A LAST GLIMPSE.
WE need not follow the Caswells far into their subsequent life. A
visitor might have found them, not many years afterwards, sitting on
their broad veranda, looking down over the pretty suburbs of the city
to the great river on which it lay.
Madge, still helpless as far as walking is concerned, but with a look
of health in her face which shows how much she has improved, occupies
the wheeled-chair, where she sits nearly all day, and in which she goes
all over the garden and the ground-floor of the house.
Una and Jack, now a great boy and girl, lean upon the arms of her
chair, listening to an interminable account of a certain Prince Arthur,
whose adventures have occupied them for many evenings, and whose
journeyings extended all over the world. A second little girl, rather
more than a year old, is carried off to bed by Mary, who pauses a few
minutes to hear the end of a terrific combat with lions and elephants
in which the prince is at present engaged.
Letty sits at a little distance, listening, while John reads the
papers, and she is knitting,—not, as of old, on an afghan or a shawl,
but on a substantial blue sock; for it is the first year of the war,
and all hands are busily engaged in furnishing clothes and provisions
for the soldiers.
John's hair begins to be a little gray, and he reads his paper with the
help of glasses. His business has prospered beyond all expectation;
and his purchases of land have turned out so well that he is, beyond
all dispute, a rich man. People wonder that he does not pull down that
great square pile and erect a handsome Gothic or Italian house in
its stead; but John only smiles, and says his wife has old-fashioned
notions about houses, and, besides, it is well-known that no builder
could ever make a decent house for himself. So the old house remains
unaltered, save by the insertion of some modern conveniences in the
shape of bathing and heating apparatus.
Madge, as we have said, is much improved in appearance. She is now
nearly seventeen. Her general health is good, and she seems to have
outgrown her childish predisposition to brooding melancholy; for she
is as bright and merry as the day is long. Letty, often calls her the
sunshine of the house. She has an insatiable appetite for books of all
sorts,—especially books of travel and adventure; and it is necessary to
put some check upon the supply, lest she should injure herself by too
close application. She has learned to draw, and shows great talent for
the art. It is she who taught the two elder children to read and write,
and hears their daily lessons; and she has lately occupied some hours
of every day with a class of children from the neighbourhood, whose
parents do not like to send them to the public school.
Letty at first feared that the work would be too much for her strength;
but Madge seems so much to enjoy the occupation, and also the feeling
that she is earning something, that she has not the heart to oppose her.
Years have passed since Madge has heard any thing from her father.
They had learned from Gatty De Witt (now Mrs. Henry Woodman) that the
establishment in Gay Street was broken up, and that the Van Horns had
left the city and, it was supposed, had gone South; but they could hear
no tidings of Joseph.
And here our story ends. We have seen Joseph and Agnes Emerson begin
their married life under much the same circumstances as John and
Letty Caswell. If there was any difference, the first couple had the
advantage; for Joseph was earning higher wages than John, and he had
better natural abilities. But there was from the first a radical
difference between the two families.
John and Letty made the resolution, at the outset, never to run in
debt if debt could possibly be avoided. Their house was, as far as
practicable, paid for before they went into it; their furniture, when
it was purchased. If they had no money to buy what they wanted, they
went without. Letty did her own work, and knew, from previous training,
how to turn every scrap and crumb to advantage. She did not think it
beneath her to save odds and ends of grease and make her own soap, or
to weed her own beds of cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes, thereby saving
many a shilling and sixpence which would otherwise have gone to the
market-man and the pedlar.
Agnes had little knowledge of household work. Her mother had always
taken all such matters into her own hands, in order, as she said, that
her daughter might grow up a lady and not a drudge. Agnes thought it
mean and stingy to save, and a derogation of her dignity to do the work
of her own household.
John and Letty were always thinking what each could do to make the
other happy and to lighten necessary toil. Joseph and Agnes were each
thinking what the other ought to do, and each trying to throw upon the
other the responsibility and the burden. If they fancied any thing,
they bought it, and never troubled themselves about pay-day till the
bill was actually presented,—when it was always found to be larger than
any one supposed. They felt it incumbent on them to maintain as much
show in dress and furniture as persons who had twice their income.
And Joseph was always delighted when people noticed the elegance of
his wife's dress; but at the same time, she was never fit to be seen
while about the house. Letty's nice dresses lasted three times as long
as her cousin's, because she did not wear them to work about the stove
or in the garden; while at the same time she always looked like a
lady, whatever she might be doing. She cared nothing for being thought
fashionable, and was not ashamed to wear the same simple straw bonnet
two summers running; while the eight or ten dollars saved in this way
was much more satisfactorily invested.
But there was a still greater difference,—one which lay at the bottom
of all the others. John and Letty Caswell set up their household in
the fear and love of God. They acknowledged him in all their ways, and
besought him to direct their paths. They had given themselves to God,
and he, in return, had drawn nigh to them, according to his covenant.
True, they had known sorrow; but that affliction had worked in them
comfort and peace, because they looked not at the things which were
seen, but at those which were unseen. They had lived for God and for
eternity, feeling that they had already entered upon that eternal life
which the Son has secured for them that love him; and their path was as
the path of the just,—a shining light, shining more and more unto the
perfect day.
To Joseph, Sunday was distinguished as a day when he did not have to
go to the shop, and might lie abed in the morning as late as he liked;
when he had a better dinner than ordinary, and time to read the papers,
look over accounts and smoke half a dozen extra pipes. He seldom
went to church, because he said he could not afford to buy or rent a
pew,—though the cost of the concert and theatre tickets in which he
indulged would have more than defrayed it twenty times over. To Agnes
it was a day for extra cooking; for sitting behind the blinds and
watching the passers-by; for reading any stuff she could lay her hands
on, and for an extra long afternoon nap. Once in a great while she went
to church when she had any thing new in the way of dress to display,
and came home prepared to give a full and particular account of every
bonnet, dress and shawl within reach of her eyes. She had no time, she
said, to go to church Sundays and weekdays, as Letty did:—she must stay
at home and attend to her family. God was not in all her thoughts; and,
if she did remember him, it was with an uneasy feeling, as of some one
who was spying out her shortcomings, and might one day take her to task
for them, unless he was propitiated in time by a better service. When
her first child was born, she was much more serious for a while, and
Letty began to have great hopes of her; but then the Van Horns came
in with their influence, and her last state was worse than the first.
Agnes became wholly occupied with the things of this world; in their
poorest and most unsatisfactory forms. She withdrew herself from all
sacred influences, and seemed actually to forget that there is a God.
And, now, what was the end? Agnes had died,—died in the very prime of
life, a brokenhearted woman,—penitent, indeed, and hopeful, but weighed
down with a sense of the irreparable mischief she had done to those
nearest and dearest to her. Joseph was a wretched fugitive. Their only
child was a confirmed crippled invalid, dependent for support upon
those whom her parents had once despised; while John and Letty were
independent and prosperous, happy in their children and in each other,
good and doing good to all about them; and, better still, having the
assurance that their present happiness was but the beginning of that
eternal felicity which should endure as long as the throne of God in
heaven. TRULY, GODLINESS WITH CONTENTMENT IS GREAT GAIN, HAVING THE
PROMISE OF THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS, AND OF THAT WHICH IS TO COME.
THE END.