The River Falls Journal

THE PAUPER.

The man who hasn't anything to write about, is writing some excellent letters to the Free Democrat. In his last, after speaking of the crops and the drouth, he says: While looking down from the hill on the latter crop-now, almost ruined by the protracted drouth-a shadow fell upon the spirits, and I found myself thinking that it might have rained as well as not, and saved all this desolation. The babbling murmur had not reached the lip, however, before we were rebuked, and felt a flush burning slowly over the cheek. A female came slowly up the walk, lifting her feet as if footsore and weary. and her head bowed with weakness and despair. She seemed a walking shadow of most abject poverty. Her thin and pallid features were the language of want and desolation. The hair was grey and hung uncombed about her withered neck, and her hands were but skin and bone. I knew her errand without asking- she was a straggler from an army which, in a land of plenty, go hungry for bread. She had a single garment, and that was soiled and rent. And the poor creature belonged to the sisterhood of our own mother! That mother, however, was laid as gently in her grave as a child to its rest, and went out from a home where none ever went cold for raiment, or hungry for bread.

As the woman came opposite where I sat, she lifted her eyes languidly, and hesitatingly bid me good morning. She had been weeping, and the shadow of soul-anguish was dark in the faded pupils. She had been out for cold victuals, and her basket was empty. She reeled after she passed, and steadied herself by the pickets, stopping frequently to brush the tears with the back of her hand. She was hungry, and the thought surged through my brain that Christ was weary and in sorrow walking by and that as much as we gave unto the least of these, we gave unto Him. And while the tears gathered like a mist over the sight. the squalid shadow vanished. and one glorious in dazzling white in the company of the Redeemer and His angels, went up singing on the beams of gold which reached from our eyelids to the sun.

When the woman returned, we were still sitting. We felt humbled-guilty. We had friends, home food and raiment; even while our barn was gushing with the fulness of the earlier harvest, we had felt like murmuring.

"Good morning, mother."

"Who calls me mother?" she eagerly and yet almost reproachfully asked, as her lip quivered and she stared unsteadily into my face.

"You have been a mother's

"Have been! yes have been; but they are all dead, sir, seven of them. And God forgive you, the last-died cold and hungry-cold and hungry--d'ye hear THAT?"

She grasped my shoulder with a strength we did not dream she possessed, and peered for a full minute, into my face. There was bitterness in her tone, and in the kindling light of her old eyes.

"I had a husband too, and he went drunk and died. They robbed him-robbed us all, and when I asked for a dime where he spent his money, they jeered and cursed me, and pushed me out as an impostor. And when Hester died, I looked upon her famished face, and cursed them--cursed the spoilers of the widow and fatherless. And God will curse them. I never wronged them, but they have robbed me of all. But it will soon be over. The dead want no bread. But, sir, it is hard walking to Heaven with famine— famine-Sir-gnawing at the heart. Do you believe that the angels have enough to eat, ha, baby?

The laugh was wild; and the light in her eye was wilder.

"Come," said we chokingly, "come, for we are rich, we have bread enough and to spare. You shall eat."

She hesitated a moment, and then the fierce, bitter expression passed off from her features, and with a sob and a glad cry, she reeled after me. And while the hungry pauper ate, we looked on and wept. As she passed the cradle in going out, she caught our babe convulsively to her bosom and bowed her face over it, while her body swayed and she moaned in her grief. The little one smiled in her streaming face, and thrust its dimple finger into her coarse grey locks. Kissing the babe again and again, she blessed it and laid it gently down. As she stood upon the threshold with blessings and tears falling profusely, the wife put a bundle of apparel in one hand, and sought the other through the blinding tears, and dropped in all we had in our purse. It was little enough--not as much as we wished to give-but it overwhelmed her, and her old heart seemed bursting with gladness. Dropping the bundle, she caught our hands and alternately pressed them with burning kisses, and murmured her choking God bless you.

We are not poor-can never be. That old pauper's kiss passed from the rough palm to the soul. Her blessing is a legacy, which will be ours when the world slips from our grasp.

"No use in tolling for her--I am too busy"

We feel deeply the careless--almost contemptuous-tone of the sexton, and rebuked him warmly as he reluctantly handed us the key of the church. The same measured beat to which the souls of richer ones had been borne to the grave. should ring out for the pauper. Her soul was rich with the love Christ, though weary with great sorrows and familiar with wants. The bowed and wasting form had undergone its last change, and was beautiful in its vesture of spotless white. The dingy and rent garments had been left this side of the grave and the poor widow entered upon a joint heirship with the Redeemer in bliss. Weeping. yet glad, we rang out a joyous funeral peal, and caught up in the tremulous echoes, the answering shout of waiting angels on the other shore.-- And God willing. the marble shall mark her narrow 'bit of earth' in Potter's Field. for one who so long and bravely fought the fierce, desperate battle of life, and erred not, deserves commemoration.