At last she, too, was laid upon a bed of sickness, and when assured that it would be one of death she dispatched a messenger to the only man she ever loved. But, alas! the messenger was too late. Frank, who had been gradually wasting away for a year, was stricken down with a malarial fever and could not recover. But the messenger (Lisette's brother) carried a message back to the dying girl. A few more messages were carried to and fro before the end came.

Lisette died, and with her last breath told her brother to carry the tidings to Frank and tell him she would wait his coming. Not long had she to wait, for the tidings of her death snapped the slight cord that yet bound Frank to life. In those two homes, four miles apart, two forms were attired for sepulture. On the same day two funeral corteges started and pursued their way toward the village burial ground. Slowly and mournfully they moved and singularly they met at the cemetery gate. Together the coffins were lifted from the hearses, and side by side the remains of those loving ones were carried through the entrance where they last parted, rather more than a year before.