Samantha at the Worlds Fair | Page 5

one of the children had to stay to home. And Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the World.
She sold her jewels of Ambition and Happiness, and gin him the avails of them.
She staid to home with the old folks--kinder peevish and fretful, Krit said they wuz, too--and let him go a-sailin' out on the broad ocean of life; she had trimmed her own sails in such hope, but had to curb 'em in now and lower the topmast.
You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of Duty and Meekness for a figger-head, instead of the glowin' face of Proud Endeavor.
[Illustration: Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the World.]
But them lamps give a dretful meller, soft light, when they are well mounted up, and firm sot.
The light on 'em hain't to be compared to any other light on sea or on shore. It wrops 'em round so serene and glowin' that walks in it. It rests on their mild forwards in a sort of a halo that shines off on the hard things of this life and makes 'em endurable, takes the edge kinder off of the hardest, keenest sufferin's, and goes before 'em throwin' a light over the deep waters that must be passed, and sort o' melts in and loses itself in the ineffible radiance that streams out from acrost the other side.
It is a curious light and a beautiful one. Isabelle jest journeyed in its full radiance.
Wall, Isabelle would do what she sot out to do, you could see that by her face. Krit had brought her photograph with him--he thought his eyes of her--and I liked her looks first rate.
It wuz a beautiful face, with more than beauty in it too. It wuz inteligent and serene, with the serenity of the sweet soul within. And it had a look deep down in the eyes, a sort of a shadow that is got by passin' through the Valley of Sorrow.
I hearn afterwards what that look meant.
Isabelle had been engaged to a smart, well-meanin' chap, Tom Freeman by name, not over and above rich, and one that had his own duties to attend to. Two helpless aged ones, and two little nieces to took care on, and nobody but himself to earn the money to do it with.
The little nieces' Pa had gone to California after his wife's death--and hadn't been hearn from sence. The little children had been left with their grandparents and Uncle Tom to stay till their Pa got back. And as he didn't git back, of course they kept on a-stayin', and had to be took care on. They wuz bright little creeters, and the very apples of their eyes. But they cost money, and they cost love, and Tom had to give it, for they lost what little property they had about this time--and the feeble Grandma couldn't do much, and the Grandpa died not long after the eppisode I am about to relate.
So it all devolved onto Tom. And Tom riz up to his duties nobly, though it wuz with a sad heart, as wuz spozed, for Isabelle, when she see what had come onto him to do, wouldn't hold him to his engagement--she insisted on his bein' free.
I spoze she thought she wouldn't burden him with two more helpless ones, and then mebby she thought the two spans wouldn't mate very well. And most probable they would have been a pretty cross match. (I mean, that is, a sort of a melancholy, down-sperited yoke, and if anybody laughs at it, I would wish 'em to laugh in a sort of a mournful way.)
Wall, Tom Freeman, after Isabelle sot him free, bein' partly mad and partly heart-broken, as is the way of men who are deep in love, and want their way, but anyway wantin' to keep out of the sight of the one who, if he couldn't have her for his own, he wanted to forgit--he packed up bag and baggage and went West.
Isabelle wouldn't correspond with him, so she told him in that last hour--still and calm on the outside, and her heart a-bleedin' on the inside, I dare presoom to say; no, she wanted him to feel free.
What creeters, what creeters wimmen be for makin' martyrs of themselves, and burnt sacrifices--sometimes I most think they enjoy it, and then agin I don't know!
But Isabelle acted from a sense of duty, for she jest worshipped the ground Tom Freeman walked on, so everybody knew, and so she bid adieu to Tom and Happiness, and lived on.
Wall, one of 'em must stay