The sunny South. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1875-1907, July 06, 1878, Image 2

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Mad all Her Days. By MRS. AMELIA V. PURDY. Six months after Camber’s introduction to the Deane’s, he had quietly informed Vale that all that was necessary to restore, her mother’s vis ion was an operation, and offered to take her to Philadelphia, staking his professional reputa tion on the issue. He was considered atuor- oughly educated physician although he had never practiced medicine. Mrs. Deane had en thusiastically embraced the opportunity. 'You he had said to Yale, ‘have one great fault, you are too proud and lay too much stress on inde pendence. Child the only people who are really independent are the people the sods of the church-yard cover; but I will let you pay me, since it hurts you so and usurious interest too. I will be a very Shylock in exaction till the last dollar is paid ‘as you like,’ but the experiment must be made. There i3 no affliction like blind ness and when your mother returns, seeing as well as we can see, we will have a big supper and jubilee.' So one day the cars pulled out of the city and Mrs. Dean and Bertie, and a nurse and Camber went in it; and nightly afterward the sisters pray that God may signally bless the efforts of the occnlist. Then there is a suspense and the letter carrier goes by, then a. day or two of anxiety and then a hack stops at the door and Mrs. Deane jumps'out and rushes by her oldest daughter, who leans back with a fervent thank God on her lips, and on to fall laughing and crying, on her knees by Pearl’s chair, and when she grows composed, she tells how Mr. Camber took the bandage from her eyes and said, looking so noble and handsome she had loved him r n the spot, ‘I welcome you back to the daylight dear Madam: thi3 is the proudest day of my life.’ When the short, sweet day was over Camber had come and altogether there was no happier family anywhere. When he rose to go, he put his bands softly on the silken curls of his pet and said ‘Titania, it I could only have you cured.’ She laughs. ‘Don’t grieve about me, God will straighten pe after awhile. I am happier than many a child who can walk, and I get around nicely on my rollers, and now that mamma can see. why my happiness is increased ten fold. Dear friend, wealth will Dot do everything’ It is five years now, since Salome stood in her white glory of pearl silk, lace, diamonds and pearls and gave hbr hand for ‘better for worse’ into her husband’s keeping. In all these years he had been tender, considerate, unselfish, a model citizen and a model husband and yet, as it is utterly impossible to wholly cloak a cor rupt nature in this most intimate of all relations —for the mother does not know her son as his wife knows him, she could no longer deceive herse'f; Mr. Horton did not understand the first principles of honor, or the enormity cf the de viations irom truth and right. A woman of deeper mentality would, after the like amount of laborious research, have arrived at the con clusion that it is as ridiculous to expect high sense of rectitude from half the people around us, es to expect them to produce a Hamlet or Paradise Lost. Moral idiocy being almost epi demic amongst us, natural liars and natural thieves too numerous to mention. People, sin ning, not from choice but because they are not able to distinguish between right and wrong: minds of infant development in adult bodies write Wrong the north pole of the mental com pass towards which the needle of inclination un erringly points. Salome made the mistake, qnired habit WMCii otfUVu be .lit tle effort. A woman cast in a coarser mould would not have grieved at all so long as lie gave her lull meed of love. It killed her happiness. She had thought him the incarnation of honor, she had thought that his word was his bond, that he was above equivocation, mental reserva tions and trickery, and finding he was not, it took the color and spice from life’s rose and gladness from her eyes. God help the wife who knows in her heart cf hearts that her husband is as ab ject in soul and body as any lizard that orawls in the green dusks and who loving the comforts he gives her, stays with him sharing his ill got ten gains to the hitter end, for,her daily drink is bitterness and heaviness of spirit. ‘ If Mrs. Horton is a happy woman she has a strange way of showing it,’ commented shrewd lips. ‘But they often starve with too much, as they who have too little.’ ‘Any woman who is happy shows it in her eyes,’ said another. ‘ Stuff! ’ growled Diogenes ‘ Only children and young ladies have glad eyes — a teething baby will take all the gladness out of the married woman’s eyes who has not a care beside, but the women who have not a trouble but this are as scarce as Koh-i-nors.’ If we have trouble so long as we have eyes and features, they will proclaim it, let our lips be silent as the dead, and friends and neighbors who would not dare to question us, will read the language of the face, that, alas for us, is not Coptic or Syriac, and speculate upon the skele ton we think is securely hidden. There is no unknown skeleton anywhere. Who has a skele ton in his life, being human cannot conceal it, though he may veil it Irom the general gaze and the casual visitor. Softly as we glide from one year into another the prosperous years passed. A little girl comes and stays a little while and goes home. Another child is born and makes quite a lengthy visit, but when the flowers of his third year open, he closes his laagning love-lit, indigo eyes and goes away to play with his sister in the daisied meadows of the land of love. From this woman, unhappy in the midst of oriental splendor, we turn to our humble friends—the Dean’s. Vale is now proprietor of a larger establishment on a fashionable street. Daisy had graduated at sixteen and liad royally fulfilled expectation. In all the city there was no girl so flawlessly beautiful. In a fit of pen itence towards his sworn ally and friend dating back to a period when both wore dresses, Cam ber had introduced Hardwicke, and that blase gentleman had become fascinated with the slen der, southern brunette, with proud eyes, lumi nous as stars, and complexion creamy as the white belles of the hyacinth, and after a short courtship he had married her, and the indolent gentleman is iaolatrously fond of his beautiful wife whose impressive grace makes her the cyn osure of all eyes. Just now, the Dean house hold is under a cloud and Mrs. Dean goes about with a sad face aud Yale steals away ever and anon, to give way to a paroxsym of grief that sickens her for days. Pearl, who looks more like one of God’s angels than a mortal woman, has reached the limit of her days. They have fought this bitter truth away with Herculean will, but they can do so no longer. How resolute we are not to believe that our idols must be taken and how we pray, half mad with eyes blinded with tears that God wifi again peiform a miracle and restore the body sometimes a third decayed. Oh this weary old world and its anguish that fills dark hair with silver, and makes hearts, young in years, dry as summer dust! She d#e8 not seem to suffer, but she is too feeble to dirve around the green hills. Too tired to even talk or read. Never complaining, always patient even when the exertion of breathing ‘Only tired’ she would say smiling. ’Mr. Camber, mama and Vale and you and I will have a long ride over the hills to-morrow.’ But the to-morrow never came, and her strength daily decreased. She was no larger at nineteen than a child of nine, and the little body was fearfully twisted and shrunken, but the exquisite beauty of the face, had increased if possible with the lapse of years. One day she is too tired to get up and asks for Mr. Camber repeatedly. He comes, to break down like a wo man, for the delicate face is white with the frosts of death. He lifts her in his arms aDd she nestles her head on his breast with the rest ful ‘now’ of her infantile days. Around her kneel the agonized mother and sisters and Bertie in the very abandon of sorrow lies on the floor writhing and sobbing. ‘I am easier now’ she says in a low clear tone. ‘Mama I’ll tell papa that you cau see. I don’t think his mind would have gone out altogether, only you went blind. Mr. Camber ^remember my Vale. Now kiss me all good bye. It will be so sweet To walk and to be free from pain.’ She roused, ‘Why there’s papa! Mama don’t you see him (’ ‘Just as ] am without one plea But that thy blood was shod for me And that thou hld’st me come to thee Oh Lamb Of God I come. The sweet voice faltered through the words of the dearly loved hymn, then the daintily pure mouth closed, she extended her arms and the angel that had been hovering in the room all day, stooped and lifted her soul and bore it through Rpaee and the glittering stars to God. This blow fell with crushing weight upon Mrs. Deane and Vale, and had she been his own daughter, Camber could not have taken it hard er. People marveled at their sorrow. They had known that her death was only a question cf time for years, and should have been prepar ed. As if the heart could ever be prepared to surrender its idols. Death punishes the living terribly, let it come when it may, unexpected ly or waited for for dreary months; w,e are just as ready to receive it in the erne case as in the other. Her life and death < ft'eoted Camber as the finest sermon the genius of man could pro duce would not, and when he stood over‘her lying in her casket, under a shower of white hy acinths—her favorite flower—he resolved to spare no effort to become a participator in the Christianity that had made her, through the hardest of physical suffering, holy as the angels that sing around the throne, aud that bad glad dened and lightened her days and made sweeta pilgrimage, that lacking this, would have been intolerable. He saw the practicable applica tion of Christianity, and that it lightened and decreased the burdens of life, and strengthen ed and inspirited. He saw that without it, life was a rose without odor; that who possessed it— was rich indeed, and with an assured future that robbed death of all its bitterness. Generally, death impresses people for a time, but with Camber tli9 effect was permanent, and the following Sunday the services of the church possessed a rarer aud deeper beauty. ‘What is a woman without religion?' is an old saying and true enough; but we say a man without practical piety, is the most abject creature that walks on God’s earth, and trust that Camber may attain the purity and holiness of heart he is earnestly seeking. CHAPTER V. ‘I want sister Vale to break up business and come home and live with us,’ said Hardwicke af ter the funeral. ‘There’s no sense in her keep ing this shop Camber!’ very discontentedly. Can’t you persuade her that it is time for her to quit work and rest. Tell her that I'll spare no pains to make her happy. She’s going to stay here and mope and grieve herself to death after Pearl. She’s almost a shadow now.' . Camber used ali his persuasive powers andjail- ilyi ‘or I will be- ill'. I must occupy my time so as to leave no time for thought. It is neces sary, evtn for those who have never committed a. crime, to sometimes get quite away from self. Introspection is the one thing I must avoid; I must keep back thought aud step forward. Labor is the true Lethe. I am obliged to Mr Hard wicke but I must not accept his offer. If I did I would die inside of a year.’ ‘Tou have never taken a buggy ride with me yet, he observes, ‘Miss Vale let me take you out ou the hills, it will do you good; I did not know anything could so utterly change you, I thought you so strong. Will you go ?’ She shakes her head, mindful of the compact made years before. ‘Why,’he demands pettishly. ‘It I went with you the people would say we were engaged, and I do not wish our names con nected in that way. He misunderstands her and colors hotly. ‘You would not be seen in public with the prodigal; you would feel it a degradation to have our names connected,’ he says, in a hurt, grieved tone. ‘Miss Vale you are hard on mo.’ He goes away moodily and Vale falls down on the bed and moans, ‘Oh, my love! my love! Thank God he does not see it, Rather than have him know I would take Bertie and put thous ands of miles between us. I would almost give my soul for one caressing word, and he wulks daily by the house that shrines the woman whom he loves with mad idolatry, and who is the wife of another man.’ Her mind reverted to Pearl’s prophecy when, under the strong necessity of having someone to confide in, she had c'arried her trouble, her intolerable cross to her little sister and was comforted. It shocked her to learn that the child had known it for years and had been too delicate to refer to it, while giving her a rich meed of sympathy. Again, and with the voice of conviction Pearl had made her prophecy. ‘He will turn to you at last,’ she had said, ‘glad to receive and return the purest love he has ever known. He will love you as you de serve to be loved, and in his love you will be purely happy, but you must wait till this infat uation dies, and it must not humiliate you, for she is something more than a mere woman, and being this she will be unfortunate.’ i rom these fits of depression she would rally ana take up her cioss, ashamed that her steps had faRered, humiliated that she had fallen from »-6r perch with broken wing, and resolute to maxe no further moan, let the nettles sting as they would. It is ’57. and the country is on the verge of a panic.. Heads oi families look aghast, merchants diminish their clercical forces and expenses and thousands are out of employment. Mr. Ho rton jokes and smiles no longer but looks serious and preoccupied. One day Salome is driving home and stops to enquire why the streets are throng- A man on the pave enlightens her. ‘There’s have incited the meabout him to murder. Sa lome leans back, gbtly—her great eyes dilated with horror. The pits stand still, though she has dropped the rei from her icy fingers. A gentleman quietly t;e| hie seat beside her and says: ‘I will take you hie, Mrs. Horton; this is no place for you,’ and turns the Shetland^ down a side street. ‘The people arrives, ’ he sayB bitterly. •They will eat yourjjbd and rend yon. Many of his pensioners a there, many men whom he has helped. My Gyy?ho would be a banker! I’d rather clean stfrs than put my character into the hands of tl abble, or be under obliga tions to the scurf f<«ne capital of my business.’ H ! s remarks are ^ reverse of consoling. ‘Whom does he ie,?’ she asks. ‘How came he to put his good ime into the power of a mob like that to blast f'aver. I don’t understand. He did not acquanme with his business, and I seldom went to fe office.’ He looks at her tvingly, It is Camber, and loving her beyondU created things, his sorrow is only a little lessieavy than it was when he stood over the deaipearl. ‘These people arbis depositors,’ he said gen- tly. ‘I know,’ she shiirs like one in an ague, ‘but I did not know th‘ bankers ever risked the people’s deposits;t seems to me the holiest trust—to tako the ird earnings cf the poor.’ ‘A man may be fhjyaest as daylight in this,’ Camber answers q€kly. ‘Horton is considered the safest banker ithe city; the failure of the Ellis bank has broj him. He took no person al risks I’ll guaraiad.’ He helped the nserable woman out of the phaeton, saw her ithin doors aud for her sake went bahk. Whoi all assailed, he defended. When he heard tli.lue and cry he rescued the hunted man. Tine was nothing in life so hor rible to him as to fe men hounding each when down. He got upon the awning and called out: ‘Whom do you vint to hang, wolves and un grateful curg ! the an who feasted and fed you, who found situatios for you, whose wife spent her days among tb destitute and the distressed whose doors alway stood open to the needy? why don’t you hav patienoe and wait? He mer its better treatmen at your hands than this. I have never know] him to engage in foolish speculations. Yo. need not hiss, I am not afraid of a millions wards who cringe to a man in his prosperity ait stone him when he's down— when the dark day set in.’ A pistol is disaarged at him. His dark, handsome face oeur falters, then goes up the cry: , ‘You have lost nothing. ‘If it be true,’ Jfe calls back, ‘ha loses all. What are your paltry dollars to a man’s reputa tion? The man ym worshiped yesterday will be a thii-f to-day, ad his loans will be magni fied by the carrioncrow of slknder till he looms into view the Titai scoundrel of tho age, and he will be poor toi, beggared. With most of you the sum you have lost will not abridge one com fort. Your clothiig will be as good, your table as gfeod, your hon.-e as comfortable as though you had not lo«£-,«jj.r deposit. He will have nothing, not even i good name !’ He spoke in vaiL; he plead with fools and madmen. Call us in enlightened people when scenes like this assc.of daily occurrence! Nor will the day ever dawrlthat the savage element will be extinguished ilmaa, while money is made and lost. Thinkjpvhat this world would be if its inhabitants' worshiped not mammon. In prosperity as in adversity a man shows his real nature. In the one as in the other he will be a simpleton or sage, leep or shallow; only in the « My father and mother in heaven.’ she said huskily, • would not receive me if I acted dis honestly.’ They had died soon after her mar riage. ‘I will keep nothing that will bring a dollar while yon owe one man.’ ‘ So my labor goes for nothing all these years,’ he interrupted. ‘ With money a man can make money and when I make it I will pay these peo ple. If you persist in giving up what is right fully your own—heirlooms too, over which they could not have a shadow of claim, you are a fit candidate for bedlam.’ ‘I must raise money some way to pay. Mr. Sprague and Mr. Hume and Mr. Morton,’ she answered. ‘Morton came here crying like a baby for fifteen hundred dollars.’ ‘ Did be tell yon that he fired twice at me , ’ Horton demanded, * and that I took the pistol out of his hand and boxed his ears for him and shoved him ont doors.’ She paled and caught at a ohair to keep from falling. ‘ Y'es,’ he went on, ‘they came with knives and revolvers aud big sticks and tongues fouler than any Billingsgate fish women, trying to scare me, and, I noticed the smaller the deposit lo3t, the greater the wrath, and you wonld beggar your self and me to pay men who would murder me. You have singular notions of right and wrong.’ ‘They are crazy,’ she says brokenly. ‘They know not what they do. Whore was the capital of your business, that you did not use it, and keep your good name out of the power of men to blast forever.’ • He made no reply and the determined woman ppt bronze and furniture on the market, and when the sale was over, she had obtained from Horton the names of a few creditors whom their losses would seriously cripple and these she discharged herself calling at their homes for 'that purpose, sarcastically reminded now and then by Horton that it was as much a sin to be unjust to self as it was to be unjust to his neigh bors and hurt to the quick that he did not co operate with her in her disagreeable work. One day, Vale came out of her sitting room and passed behind the counter. ‘ I do not wish to purchase,’ said the lady who had just entered the store. ‘I wish to see you on business. I am Mrs. Horton.’ Vale led the way to the back room she bad just quitted with a sympathetic face. Salome saw it in the true eyes and felt it in the cheery voice, and to the day of her death loved the woman before her. ‘ I believe you had deposited with my hus band two thousand dollars, Miss Dean?’ ‘Y r 63, one must meet with all sorts of losses is life’ is the unexpected answer. ‘ Being a woman,’ Salome replies, ‘the loss did not send you howling ont ou the streots, with kuife and revolver, clamoring for blood. Men are always our superiors, taka them where you will.’ Vale laughs and repeats; ‘Always our superior, Mrs. Horton, I bear it in mind and try to be humble. It is good in them to breathe the same air we do.’ ‘Lofty beings,’ Mrs. Horton goes on, quite sick of herself and of the whole world. ‘ I am afraid we are not sufficiently grateful to them for the priceless blessing of their society and the honor of bearing their names.’ She has the crowd at the bank in her mind’s eye now, but not a bit of sorrow for herself de spoiled of all that was beautiful and rendered necessary to existence by long habit. ‘I came here to pay you the money you thought was lost. I obtained it by selling pearls that had been in our family for hundreds of yoars, that my mother wore on her weddiag day, that I wore on mine.’ She went on. • I tell who would ed. been a run on the banks and the big houses of Denton and Horton have ‘busted.’ Just then a vast qjowd surges up the street, not orying a la lanter! aristi va! but the faces are white with fu^y and their eyes are full of men ace. Among them can be distinguished the ges ticulating and frantic foreign element, with the keen thirst for blood when the tiger in the heart rouses. She turns deathly white and drives af ter the crowd that goes on and on till it stops bt fore her husband’s bank. The police are in lull force and breast back the cursing, swearing people with their batons. Up the street is borne the hoarse cry of another mad multitude at the Denton bank. Women too are there, without bonnets, and crying, and buffeted about by wild men, who are conscious only that the money they had saved is lost. A wild-looking German is haranguing the crowd and urging them to break into the bank and take summary venge ance on the rascals who had rained them. °A‘ policeman forces his way through the crowd and leads off the man wiio, in a moment more, would passed the last the poorer depositors were the first to be paid. Meanwhile shader flitted hourly through the streets and the broken-hearted widow and the orphan depositors who had lost their all were paraded forth for sympathy with many oaths and gesticulations. Wherever a banker fails, this mythical widow and weeping orphan is produced with fiae effect. It occurs to the frenzied people, that in the time when so many are losing money it will not do to slight the class over whom the dear Christ and his apos tles were particularly tender. It is true they are in our midst daily and no one notices their presence particularly, but when the popular mind is feeling tnrough its pockets and insen sibility has doffed her crown, to bring the wid ow and orphan in, and make capital of them, is the very thing to do. Those who have not lost a dollar will, hearing this, turn out with one accord to hiss and to stone—it is always the stone-age with the majority of oar people. For three days busy tellers pay over the coun ters and then the bank is closed'and for the first time since the run commenced Horton goes home. He has aged ten years in that time. The ruddy hue of his complexion is gone. He has lived without eating or sleeping. He cares not a whit for the trust he has betrayed, that six hundred thousand.dollars of the people’s money has been destroyed. He grieves for the power that has passed out of his hands, for the crown and the throne his no longer. For him who had been first, to pass now to the rear is intolerable a g on y- I Q the teiqple of life he would die before he would sit in a back seat. Born to command, he commanded in the school yard when a child ol five. Show me a school yard and I’ll tell you what sort of men and women the playing chil dren will make. A weaker man will in the first plunge fjom the tu'even of prosperity to the hell ot failure have thought madly of suicide. He shut his teeth Lard aud said: ‘I will climb again. I will not stay down. I will work and scheme as I never worked and schemed before.’ He looked out at the bitter multitude. ‘Who values your censure or praise ! Five years from now ye will ortfwl and cringe again.’ Even the gross ingratitude of the men he had assisted, pained him not at all. He smiled at it and thought it natural and forgot it in the greater suffering of almost irreparable loss. His wifd met him without tears. There was brave blood in her veins and too much romance in her; moreover she knew not the definition of poverty. Till she went among the poor as a phi lanthropist she did not know how they lived. Observation is a fine teacher but experience is the better, and having only had experience of the pleasant ways of life she was searcely to be blamed that her grief was altogether for the good name now nnder a cloud, but she put into his hands all the valuables she possessed. The pearls like linnet eggs that had been in her family* for twelve gen erations, the priceless lace dresses and flowers ana the bridal diamonds she had worn but a halt dozen times. He flung them all down with on awful cry of anguish, and grovelled on the floor. She knelt beside him and pillowed his hot, half-crazed head (there was not among his depositors one breast as heavy, one head as pain ful) on her lap and sought to soothe him. She failed as might have been expected. She prof fered the wrong kind of consolation. He had hoped that worldly wisdom would have prompt ed her to hold on to the stately mansion and all it contained and which no process of law could touch. Having so much secured,he could bank rupt his outstanding debts and have a fair sum to staitauew with. She would give up all and beggsr herself to pay people who abased and slandered him. He reasoned and plead with her that what she would raise would be but a drop in the bucket—but he plead in vain, she was resolute. of trouble—therefore am more experienced. If I can assist you in any way it will give me pleas ure, but you can have no scarcity of friends.’ ‘I haven’t one,’ Salome says quickly and breaking quite down, ‘some stay away fearing to intrude; among the rich I was never a favor ite.’ She looked up piteously. ‘I hated deceit aud I had no policy: what was weak and con temptible I ridiculed, and since I have nothing more to give, the poor have deserted me.’ Vale called one of the girls and bade her mind the store. ; I am going with you and we will get through this business as soon as possible. You are utter ly prostrated and ought to be in bed and I will go heme with you and stay all day if you would like me to. I will take the money you offer me, but dear, men sometimes have a dreary struggle after they fail: sometimes, never succeed. I know more about the world than you dojifMr. Horton is one of these will you come to me and get this money ?. It is the price of your mother’s bridal pearls, and I will take it on no other terms. ’ is a black-hearted woman indeed add one straw’s weight to tha$rouble that is cra zing her. There’s many a Nero, who will n bo execrated for hundreds of years, till we - gin to have a compassionate .pity for mada unutterably detestable for centuries, while the many go unwhipped by justice down to their graves, and so women told her of ‘breaches c trust,’ and 'promises violated,’ and asked her to please set them right, about this operation -hey are satisfied was wrongly related, and ot that transaction, that had the strong flivor of ras cality, conscious all the while that they were torturing ap Torqueamada never did down in his subterranean dungeons, for Toiqueamada never professed a tender feeling for the people he put upon the rack. She went to her hus band with these stories, and when the truth was not politic, he softened their angularities with ingenious sophistries, vulgarly called lies, but unfortunately for him, and for all who attempt it, who do not possess superhuman cunning, the stories did not corroborate, and to-day con- tradieted yesterday, and this story that. Her eyes opened suddenly and this business UDrolls like a scroll before her. She knows now that the capital of the bauk had been a myth, ana that the gigantic superstructure, the pride of the city, had been keptmp by the shrewdest of financiers, and by the deposits of the people. Finding it impossible to deceive her any long er, he flung aside his cloak and made tree con- fession, and trusted to her love to hold her. She heard that the ‘breach of trust’ was but a nttie pleasantry and did not impart any degradation nor was it amenable to tbe law. The legal frauds were unveiled before her wondering eyes and they were legion. . ‘It is exposure that makes the infamy, he said one day. ‘Failure is worse than a blun der; it is a crime; what have I done that has not been done a thousand times a year oyer ihe earth ? I never did so mean, so utterly con- tern ptable a trick as those men did who got up that ‘Cave stock Co.’ If the coal had been as good as the Prospectus it would have been a fine thing. I know of one man who took that stock in payment of a debt, from the mao who broke him, and released him from all indebted ness, who would nbt have touched it at all ODly for the good names upon it, men ot wealth and financial integrity, who stand high in the land, who, had it prospered, would have gladly shar ed in tbe profits for loaning their names and influence, but a3 it came to gritf, washed tueir hands in innocence ot the whole swindle, while the victimizer goe3 scot tree. A entrusted B with twelve hundred dollars to pay to C. ihe war breaks out, B uses the money and there is no correspondence between tbe hostile sections. A is South aud meets C who demands his money. A suggests that he needs a* little close confine ment, C resents thejokeand persists, A explains and C in a white fury goes to B—who pa; s him and other redress has he not, and people think him lucky to get it. at all. No man in business who makes money rapidly makes it honorably, and in a town ot delrauders the defaulter who is exposed gets not one word ol sympathy. ‘I wonder how you can ever find jurymen’ she ictenupts. ‘With what degree of consistency can a man find a bill against another for what he is guilty of himself, and how can a corrupt judge sit in judgement on the cx’imes be has committed himself.’ He laughs at her simplicity and genuine dis gust for the ‘ways that are dark,’ hoping by de grees to familiarize her with wrong-doing and to gradually undermine her conscientious scruples. He has obtained a lucrative position in a large dry goods house, and with the determination to make money, has dismissed the olden business from his mind. ■You can’t keep a man like Horton down,’ said a looker on, who admired his indomitable pluck, you this to prove to you that I have a desire to act honorably so far as I cud, with the people v : Vrtt'i'Jfl JBX husband.' , , , ‘and/if I can help you l Via a r S ew fl vt°cnm f fo S torta^ old* than you are aud I have had a great deal aud the Horton smash up ceases to be discussed. The poor wife has no god on her altar now but the God iD the heavens, but duty binds her in its heavy chains and she drags them around clanking at her feet- (T0 BE CONTINUED.) She is dead in earnest and Salome promises, after which Vale brings hpr a cup of coffee and makes her drink it, and goes away with her, and a half dozen dipositors’ heavy hearts are as light as down when they drive away. As they go homoward Mrs. Hardwiche passes them driv ing the dainty shutlands that Salome loved more than any thing she had parted with. Vale frowns at her as Salome drops hack, white and sick in her seat, and Daisy gazes wonderiugly at her sister and her ghastly companion, and seeing her husband at a little distance beckons to him and he comes. ‘Whois that with Vale?’ she asks. ‘Mrs. Horton,’ he returns, ‘You did not drive by them, did you ?’ ‘Yes.’ Her beautiful face clouds and her eyes fill. ‘Ferd, I am so sorry. I did not know her; I would have gone five miles out cf my way rather than drive these ponies by her.’ ‘Your errors will always be of the head and not of the heart,’he says, proudly. ‘There don’t cry, you great baby.’ ‘I can t help it,’ she replies, ‘I feel so sorry for her, and Vale says we never know the day or the hour, when such trouble may overtake us. When she found her deposit was lost, what did she do? If she had been a great bulking man, she would have gone out to kill or whip, with foul oaths on her lips, taking God’s name in vain, and acting like an idiot; being a wo man, she takes a ‘good cry,' though really I nev er did see the good in any cry, and drops it, and lo! she is out on some erraud of mercy with the woman who has much more reason to cry than any woman I know of.’ Hardwicke laughs. •The women of your house are not men-wor- shipers, that is evident. For men as men I think you and Vale have the purest contempt. You must not give credence to half you hear in regard to Horton. Even Camber, who has al ways distrusted him, says that in a time like this, peoples’ inventive genius is remarkable.’ ‘If it should happen to jou, I'd die.’ fc>he looks at him drearily through her tears. ‘I am not in business,’ he answers. ‘So you need have no fears. Good-bye! don't cry aDy more, darling, you’ll spoil your eyes.’ And wife and husband separated. Vale remained with Mrs. Horton all day, and the friendship thus commenced lasted till death. ‘His love sanctifies her to me,’ Bhe said softly, as she went home in the gloaming. ‘Any thing in the world that he loves would be dear to me, and when my compensation comes, I wiil be more than repaid, when from the great, wide .world of women he chooses me. I shall be roy ally repaid for the silence and dumb endurance of years. Will any one be cruel enough to tell her these stories afloat about her husband ? She Edison’s Latest Invention Yesterday, a strange man, carrying what ap peared to be a small coffiu, paused in front of the Oil Exchange. He was a sad faced man aud his black suit glistened in the sun-light like an armor. He put down hi3 strange burden, and bowed to the men standing around. Then casting his eyes up at tho building, he began: •Gentlemen, I congratulate yon. You have reared here a structure which is second to none in the country. When you shall have gone to that bourne from whence no traveler returns,’ and he glanced sorrowfully at the little coffin, ‘this beautiful bnilding will remain a monu ment to your energy and enterprise, ‘But, gentlemen, poor as I may seem, great as the contrast is between us, I have that in this little box before me,’ and he tipped the coffin reverently with his cane, ‘which I would not exchange for all the wealth of your oil re gions. It’is, gentlemen,’ and he fcegan to un screw the lid, while the crowd involuntarily shrank back; ‘it is, gentlemen, a rat trap which lam introducing for Mr. Edison, of Monro Park.’ The crowd closed up again. ‘It is hi3 latest and, as he says himself, his best. I have handled a great many rat traps in my life, and I can safely say that this one knocks tae socks off all ot them. Don’t crowd up too close till I show it to you.’ aud he took off the top and exposed a box with a lot of apartments communicating with each other by little doors, windows and openings ot one kind and another.’ The great inventor named this the ‘Citizen’s Savmg’s Rat-trap,’ because it operates on the same principle as a savings bank. ‘You see, the rats smells the cheese and enters by the front doors,’ and the trap-man indicated the aparture with his cane; ‘thence in quest of the.cheese, which is a sort of ignis fatuus, through this door, which admits him to parlor A, or the cashier’s room.. This door closes behind him, and he passes thence to parlor B, or the direct or's room; this door closes behind him as before and he proceeds to parlor C, or the president's priyate apartment. By an ingenious arrange ment, the closing of each little door removes the cheese into tbe next room, in this wav al ways keeping it one room in advance of the rat that seeks it—until the last room is reached (par lor D) when it is swung noiselessly to the front apartment for the allurement of another victim. Once inside of a door, no rat can get ont, but rats on the outside can get in, and do get in until the trap is full.’ ‘What s all that got to do with a savings bank?' asked a receiving teller who was in the crowd. ‘Everything, my dear friend, everything,’ re plied the strange man; ‘because, you see, when the trap is full it dosts — liabilities large; assets nothing.—Oil City Derrick A sturdy vagabond, with full black beard of unusual length, was recently brought before a London magistrate, who questioned him about his past life. ‘If one can believe all that is laid to your charge, said the-judge, solemnly, ‘your conscience must be as black as your beard. ’ Ah, replied the wily rogue, ‘if a man’s consci ence is to be measured by his beard, then your lordship has no conscience at all! ’ They have begun to post circus bills on the gravestones out in the wilds of the West, onoma the custom become general and reach out its ai ms to embrace the oivilized world, will find men, it death has not changed tuotr disposition, mean enough to get up and demand a complimentary ticket for tne privilege