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W Hmns COUi'CTlOiY
J. H. & W B. SEALS, J SSwtors
ATLANTA, 6A., SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1879.
TERMS!
$3 PER ANNUM
IN ADVANCE.
.NO. 189.
Tlie Winter Winds.
BT MKS. MAKY WAKE.
The winter winds are chili and wild,
The winter sky is black as doom.
And here and there a ragged child,
Is struggling through the murky gloom.
The winter sky is pitiless—
The frozen earth is chill, and gray—
But human hearts that throb with life,
Alas ! are colder far than they!
The sky is mottled in its gloom—
The earth is wrapped in shadow deep,
But human hearts are wrapped in self,
And cannot see their fellows weep!
God pity the poor child of want!
And pity those who cannot feel;
Supply to each, his greatest need,
And be with all through woe and weal!
Under The Snow.
;bv s. m. A.C .
The world without isagleam with snow,
Within is the Christmas tide;
Now wheeling swift, now circling slow,
The waltzers merrily glide ;
“ What magic spell hath the baleful power
To shadow this time of glow?”
-,I dream, 1 dream, 1 am made a flower
And shrouded under the snow.”
“You are fanciful—and yet not so—
O rose of the world most fair,
With your starry eyes and your breast of snow
And wonderful shining hair,
My life is set to your sweet refrain,
Each heart-throb I would know.”
“ My soul is sad for the streamlet's pain,
Ice-fettered under the snow.”
“ Look not from the win low. The world is chill
Atd weird in its robe of white,
The graveyard over the western hill
Shows ghastly clear to night.
Each hillock old is a crested wave,
The North wind waileth low ;”
*,I know 1 shall feel, when they makemy grave,
The pitiful fall of the snow.”
Her lips are yours In their velvet bloom,
Her eyes lii their starry pride;
You hoid her close, as thro’ gleam and gloom
The waltzers merrily glide;
One hillside grave you have quite forgot,
Yet all too well I know,
Your kisses thrill, nor your clasp warms not,
Her heart is under the snow.
She listened to him without a word beyond ran>ing of her hand as if to ward off a blow.
Slllll, '111 Lilt IIID;
—OR—
A Woman’s Sin and its Pun
ishment.
BY SIAEY E. BKYAN.
(CONCLUDED.)
In the softly lighted, luxuriantly warmed par
lor of a fashionable hotel, Bertha sat waiting for
an expt cted visitor. Some remnant ot a teeling
that bad once tyrannized over her being had
made her dress herself with peculiar care. Her
g arnet velvet robe lay in gleaming folds over the
oor, soft laces were at her throat and a twist of
pearls with a ruby clasp. If she had been too
pale, a touch of 'French rouge had given the
needed tone to her complexion and brilliancy to
her eyts, that turned restlessly to the door.
Suddenly the color deepened under the rouge;
a man’s graceful, perfectly proportioned iigere
stood on the threshold of the room. But she
rose to receive him wiih a queenly seli'-poses-
sicn, and met with calmness the bold yet soft
glance of his superb eyes and tbo half gallant,
half mocking smile with which he bent over her
hand. He wool 1 have raised it to his lips, but
she drew it quietly away and stood looking at
him critically from head to foot, while he laced
the scrutiny with a look at once amused, care
less and enquiring.
‘You are »s handsome as ever,’ she said at last.
‘The years have not changed you; they never
do change soul lets things.’
•Thanks. Time has changed you only to
make you more captivating, 1 he said, with that
smile that one was sure would be seen to be a
sneer if the black, soft moustache did not so
shade his month. ‘But why do you speak so
hastily cam mea, do you grudge me my poor
good looks ?‘
•No, I am glad of them;they will help do what
I want.*
‘I inferred from your letter that you wished
something of me, though I cannot conceive how
I can be of service to Madame, who commands
the Sesame ot money, and who, since the thous
ands of her obligingly deceased grandfather
have fallen into her hands, h&sforgotten her olct
friend.’
•Friend !’ Bertha’s sneer was intensely bitter.
‘Enemy, tempter, destroyer!’
‘He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Wbet tragic tones and epithets ! Pity I have
not verve euough to enjoy them; so true is it
that one’s tmoiions depend on their dinners.
How expect a bread emotion from a narrow din
ner? M;iie have been aepressingly contracted.
The recollection of them brings me back to bus
iness. You want something of me. I am at
your Eerc ice, ready to do mon possible far—a surah
cash consideration. I am frightfully cut of
pocket. ‘
‘Yet your dress is the perfection of elegance. 1
‘Ah ! mafoi, one nits! dies.s well, if one starves
to do it. Society tolerates a hungry stomach but
not a shabby coat. I am bere, as I wrote you,
with no money and nothing to do. Had a place
in a pretty tair company in Paris, but the prime,
must needs have a j-alous husband who miscon
strued a few little professional attentions, and
there was a quarrel, and yon know I dislike un
pleasantnesses. 1 have had other bad fortune
— been devilish unlucky in play, and, in short,
am regularly thrown out for the season.*
‘Why do yon not raise a troupe of your own
and take them West?*
‘Why don‘t I finish the Washington Monu
ment? I could do that just as well as I could
raise money to get np a troupe and go traveling
with it. ‘
It will take but little money. You need only
third or fourth rate talent. You have talent
and versatility ©Dough to supply many
deficiencies. I will advance the money and
supply the Star.*
'You? Will you gt on the stage again men-
n-t V—
| z -' ‘I beg yon will call me no such names, Adol-
l phe. I do not choose to be mocked. No, I will
'not go on the stage again, but I have a girl with
me here, beautiful as Diana,graceful, gifted
with a voice that one hears but once in a cen
tury and with an in-born passion for the stage.
I want you to draw out and foster that passion
and use all your eloquence to make her believe
in the noble mission of the stage.*
•Its noble mission! Now that’s amusing.*
‘You must never sneer at it though where she
is, She is totally unsophisticated a perfect
babe in the woods. She has been taught that it
is not right for women to act: I have given her
other lessons and she has learned them eagerly,
but there is yet much to be done. Talk to her
in your fervid impassioned way of your noble art
make her believe herself one of the chosen, get
her consent to go on the stage under your
auspices. Give her a Star role. My word for
it, she will fill it well. ‘
‘You give me a delightful part to p’ay. What
other leesons shall I learn your wonderful
protege ?‘
‘No other, Adolpbo Verdier. The girl is pure
as mountain snow. You cannot cemprehend
such purity. Address yourself only to her
intellect, make her an actress-not a vic
tim. Dare to disregard my wishes and yo*
shall repent it- I will close my parse against
yon; and I wilt betray you to the police.*
‘You will not carry out that last threat, my
angel, for to do it would he to expose yourself,
in a great measure, aud if my shrewdness is not ! For she loved Adolph-tor rather she lov, d the
' devoted artint—the nolle, generous man, with
the charm of a inystericus, and sorrowful hig
her senses bewilderingly**s 3he lay unsleeping
on her pillow that nig,., remembering how
eloquently he had desorilit'd the stage, and the
beauty, the freedom -n artistic; delights of a
life devoted to inteyr»bf JxiU e.Drama.
ffTpi irittCT— tit"■heau 1
that Apollo might bavoei.vied—upon his hard
cotton pillow and mntteing;*
‘A VeDne truly; but Von Lieu what an en
fant? Such guileleea e.wsi If I were not eo
blase here might be a sematien. But it seems
almost a pity—as if one should hnrt a child.
However, the blame be oi Bertha’s head. Did
she think ‘
And here Adolph, who wa* conveniently
void of a conscience, dropped off to sleep.
This was the beginning In a week there had
been such progress tha Sylvia was studying
the first part in a popular alsy nndsr ths instruc
tion of her two disintensted frisnds, Adolph
found no difficulty in gating together a troupo
of nnsmploved, profetsionals, and aftsr a
number of rehearsals anda hurried getting up o f
costumes and other appurtenances, the troupe
took its departure. Pocr Sylvia was like one
wrapped in the glamounf enchantment. She
heard and eaw s few dBeirdant things in her
britf association with the other members of the
troupe, but they failed a» yet to raise the veil and
give bar a glimpse into the ignoble reality of
hsr beautiful dream. India beauty atd splendid
gifts of Adolph Verdiw, (who wa* strictly on
his good behavior for the time aad concealed
effectually thsr«cklsss, dissipated, unprincipled
proclivities that had kept him from all success)
she seemed to see a type of the profession to
which he belonged, the profession, to which she
now consecrated herseil with all the ardor of a
pure, impassioned imagination, f xalted by love.
stood looking at her with a strange expression
in her sallow, bony face.
•Yon have come for Sylvia,* Bertha said. ‘She
is not——’ i
j might not be too late. She started up with
| more than her wonted energy. She threw her
pu'se fnto the woman's lap.
‘Go, ‘ she commanded, and she herself rushed
from the house, and hurrying to the telegraph
office sent two messages across the wires to that
western town where she knew Verdier s small
troupe was playing. She came baok toberhou-e
aDd waited for the answer, walking the floor in
agony. Suddenly she started, she heard Hart-
ridge s step in the hall; he had come in without
ling or announcement. A sight of his rigid,
white face as he entered smote her with fresh
apprehension. She sank into a seat and said
faintly:
‘You have seen Sylvia?*
He came to the end of the lounge and looked
at her. Such a look ! It was as though cold
steely points were piercing her heart. And Lis
voice, when he spoke, was unnaturally cold and
calm:
‘I have seen Sylvia, yes,‘ he sail, ‘Ihave seen
her in her coffin. She is dead by her own
band—accidentally it is said, but I know Letter.
Your work is accomplished.*
She listened to him without a word ora move
ment beyond an involuntary raising of her hand
as if to ward off a blow. He went on;
‘If remorse could reach you f r the ruin of an
innocent, motherless ‘
She sprang up suddenly, and brought her
white, terrible face close to his.
‘Motherless !• she shrieked. ‘ ‘/am her mother,
I, her murderer am her mother. She is my
child mine. ‘
She fell to the floor in a quivering heap. He
stood looking at her a moment, with no soften
ing in his stony face.
•Then I leave yon to your punishment.* he
said, and quitted the house.
Terrible was that punishment, for before
morniDg, Bertha Huntly was a maniac. No
gleam of reason ever after visited her brain.
And her victim—poor Sylvi*. She, who might
have been the blest wife of one of the truest
and tenderest men on earth—the mystery of her
death was never cleared away. Adolphe Yerdier
and the others asserted, that it was accidental—
the rbsalt of a too realistic rehearsal of a tragic
stage-scene in her own room, but few believed
it so. Looking at her sweet, calm face in her
‘No I haven't come for $vlvia. I hav° mouf, coffin, Hartridge felt that his lily had been tin-
... , . -• fa* f t ,.*Sr3«r t o iae'lajfc. >ifr n»iu i'o b.unssit that Bur
at fault, you aim at ignoring the past and sai’-
ir.g under very while colors, if not for society 's
sake, then for some one's in particular. You
rever cared for society; was always bohemian;
But that heart of yours :! I know whst a fiery
| uncontrollable thing it is. It is that which
troubles you now. I can see through your
solicitude "for this white-souled Diana that you
wish to transform into the star of a poor little
batched up, fourth rate theatrical company and
sent c ff out west. The girl stands in your way,
and you mean to put her out ot it, yet yen
don‘t wish her victimized. Yon put her in the
hawk's nes‘, yet tell him to keep his claws
sheathed. I don't understand your soft heart-
ednees, my Bertha. I thought if any dared
come between you and the o'jeet of^ that fierce
love of yours, you would be as cruel as Queen
Eleanor‘8 self. I remember once ‘
‘Hush ;I have commanded you re mr to bring
uu tbe past. I have told you what I wish: I will
gc* and bring the girl, but remember if ‘
•Pshaw: 1 interrupted the man, frowning im
periously and giving his mustache an angry
twirl.* I will not Larm the girl. I am utterly
sick of women and affairs of the heart. I am
alter money now; a much mors important
thing.-
’And you promise *
T do, without reserve, I am in no mood for
love making. I am growing too old for it,
Bertha. Do be reasonable. ‘
•Too old ! He looked as if eternal youth
and beanty were his birth-right. But Bertha
believed or tried to think tl.a! sue belifved he
would regard her threat, if not his promise
and she went out and presently returned with
Sylvia Fane. She had said to her,
•The friend I once spoke to you of on the
mountains, is here; come and see him,'
And soon Adolphe Yerdier was bending low
over the girl's slender hand and she stood, her
pure cheeks flushing under the ardent yet
respectful homage of those splendid eyes. How
rich his voice was; what a charm in his smile,
in that graceful, gallant, delightful foreign
manner, with its subtly disguised flattery
of look and gesture. Then his singing!-a rich
tenor that might have made his fortune had he
taken the trouble to train it. He sang a duett
from H Trovatore with Bertha and his tones
thrilled the mountain girl, as no sounds ever
had before. That voice and those eyes possessed
tory—which she beiievtd him to be
A letter came to her from Hartridge before
she left, but she hardly read it. Another took
months to oil now tuan bSeaa jo fill thorn wi
•I‘ve come though to get you to pay for two
years* feeding and clothing of the girl. I'm
pretty sure its your right to do it by law.’
‘By law, Mrs. Fane ?‘
“Yrs; if I’m not mistaken; and I don’t think
lam. Aint your real name Bertha Miller?
Yes, I see it is by your face—I thought I knew
that face when 1 saw you first, though I had
never seen it except in a picture. I ransacked
for that picture among my things, bnt 5 it only
turned up last week. Hare it is.”
She ran her hand in her pocket, and drawing
out a faded photograph, laid it down on the
table before Bertha Miller. Faded, but it was
Bertha's own face, fresher and more trustful and
caDdid in look, but still her face, and she stared
at it as if it had been a ghost suddenly upstart
ed. Presently, she turned it over. Oa the
back was written, ‘VaDderis from Bertha Miller.’
The woman standing over her laid her bony
forefinger on the words. “He wrote that. I
took the picture from him after I found him out
and knew he had left me for you. He was my
lawful husband, though he left me, before my
second child was born, and pretended to marry
you. He was never your husband, though it
may be you thought so, for they told me you
took on dreadful when you knew you had been
deceived, and threatened him aDd ran off so
distracted yon left your child behind. And
when you came back he was gone, and so was
the child. He didn’t come to me. I never saw
him nor heard from him till years afterwards,
when he came to my honse, an old-looking
broken man, without a dollar in hia pocket.
He wa* nothing to me; I had given him up
and look baok my father’s name, but he wss my
children's father, and I gave him money, and
pure soul bewildered and terrified at the sud
den revelation of wickedness around her—the
downfall of her beautiful ideals, the insight
into the treachery of the woman she had trusted
so fully and the man she believed in and loved
—terrified and horror-smitten at finding herself
in the midst of and surrounded by snoh evil,
she had freed herself from it by the first means
that suggested itself to her frenzied mind. Her
own hapd had set free the dove from the cruel
net spread for it—had
“Broken a rose before the 6torm destroyed it.”
in the deep, tender ueaniDg of the written off again. ^ It was ^ then he gave me
words, aud, Bertba, as she crashed the ietter
in her baud, hardened ilier heart sgaiDst the girl
she felt strangely pitiful to, ia spite of her cruel
scheme against her.
As soou as they were gmo, Bertha went back
tob»rhome. Hartridge oime at once. He hardly
noticed the heightened olor, the eager passion
in her eyes as she came forward to meet him.
‘How long it seems siioe I saw you ! ‘were
her first words.
‘Where is Sylvia Faoe?’ was his abrupt
question.
She blanched, and sataer teeth hard, but she
answered lightly.
‘Haye you not heard ? She has left me, to be
a wandering star. She lecame stage-toad and
has joined a troupe and ;one west. She would
not listen to RDy rernon ’
•Woman, f vise friend, this is your work,’ Hart-
ridge interrupted, seizin; her arm and locking
into her white face ancTVoweriag eyes. Your
own work, Temptress. You have ruined her;
you have rumed me. I will never see your face
again.’
The iceberg had indeed a cove of fire. It
seeemed to have withered her, t.s she lay,
crouched on the flocf after he had left her.
But she rallied after a while; she wouid not
despair, especially new that Sylvia was gone.
She wrote him a long jlausible letter, which part
ly served her purpose, and resolved to wait the
developments of Time. But though softened to
wards her, in part, he would not visit her. He
shnt himself in his stndy, and bent to business
with unsparing devotion. But one night he
dreamed that Sylvia stretched her arms to him
across a black gulf and appealed to him with
eyes of such piteous wretchedness that they
haunted him next da/ aud forced him to shat
np bis books and his office and go in search of
the troupe, of whose course a western newspaper
had informed him. Bertha heard of his depart
ure, bat beiievng he weald never take a wife
from behind the footlights, she did not gness
his int«ntioB. While h« was gone, she had an
nnlooked for visit. Mrs Fane came to see her
—stalked abruptly into ker room one day and
that picture and told me to burn it. He sai
you bad been his ruin with your fair face. He
said he had seen you, that you had taken up
with some play actor and had gone on the stage;
and when you asked about your child, he told
you it was dead, and you had burst into crying.
He was surprised at that, and almost sorry he
had not tnld yon the truth.”
“The truth ! What do you mean woman—was
it not true that my child—my little Lily was
dead ?”
“No; she wa« living. Re had put her in a
convent. He »as Catholic yen know, and she
stayed th~?e till he died. She thought you
wrr- dead, and grew up “
“Grew up? Aiercilai'Gid! Mrs. Fane, tell
me where, who is my child ? ’
“Where she is, yon know beftsr than I do.
Who is she? Why she’s Sylvia Fane, and that's
wh . I come to a«k yon for—Good gracious ! the
woman has fainted ! Help ! Come here, you
girl-"
But Bertha recovered without help and rose
up phaefiy, terrible to look at. Her child? The
iitti* b be that had drawn its life from her breast
whe- ; . she was hersslf little more than a child—
the little partner in these early sorrows and
wrongs that had changed a loving high-souled
gir* into a bard, bitter, reckless woman. Ah,
but if she had had the child to stay with her, to
lay its cheek sgaia-t htr’s and clasp her neck
with loving arms, she would not have been so
nckless, the child’s love would have saved her.
How often hud she longed to clasp it and stretch
ed ont her empty arms in the wretched lonely
night! Now she understood why Sylvia Fane’s
sweet face had touched her so, why she had felt
that strange yearning for the girl she had yet
made her victim—the girl she had sent to her
ruin, the dove she had put into the cage of the
same beautiful remorseless falcon whose talons
had pierced her heart. Oh. what horror was in
tbe thought! Her child ! that noble.trusting
girl whom she had plotted against so basely.
Oh, if it were not yet too late ! She took up
Sylvia s last letter—brief, incoherent, tear-blot
ted. It was more than two weeks old, yet it
I’ve a Utter from thy sire,
Baby mine, baby mine;
He‘s coming home or lie's a liar,
Baby mine, baby mine;
He is now chuck full of wine,
He is coming o'er the Ithine,^
He had better hide his sign,
Baby mine, baby mine.
He had better come in scon,
Bab- mine, baby mine;
I-vebeen waiting since bigh noon,
Baby mine, baby mine;
I am waiting with a broom,
I will chase him ‘round the room,
While his nose shines through the
gloom,
Baby mine, baby mine.
Cold Comfokt.—Algernon, under her window
in the cold, white moonlight, with a tender ex
pression, says:
‘Tis the la-hast rose o-hof stammer,
Le-heft bloo-homing alo-none;
All its li-hnv-ler companions
Ak-lia fa-deh-bed and go-hone—
Voice of pa from next window, strained and
cracked like,as though the old gentleman didn t
have time to look for r is store teeth. ‘All right,
young man, all right; just pin a newspaper over
it to save it from the frost, and we ll take it in
with the rest of the plants in the morning.’
How beautiful is science! A few days ago an
academician, rising in his place, made in a tone of
the deepest earnestness, the following annoure -
ment: ‘Gentlemen, it is with unspeakable satis
faction that I have the honor of informing you
that thanks to the most persevering efforts. M.
P—, our correspondent of the Maritime Alps,
has succeeded in inoecu’ating a man with the
mange of a dog, a cutaneous disease, which
thus far has seemed wholly incompatible with
the human temperament.’ {Prolonged enthu
siasm .)
We have ceased to envy Beaconsfield; he is
seventy-three years old. If there is anybody in
the world we do envy, it is the young gentle
man on the other side of the street, who is mak
ing faces and calling us names. He doesn’t go
to school, has hulled six bushels of walnuts
this tali with his bare bauds, wears his father’s
vest for an overcoat, is thirteen years old, and
has eaten eleven apples since U o’clock this
morning.
A countryman drove into Xenia, Ohio, the
other day with some friends to meet a train
Arriving at the depot, a freight train was stand
ing on the side track and the countryman, not
seeing any convenient place to tie up, delibe
rately hitched his horse to the rear car of the
freight and proceeded to promenade tbe walks
around the depot while waiting for his train.
What was his surprise when he saw his hitek-
ing-post pull out for Cincinnatti, with his horse
and wagon bringing up the rear iu not the bests
of order. It would not be proper to record the
remarks of the yonng man on the subject.
•No woman of proper self-respect,’ says a wo
man’s rights journal, discussing the marriage
ceremony, ‘will submit to be given away.’ Per
haps not; but, dear woman’s right, to be ‘given
away’ is not the worst feature of the ceremony.
She is too otteu ‘sold.’