A DISAPPOINTED LOVER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8082, 24 September 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DISAPPOINTED LOVER.

A RUDE AWAKENING FROM A

DREAM OF ROMANCE. Years ago, in his native village, a wealthy German living in Chicago had a sweetheart to whom he was devotedly attached. Bat a tide of emigration landed him, when a young man, in America. A false friend brought him news that his Lena was engaged to another. In pique he married the handsome daughter of his employer. In due time he entered the firm, and later on had the business to -himself, making a fortune. For ten happy years everything prospered. His wife was a beauty, and half a dozen handsome children blessed their union. The only cloud that dimmed the father's horizon was the knowledge that Lena had never been false— that the report of her engagement was untrue; and in her father's house, unmarried and disconsolate, the sweetheart of his youth lived alone, However, a year or more ago, by a sudden and fatal illness, the wife was laid low, and our friend found himself a widower, with six children. Rich, respectable, a model citizen and personally a line-looking man, he was the object of many solicitous attentions. A dozen lovely women of his acquaintance looked at their autographs and thought how well his name would come in at the end of them. Bat as soon as he began to think of such things the image of Lena, his sweet, flaxen-haired Marguerite, came in, and, after a year's decorous mourning, he wrote to Germany and proposed that if she could forgive his readiness to be deceived in the past, and would bridge the twelve years of seeming indifference with her enduring love, they should renew the love of their youth. Back came the response. Lena the faithful, Lena the constant, would take to the sea per next boat. The widower withdrew to his library, day after day, and thought up the past, fanned each little recollection till it sprang into a flame, and when finally the Fulda was in the bay he started for the wharf. .

In the first communication with Lena after his good-looking wife's decease, he had dwelt much on the need his little children had of a mother's care. In succeeding epistles he let the children down one by one till their names were never heard. His first intention was to be walking on the wharf with Rachel, Leah, and Sarah on oce)side and Abe, Sol, and Isaac on the other, but When the day came he had arrived at another conclusion. He discarded a mourning suit, and in a jaunty rig of Saratoga blue and a light hat the widower paced with beating heart the confines of the wharf till a gangplank was run out. "After all," he said to himself, "there's nothing stirs the pulses like first lovethe same sweet passion of youch puts the ineffaceable brand on the human heart." He was about to clasp the early Marguerite with the dove-like eyes and the flaxen braids to his well-developed bosom.

Oar widower, as we have said, was handsome. No thread of grey had touched his raven curls. His eyes were undimmed, his complexion good, and, best of all, he had kept his waist. Buoyant with excitement, he ploughed into the ship. To the stewardess he said, "You have a Miss Strauss on board ?" % "Oh, yes; Fraulein Strauss has been ill, but she is dressed and up. Step this way." How he stepped ! There were serveral ladies on the sofas of the saloon. To one of these the stewardess led him. " Your friend has come, Miss Strauss," said t>he. A pudgy, doughy-faced, heavy-looking women, whose figure resembles an 8 more than any other, rose with a little squeal, of joy and cast herself upon his bosom. Lena had been a fairy. She was as broad as she was ■ long. Lena's flaxen hair had been bright and so luxuriant that her Marguerite braids were as thick as his wrist. Lena's stock of hairs hardly covered her protuberant temples, and was a dirty ash colour. Lena in '75 had been a fragile poem in petticoats ; Lena in '87 was a churn with a bonnet on. Who shall depict the cyclone of disappointment that swept over the widow's soul ? But the poor man was as brave and chivalrio a spirit as as ever went out to do battle in Palestine. He took her home, and, according to agreement, he married her.