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THE SUNNY SOUTH,
Address all Household letters to MISS LIZZIE O. THOMAS, Atlanta, Qa.
A Smile.
Only a smile, yet it brightened
A day that seemed dreary before.
Only a smile, yet it lightened
The burden that heavily bore,
And quickened my energy flagging,
And filled me with courage anew;
For the smile was but the warm sunshine
Of a soul that was noble and true
In my step came an unworted lightness,
And greater my soul seemed to grow;
For warmed was my heart with the brightness
Of the smile that gladdened me so.
And naught I could then do for others,
But seemed it were well worth my while;
For my soul had grown purer and better,
Because of the light of that Bmile.
Marie Annie Henson.
Strictly in it.
A long, hot, soundless summer day was
drawing to a close. The last rays of the set
ting sun were fast fading into twilight. The
chant of the merry birds mingled sweetly
with the rustic music of rustling leaves and
the monotonous gurgle of the brook.
It was Sunday afternoon. Jack Horner and
I were walking leisurely down the beautiful
country road between farmer Brown’s and
lack’s pa’s fields. The road extends north
and south. On our right—for we were go
ing north—lay Mr. Brown’s field. Appar
ently, it was planted only in corn and cotton,
but out near the center was a fine watermelon
patch.
“On my word, Ed,” said Jack, stretching
up his head and looking towards Mr. B.’s
house, “we must have one of those melons.’’
“Yes, but we must be cautious. If the
old man finds it out he’ll raise cain.’’
“That’s what I know,” returned Jack,
“but he’ll never miss one. Why, man alive!
enough watermelons rot out there every year
to pay off the national debt.”
“Then, it will be no harm to take one,” I
added in the way of self-vindication. “Come,
what do you say ?”
“I’m with you.”
A few moments later we found ourselves in
the middle of farmer Brown’s watermelon
patch. Selecting a choice melon was but a
moments’ work.
“Here is a fine old fellow, Jack,” said I.
Jack, stooping over, thumped the melon
and pronounced it ripe. Then he cut it off of
the vine and said:
“Bring him along, Ed, we’ll eat ’em at the
bridge.”
I took the melon under my arm and we
were off.
“Hold on, boys!” said a voice from be
hind us. “Ain’t you going to invite me?”
We turned around and there stood Mr.
Brown himself !
This sudden and unxepected change in the
program started us across the field with all
the agony a prospect of instant death could
crowd into us. I dropped my melon and
stumbled over it, fell and buried my head to
my shoulders in a half-rotten forty-pounder !
When 1 got out of the predicament and
started again, Mr. Brown had me by the
coat tail ! Somehow, I never knew exactly
how it happened, but we fell. This time I
knocked considerable turf off the ground and
buried my head in the dust. I had on a white
duck suit which I had bought just the day
before—it was now ready for the laundry.
Being somewhat younger than Mr. Brown
and, therefore, more active, I was twenty
yards or more down the cotton rows before
the old farmer could get his number eight’s
gathered under him to resume his pursuit.
The cotton was about shoulder high and
we made a wake through it like a cyclone.
About two hundred yards across the cotton
patch we struck a cornfield, and down the
rows we sped at a break-neck speed. The
distance between us was fast decreasing. I
had nearly overtaken Jack, and the old farmer
was outrunning us both. A few moments
more and he would have me by the coat tail
again. On we sped. Now across the rows,
now down the middles, now through thistles
and briars, now through bull-nettles and over
rock?, on we dashed. It was a race for life,
I thought.
Finally, almost out of breath, we reached
the fence, on the north side of the field, next
to our pasture, and, with a handspring, reck
lessly and thoughtlessly, Jack and I went over
the fence. Jack was still a little ahead of
me. I heard a scream and a splash, but alas !
alack-a-day ! it was too late to stop, and over
I went.
Just what had happened I didn’t know until
I raised my head above the water and found
myself standing ears deep in a mud hole!
The old farmer had his revenge. He was
leaning on the fence laughing and jeering
us.
It was a time to try one’s soul.
We struggle to the opposite shore and
again set out for home. Too mad to talk
without “cussing” we keep our mouths shut
until we reached the crossroads where we
parted each for his home.
“I suppose,” said Jack, “if you should get
through this night alive, you will come up
to-morrow and help me finish chopping cot
ton ?”
“Yes; I’ll be there by sunup.”
“If you are not I’ll order a coffin.”
“You may!”
With this we said good-night.
When I got in sight of the house my heart
leaped for joy. There was not a light in the
house that I could see. My folks had gone
to church, I thought, and I could clean my
self up before they returned, so I hurried to
the house, entered the front hall door, and
passed through the hall into the dining
room. I was making for the bathroom by
a near cut. But when I opened the dining
room door I found myself in a brightly
lighted room. The family and the Rev. Mr.
Dodge and daughter were just ready to seat
themselves at the supper table. They all
stared at me in amazement.
At first I was paralyzed and dumbfounded.
Then I tried to beat a retreat, but the door
got between me and the open field, so I had
to stand my ground as best I could.
You would have died laughing to have
seen pa. He was the most puzzled looking
fellow you ever saw. After two or three
desperate efforts he blundered out:
“And where have you been now, Ed?”
“A swimming in the tank.”
“With your new suit on?”
“Yes, sir; I didn’t have time to pull it
off.”
EDWIN BAZAR.
Eagle Oak, Tex.
Just a Talk Among Ourselves.
I have been reading Julia Ried, by Pansy,
and I was forcibly struck with one thing
said in it. One of the characters, Abbie
Ried, went about in a quiet, unassuming way
lifting souls heavenward by her sweet, Chris
tian life. One day a good minister said to
her: “God has greatly honored you, my
child.”
“I!” she said bewildered. “Why, I haven’t
done anything.”
“Only just lived,” said a friend, signifi
cantly.
8 “It is a great thing for a Christian to
live,” said the minister.
e And, indeed, my friends, it is a great thing
if we live Christ’s gospel, not simply speak
it, but live it in our every day intercourse
with men and women. Words are “as sound
ing brass or a tinkling cymbal,” if we do
not practice what we preach. The world is
full of carping critics, with eyes and ears
ever open, listening and looking, to catch the
Christian who only professes Christ with his
tongue. The simple influence of one quiet,
godly life is worth much more than the
spoken or preached word. There is a gentle,
quiet kind of digniity about it that commands
the respect of all men. Down in every man’s
heart there is a germ of good and a lover for
that which is noble. We know it is hidden
deeply sometimes, and crusted over with the
bitterness of ice of years, but with the proper
influence brought to bear upon it, it wil
pulsate and respond though ever so feebly first.
As professed Christians we are too often like
the Pharisee: too much in love with our own
righteousness and too intolerant with
what we call unrighteousness of others.
We hold a high head, looking heavenward,
while we say:
“Ob, God, I thank thee I am not as other
men are, even this publican.”
Now, one of those men went down to his
house justified and we all know it was not
the “better than thou” one. We are told
how Abraham once sat in his tent door at
eventide, when an aged traveler went up
much wearied from his journey. Abraham
gave him a hearty,hospitable welcome. When
they sat down to supper and the stranger did
not ask a blessing or give thanks for his
meat, Abraham, like many otherwise good
people, was wholly intolerant and he asked
the stranger why he acted so. The stranger
said:
“I am a fire worshipper only.”
At that Abraham angrily thrust him out
into the darkness and peril of the night.
God inquires of him his reason for thus
treating a guest.
“I thrust him out,” he replied, “because
he worships not thee.”
“Lo,” was the answer, “I’ve suffered him
these hundred years, and shall not thee en
dure him for a night?”
What a lesson ! We claim the right to our
own opinion, and cling to it tenaciously^
Why not as Christians be tolerant, at least,
toward our fellow man ? We can never bring
men to Christ in this way. We must keep
our hearts in touch with the great throbbing
heart of humanity, put ourselves on a level,
as it were, and in kindness, gentleness and
loving sympathy, try to reach them and bring
them to know and feel the blessedness of the
Christian religion. Let us strive to be true
and pure in our Christian life, and remember,
“If only we strive to be pure and true,
To each of us all there will come an hour
When the tree of life shall burst into flower,
And rain at our feet the glorious dower
Of something grander than we ever knew.”
Yours truly,
' DOLORES.
Mordecai DeLashmet.
Mordecai DeLashmet and his brother, it
seems, lived alone.
One day Mr. DeLashmet announced that
he intended going on a hunt.
This was not unusual, as he was the Nim
rod of his day in his “district.” And he was
proud of his reputation. But this time he was
gone three days when his brother, Lige
DeLashmet, becoming alarmed, went in
search of him.
Entering an old forest, he soon descryed
his brother sitting under a large oak against
which he was leaning.
Mr. Lige DeLashmet is said to have ad
dressed him in no gentle words, desiring to
know the wherefore of his absence and pres
ent position. Receiving no reply, he dis
mounted.
Mordecai DeLashmet was dead.
Beside him lay a dead highland moccasin
and his gun was at his feet.
The condition of the man testified to the
cause of his death. The moccasin had bitten
him and he,fin turn, had shot the snake.
Then, knowing that death was near, he sat
down under the tree and leaned against its
trunk, and there life went out. The tree and
the lonely grave are there yet.
These are the only monuments left of the
DeLashmet family in South Carolina. It is
said they went to Mississippi in the century’s
infancy. The old records show that they
were of the French nobility.
MARION MOBLEY DURHAM.
Spending the Summer.
I know that there are many enthusiastic,
ambitious spirits doomed to pass much of
their lives in uncongenial surroundings. I
have wondered if they might not be helped a
little by this letter from a friend. She says:
“During the hot weather last summer I
was, as one may say, dry-docked in a lonely
old farm house. It was kept by a farmer who
never opened his mouth except to yodel ‘here
pig,’ and his wife who asked me if I needed
‘more cover o’ nights’ and hot coffee at noon,
with the thermoneter in the 90’s. But, up
stairs, a son of this couple had left a room of
books—books from whose heart mama mice
had built stately palaces for her pink-nosed
babies, (one mouse had built a house out of
Gibbon’s description of Rome in its glory),
books, out of whose yellow entrails, crawled
the fat moth, emblem of Poe’s King Worm.
But still they were books.
“Shall I ever forget how, during those hot
hours, when the sun was burning the grass
outside into tendrils of ashes, I sat among
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those books? I wandered amid the stately
sentences of Scott into cool, majestic ruins
(perched on a cliff by the ocean), came the
lover’s flageolet, the scream of the fishwife,
the voice of stalwart Scotchmen calling a
grandfather ‘luckie dad,’ and a hornless bo
vine the ‘humble cow,’ names full of Home-
ric suggestiveness.
“I had only to change a book and away I
was with another Scotchman, climbing the
Yosemite with rugged John Mims. All
around me now swept blue ice and white
snow. I followed the path of the ancient
glacier, and in Yosemite, monument of gia-
cieis, I exclaimed with Mrs. Fitzgerald, ‘God
has made one spot where he will be wor
shipped !’
“It was somewhat disenchanting to be
called away from Mims, who iived on canned
stuffs for ten years, to sit down to bacon and
corn bread and flies in the syrup. But dinner
was soon over and I was wandering with
books for my wings once more.
“Once I came to Brook Farm, spot sacred
to friends of Washingon Irving, with whom
they went picnicking. Imagine literatuer>
and musicians making hay and milking the
Juno-eyed herd! Why couldn't that farm
life, where men of intellect and culture
shared their toil and goods together, have
gone on forever? Was it because a tower of
Babel aspiring too near the battlements of
eternal peace must not be built, not even out
of hay ricks and golden corn stacks?
“Once I got‘into the streets of New
with that lovable Vagabond, Arteri* Js^WarT
and I could feel cc ol drinks running down
my throat, and hear the laughter of his jollv
companions with whom it was so true that
‘in the midst of life we are in debt. 5
“At night I went to bed, not by poetical
candle light, but in the society of an ii 1 -
smelling, broken chimneyed lamp, with a
very little oil °nd a very greasy mixture in
the bottom. I could not read by it, but I
slept and my dreams went on with the en
chantment. Often I sat on the porch with
Dryden’s simple dame, and shared her twi
light meal of ‘black and white,’ brown bread
and milk, and in my dreams I seeinedt o feast
on the wholesome, honest food of a different
‘black and white,’ I mean the pages of the
books which fed my spirit.”
MRS. MARK MORRISON.
x Baby’s Bed.
® Most mothers will agree with me when I say
there is nothing too pretty or too dainty for
the baby’s bed. Sometimes we find that the
little lace trimmed cots shown so temptingly
in the shop windows are too expensive for
our pocket books, but everyone can provide
neat and pretty furnishings, even though the
sheets are of plain muslin, and the coverings
only patchwork quilts.
One little lady of our acquaintance has a
cradle furnished so nicely that, perhaps, a
description of it will be of interest to the
mothers. The mattress is just the size of
her cradle, about four inches thick, and filled
with hair. This is covered with muslin slip
made to fit it exactly, and buttons at one end.
When this become soiled, it is an easy matter
to slip it off and exchange it for a fresh one,
and in that way the mattress is alway kept
clean. Next there is a quilted pad, then the
sheet, which is of fine white muslin, with a
two inch hem, hemstitched all around it.
The upper sheet is just like the lower one ;
the hem of the soft white, woolen blanket is
feather stitched in place with pale blue Asi
atic twisted embroidery silk. There is a
small feather pillow with a slip of white
linen, finished at the bottom with a hem
stitched hem.
A small white linen spread fringed all
around was purchased from a dealer in fancy
goods. In the center the mother embroidered
a monogram three inches long in blue Roman
floss. Blue and white violets are scattered
over the spread, embroidered with Asiatic
filo silk, using two shades of green for the
leaves. This is one of the handsomest bed
spreads I have ever seen, and like everything
else x about this bed, it can be washed, and
look none the worse for it.
WESTERN HOUSEKEEPER.