Love stories; Unmarried mothers -- Fiction; Women household employees -- Fiction
How a mind under such uncertain circumstances could retain so
comparatively placid a vein is one of those marvels which find their
explanation in the inherent trustfulness of the spirit of youth. It is
not often that the minds of men retain the perceptions of their younger
days. The marvel is not that one should thus retain, but that any
should ever lose them Go the world over, and after you have put away
the wonder and tenderness of youth what is there left? The few sprigs
of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your materialism, the
few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of the wintry soul, the
half hours off during the long tedium of burrowing, these reveal to the
hardened earth-seeker the universe which the youthful mind has with it
always. No fear and no favor; the open fields and the light upon the
hills; morning, noon, night; stars, the bird-calls, the water’s
purl—these are the natural inheritance of the mind of the child. Men
call it poetic, those who are hardened fanciful. In the days of their
youth it was natural, but the receptiveness of youth has departed, and
they cannot see.
How this worked out in her personal actions was to be seen only in a
slightly accentuated wistfulness, a touch of which was in every task.
Sometimes she would wonder that no letter came, but at the same time
she would recall the fact that he had specified a few weeks, and hence
the six that actually elapsed did not seem so long.
In the meanwhile the distinguished ex-Senator had gone light-heartedly
to his conference with the President, he had joined in a pleasant round
of social calls, and he was about to pay a short country visit to some
friends in Maryland, when he was seized with a slight attack of fever,
which confined him to his room for a few days. He felt a little
irritated that he should be laid up just at this time, but never
suspected that there was anything serious in his indisposition. Then
the doctor discovered that he was suffering from a virulent form of
typhoid, the ravages of which took away his senses for a time and left
him very weak. He was thought to be convalescing, however, when just
six weeks after he had last parted with Jennie, he was seized with a
sudden attack of heart failure and never regained consciousness. Jennie
remained blissfully ignorant of his illness and did not even see the
heavy-typed headlines of the announcement of his death until Bass came
home that evening.
“Look here, Jennie,” he said excitedly, “Brander’s dead!”
He held up the newspaper, on the first column of Which was printed in
heavy block type:
DEATH OF EX-SENATOR BRANDER
Sudden Passing of Ohio’s Distinguished Son. Succumbs to Heart Failure
at the Arlington, in Washington.
Recent attack of typhoid, from which he was thought to be recovering,
proves fatal. Notable phases of a remarkable career.
Jennie looked at it in blank amazement. “Dead?” she exclaimed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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