PARADISE

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 352, 5 February 1903, Page 8

PARADISE

} By Eloise Jane Hufft. %.

(from the New Orleans Times-Democrat, by Permission.) TTTF. young mother had been into the dim shadows where Death and idle struggle, and win or lose, just at the happiest, sweetest, fullest hour ■which had been hers, when love took on a new and tender unselfishness, when its' lilting, dancing measures broke into the deep inol«»ly of an anthem, and, as she drifted back into the light again, thus it was that she half wished and half prayed in her still childish way that Death would never lake this woman-child'of hers as long as Life held Happiness—that love of Life should be a talisman to stay the hand of Death. Thrice in the woman's threescore years Death had come to woo her from hi* brother Life out into the far beyond, that unknown land, that hereafter which he called Paradise, and of which he spoke with a wondrous eloquence and a great witchery. When first he came it was just at the dawn of day, just as the east was flushing in the faint rays of the rising sun and the birds twittered in the trees: shod with silence he glided through the quiet balls and still hushed household, among the watchers with wet faces and terror-touched eyes. All unseen, though they looked for bis coming, he went -in the gray of the spring morning into the sweet sanctity of the girl's chamber. Pausing on the threshold, as if loth to enter an unbidden guest, be noted all its whiteness and its dainty simplicity; noted, too. on the muslindraped dressing table .1 tiny silver frame, with the pictured face of a youth, an earnest, grave face; and Death smiled at the story it told. But he went to the bed where she lay as one asleep, until she seemed to be already Death's own. lie stood beside her and looked with sad eyes and cold, impassive brow at the child who was his for the taking, and it was in tenderness and with a love and pity surpassing the human that he gazed on the fairyoung face, like an untouched lily leaf, the unwritten brow, the sweet childish mouth, upon which the kisses of love had left neither song nor sigh, the slender little hands, so weak and fragile, and he stooped and touched her with his pulseless fingers as he said: "My child, you are ready, you are willing »o come with me? for I am your friend, and will give you eternal calm and peace, a gift which human love and care cannot bestow. I will take you to a land where you will never lose your youth; I will save you from Life. Look into the faces of the aged, my little maid, and read there of all that Life writes upon faces once as fresh and fair as yours; all that love entails; all that lengthened years give to those who wait too long for me; the fever that is ambition; the delirium that is love; the cLill that is regret; the ceaseless anguish of sorrow and disappointment that dims the eyes fixed upon the things of this world."

His voice had almost the wooing and the pleading of a lover, as he saw in her awakened eyes the cloudless, untroubled soul of a child. "From all this I will save you. Come with me now before Life has taught you to yearn for me, for I come not at your call, however sorrowing and loud." The girl gazed upon him with a great wonder in her gentle, dove-like eyes; she quietly unclasped his hold and laid her fingers caressingly upon some faded roses on the bed beside her, and she said, as one repeats words of a foreign tongue, all unlearned in their meaning: "Regret, sorrow, disappointment—what are these?" "Death went on: "Come, my child; come with me to Paradise, to the land where all is serenity, all is joy and content; where the days are all one as another in their changeless, tranquil happiness." And then, as Death became the more imperative, as he again touched her with his icy fingers, she looked across the room until she met the pictured face, and something like firmness gathered and settled upon her childish features. "That is not Paradise of which you tell me." Then she hesitated, but, looking straight and direct into the close, stern face of Death, a little faint flush oreepinginto her cheeks and a sweet, unafraid womanliness growing upon her as she •poke: 'That is not Paradise. Paradise is here, because John is here.''. And Death went his way with empty arms, aud when she waked the watchers said that she wandered, still she was feverish and distraught, although brr p<--- » plac-M -»n,i pjnnr and In r

voice even and sweet, for shefiuid: ".No, I will sot go with you; Paradise is her** * >lt was noon, a still nmmer noon when Death came again, meeting, as ha glided through the solemn quiet of the "waiting, praying, desolate home, a man whose lace was as pale and set as Death's own; whose eyes were heavy with unshed itears; children with s> strange grief upon their hearts. But heedless, unpitying Death passed them by, and went once again for the one Who was brought into the shadow of his wing. But it was a different scene that met his eyes as he paused for an Instant at the door; it was a mother's room now, wide and spacious. Over the mantel the pictured face of a man, a scholarly face, pure' of outline and direct and firm, of expression, seemed to dominate the room, and the groups of children's portraits, little shoes upon the floor, little stockings in the great, wide workbasket, school books and slates on the desk by the window, all typified her life, with its broad, unselfish. Womanly interests, its loves and its cares, its duties and its pleasures. Onfce again she listened to Death's pleadings, and ns he looked upon her, he almost envied Life the beauty he had written upon her face. Youth and freshness were gone, spent as a generous giver does mere gold, in loving service, glad to be the poorer; but there was grace and loveliness passing that of form or color in the quiet, Madonna-like eyes, the thoughtful brow, the mouth kept sweet and mellow by sunshine and rain, the words of love and the crooning of cradle songs; all was there, all the Life from which he had warned her —tears and laughter, moments of joy, hours of sorrow and grief, years of sweet, calm, even-paced content, hope, patience, anxiety, realization —the story was all written there, and it was gain, not loss; beaut} - , strength and all lovesome womanliness, but Death despaired not, even though he saw more of happiness than of sorrow. "Now you are ready to come with me to Paradise; you who have known grief and loss, for I have taken your children from your arms, and they bloom there. You have seen all that Life imposes; you have known weariness; you have felt the thorns and briars along the path. Life has not spared you labor or care. To you, and such as you. I conic as a deliverer; one who bestows rest after long toil. All Life's burdens will be lifted, and you will forever fold your hands in eternal peace. Come with me, you who should greet the coming of a friend who will give you Paradise." But she looked up into his face, into the passion-pure, marble-like features of Death, and,- as the glow of the Northern Lights flushes into roseate hue even fields of ice and snow, so the face of Death became illumined with all but human beauty and expression, as she said, her voice not the timid, faltering tones of the blushful maid who had once answered his- plea, but the full-rounded, melodious accents of a woman: "Go your way, Death. I know all that life means, all that love gives and takes, and again will I say, after all these years, Paradise is not with you. Paradise is here, happiness is here, for John is here!" And Death trailed his ghostly garments through the house and went alone,with* almost a bitterness against his brother Life, who could so hold out and so charm. "When she waked she said, as one who had routed and conquered a foe: ""What does he know of Paradise? Paradise is hers, for you, my beloved, are hers."

Evening shadows -were gathering when Death came again. The room was all in half lights; a mother's room still, but no longer that happy mother of little children. No little shoes upon the floor, no little stockings in the work basket; the low rocker where so many lullabies had been sung was gone; the little pile of school books and slates was put away; the lessons to be learned in mother's room- were not to be conned from books, or written upon slates. The man's face still looked down from the mantel, but the pictures around it were no longer of children, but of men and women. All was- changed, all the childish life was folded away, but the anxious ones as he passed them looked with eyes that stirred his memory, the fathomless, ages-old memory of Death, with a recollection of two other faces—the child and the woman, noither of whom would go with him in these buried years.

But now he had scarcely paused by her side when she said to him as one who greets and welcomes and half chides a friend who has tarried too long: "Why have you waited such a weary time to come for me? I have been watching and praying for youoh, so long! and you let me linger." And, as he gazed upon her out of the depths of the past he remembered her, although it was an old and worn face that was lifted so wistfully to his, white and lined, framed in snowy hair, tired and grief-stricken, but the voice was the same, though all its vibrant tones were stilled, that voice that always took on a softer measure at one name. So it was that when they found her, the men and woman who called her Mother, on her face was a strange, sweet peace, and a smile almost of triumph and much of youth; for it came when she placed her hand in that of Death, and said: "Yea, I will go with you to Paradise, for John is there." Where the Paint Went, ' "I thought you were working on Jay Krank's new house," said the housepainter's friend. "I was going to," replied the hoasepainter, "but I had a quarrel with him, and he said he'd put the mint oe himself." "And did he do it?" "•"•-» "l'es, that is where he put ffl&gt ol it,"—Philadelphia Press.