 | Pictures of country life |  |
MRS. WALDEN'S CONFIDANT.
Fourth of July! The beating of a drum and the screaming
of a fife were heard in the distance—some few thin clouds
moved about the sky, as if to keep the light from dazzling—
the air was soft and refreshing, not over warm, just sufficiently
in motion so stir the young thrifty corn, and bring the scent
from the tomato and potato vines—the orchards looked well,
and the harvests generally had fulfilled a good promise. The
people all through the neighborhood were glad, and thought
their village was about as thriving a village as was to be found
in that part of the country—and so they well might think;
the best farms commanded fifty dollars per acre—the soil was
productive, and there was abundance of wood, water and
stone; fine clay for making bricks; besides other advantages
which made the farmers about naturally a little proud—and
this pride extended from their own possessions to the property
of their neighbors, and took in the fifty lots and thirty dwellings,
the meeting-house, two grocery stores and tavern, which were
the pride of the Clovernook neighborhood. There was talk of a
seminary, and some prospect of the erection of half a dozen new
dwellings, besides the certain addition of a third story to the
and it was whispered the device was to be an eagle soaring
towards the sun, with the motto beneath, “upward and onward.”
The commission had been intrusted to the wagon-maker,
whose ability for the task nobody doubted. There was
some regret that the sign could not have been completed and
swinging before the “North American Hotel” on the glorious
Fourth, but the regret was not enough to mar the general joyousness,
and as for the landlord, the excellent Peter Holt, he
had a secret project of his own that the completion of the
third story, and the putting forth of the new sign, should give
eclat to the general training in the fall. Therefore he compressed
his lips and put his face under a dubious cloud when
inquired of concerning the sign, saying simply, “we shall see
what we shall see.”
The people about the neighborhood had been astir before
the cock on the day. I write of, for a general celebration was to
be held in the village, and in addition to the usual ceremonies,
two of the oldest men in the neighborhood—real Revolutionary
soldiers; were to head the procession, which was to form at the
North American Hotel precisely at ten o'clock, who were to
bear between them the American flag; and on each side of
them little girls were to walk with baskets of flowers, garlands
for the conquering heroes.
The village, which stood on a rising ground, could be seen
two or three miles away, from positions where no woodland
intervened, and now, even higher than the steeple of the church,
shone the bright colors at the top of the “liberty pole.”
Not more than a mile away, and plainly in view, not only
of the steeple and the liberty pole, but also of the people gathering
family of Timothy Walden, consisting in all of husband and
wife, Matilda—a young woman of eighteen—and two boys, of
fourteen and sixteen years.
They had been early astir in common with their neighbors,
but not joyously astir—they were not people who joined in
celebrations—why, nobody knew; they did not know themselves—but
they honestly believed themselves too poor to be
justified in spending so much time and money.
There had been some hope on the part of the young people,
up to the last moment, that they might be permitted to join in
the festivities of the occasion. Even to drive the geese from
the common, and assist in the removal of hoop-poles and
staves preparatory to the grand march, would have been esteemed
a privilege by the boys, and to be allowed the most
obscure position where she might see the procession and the
green arbor over the dinner-table, would have made holiday
enough to Matilda, and she would have been quite willing
to forego the white dress and pink ribbons which the young
ladies generally had.
When the breakfast was concluded, Mr. Walden went out
to the harvest-field as usual, and apparently did not once think
of a suspension of labors. Sullenly the two boys followed,
half wishing it might rain and spoil all the fun for other people,
for nothing so embitters the heart as the constant denial
of innocent pleasures. And here let me say that Mr. Walden
was the owner of sixty acres of as good land as was to be
found in the neighborhood, besides all necessary horses, carts,
and implements of labor generally. His fences were in repair,
and a thrifty orchard and commodious barn had rewarded his
a house, for it was unplastered, unpainted, and altogether unfurnished
except the actual necessities about the kitchen and
sleeping-rooms. The sun streamed across the bare floors
through the uncurtained windows, and great piles of bedding
and heaps of rags and wool filled the empty rooms—there were
no flowers about the yard, and the garden in the rear was
quite overgrown with weeds.
A patient, hard-working woman was Mrs. Walden—but she
was not hopeful any more—she said she was tired of hoping.
She had tried long and hard to get a little beforehand in
the world, and what had it amounted to? Thoughts of
this sort were busy in her mind on the beautiful Fourth of
July aforementioned. It had never been her habit to indulge
in hard thoughts, but some how that day she could not help it
—the house had never looked so naked and comfortless; she had
never seen so little prospect of ever having anything, and in her
absence of mind she let fall the coffee-pot and broke it in pieces
as she cleared the table; true, it had leaked a long time, but
then it was better than none—dear me, what would become of
them! She had done her part—nobody could say she had
not—who then was to blame? if it was not Timothy she did
not know who was. This suspicion once allowed to come into
her mind, made room for many accusations, and she put together
all the Fourth of Julys and other holidays she had
spent at home working hard, and no thanks from nobody,
which meant from Timothy. They had never had a Christmas
dinner nor a New-Year's dinner so long as they had kept
house—and who was to blame?—why somebody must be; but
no matter for that, she must try to do her duty at any rate—so
to look towards the field, she saw the two boys turning
somersets in the shadow of a tree, for they felt it to be their
right to be idle on the Fourth of July, and for the moment she
felt as if she was all the one that did anything to any profit, and
this the more, perhaps, that as she looked she saw Timothy
making his way to the fence, where young Dr. Meredith, who
was just come home from prosecuting his professional studies
in a distant city, was waiting to shake hands.
“Dr. Meredith, indeed!” exclaimed the unamiable woman, “a
great doctor I guess he is.” And if her supposition that it was
impossible for John Meredith to be a doctor could have been
analyzed, it would have been found to consist chiefly of the facts
that she had known John Meredith when he had but two
shirts, she had known the colors of all his boyhood coats, and
how hard his mother worked and how much she denied herself
for the sake of educating him; and more than this, she knew
his mother before him, and all her family. That she had ever
known John to be other than a good and obedient boy she
would not say—but what of that?—there he was, dressed finely
and going to pass the day in idleness—perhaps he would read
the “Declaration” and be called “doctor” by some silly young
girls at any rate.
Then her thoughts naturally reverted to her own daughter,
and she became aware that her wheel was still, which added
to her irritation, and in no mild terms she enjoined her to go
forward with her work.
Still, ever and again there was silence in the room where
Matty should have been spinning—how could she keep her eyes
from the public road filled with wagons and carriages, and
happy faces and dressed gaily, going to the Fourth of July.
Among the rest there is one who looks earnestly towards her
and bows very low, and close against the pane she presses her face
before she sees it is Dr. Meredith; but her sweetest smile and
a double recognition are given, for though she has played
“hide and seek” with him many a time—aye, and even beaten
him in the spelling class at school, she is pleased to see that
he has come home, and never once thinks it is not possible for
him to be a doctor. “Dear me!” says Mrs. Walden as the
wheel stops again, “well, I must work all the harder for the
idleness of the rest, I suppose,” and with a shining tin pan in
her hand she makes her way to the garden. She don't know
what she will find, she don't suppose she will find anything,
and sure enough she does not; the cucumber-vines are yellow,
and seem to be dying; there is not a cucumber to be found
larger than her little finger, and as for the tomatoes, they might
just as well never have been planted; there are a few
onions run up to seed among the weeds; the cabbages are not
heading at all, and she can't tell where the beet bed was made.
So, through nettles and burs she makes her way out again,
stopping for a moment at the currant-bushes, as a forlorn hope
—she finds a few poor little berries, but if she picks them now
there won't be any left, so she leaves them for a greater emergency,
and with an empty basin returns to the house. The
flies are buzzing thick along the ceiling, and one or two old
hens are picking the crumbs from off the floor—they ought to
have plenty, but they have not—there are not more than half
a dozen chickens in all, about the farm; the hens don't do
well—she don't know why; possibly there is some fruit in the
traipse there after it, if there is; there is part of an old ham
left, she will cook some of that for dinner, and when that is
gone she don't know what they will do. She is mending the
fire when Timothy comes to the well for water, and seeing
pieces of the broken coffee-pot says:
“How did this happen, Sally?”
“I let it fall,” she answers, “and I don't care if I did.”
“Why, Sally, what put you in such a humor? I am sorry
the coffee-pot is broken, but I did not mean to blame you;” and
he adds by way of lessening the disaster, “see here, I have
been doing mischief, too,” and he exhibits a hole in his shirt
sleeve which he had caught in a brier and torn.
Sally does not speak, for she secretly believes that her husband
does blame her, perhaps from the fact that she is blaming him.
“I am afraid our Fourth of July friends will get wet,” says
Timothy, looking up at the sky, and making a last effort to
elicit some notice from Sally before he goes back to the field.
But for the first time in her life she refuses to speak, and with
tears brimming up in her eyes, goes to the closet and takes from
the shelf a bundle of old patched and darned shirts, and sitting
down, adds patches to patches, and darns to darns—there are a
dozen good new ones on the shelf, to be sure, but if they were
worn out they would not be new—so with the tears falling fast,
she works on. There is a rap on the open door, and looking
up she sees Mrs. Eliza Bates—a neighbor whom she has known
well ever since her marriage, and before, in fact. Indeed, they
were quite confidants at one time. But their intimacy has not
been very great for a long time—Mrs. Walden has never felt
that it was right to have any confidant but her husband—and
much, and Mrs. Walden knows it. She has had, too, great
worldly prosperity, and this has cooled the friendship formerly
existing between them, perhaps. But sympathy is sweet, and
when Mrs. Bates says in tones of real kindness, “Why, my dear
Sally, what can be the matter with you?” at the same time
putting her arm kindly about her neck, she answered, crying
all the time, “I am glad you have come, Eliza, for I felt lonesome
and bad, sitting here alone.”
“I knew I should find you at home, and so while all our folks
were gone to the Fourth of July, I thought I would come and
see you, though you don't never come to see me.”
“How good you are,” replies Mrs. Walden. “I suppose
everybody knows they can find me at home of holidays, by this
time,” and she hides her eyes in her apron.
Mrs. Bates holds her hand saying, “really, Sally, it's too
bad;” after which she makes moan without the use of words,
for a few minutes.
“Don't, Sally, don't cry,” she says, at length, “but tell me
all about it; a body must have some confidant—now, I tell my
daughter Kate all my troubles—but some mothers don't say to
their children all they feel.” And in thus drawing out her
friend, Mrs. Bates was actuated by the kindest feelings.
“I suppose we all have our troubles,” sobbed Sally Walden,
for Mrs. Bates had spoken of hers, and therefore she could
admit her private griefs more freely, and Mrs. Bates rejoined
quickly, “to be sure, Sally, I know I have mine. Now, if you
had seen what a fuss there was at our house this morning about
going to the Fourth of July, you would think you were not the
only person in the world that need cry; I got so worried out
Sally, my life is nearly tired out of me in one way and another.
Now Peter Bates is just the hardest man in the world to get
along with, and if I did not manage and twist and economize
every way, I could not get along; but I am determined that
my family shan't be a whit behind anybody else.” And here
she went on to explain how she had taken her own dresses and
made them over for Kate; how she had managed to make old
things about the house look almost as well as new, and when at
length she stopped to take breath, Mrs. Walden could not help
giving some of her own grievances utterance; she did not want
to say anything against Timothy, she did not intend it, but
she did. “It's too bad,” said Eliza Bates, “and though
Timothy Walden is as good a man as ever was, and I believe
means to do what is right, he don't do his part by you, and I
don't know as it's any more harm to say it than think it, and I
have thought it a good while, and I am not the only one.
Everybody knows,” she continued, “that you never spend
money—that you are always at home and always at work, and
can't help saying how does it happen that the house is never
finished, and that Matty is not dressed as fashionably as other
girls? Somebody must be at fault, and every one knows it is
not you.”
Now Mrs. Bates had thought many a time, and said it, too,
that Sally Walden was more to blame than her husband—that
she seemed to have no ambition and no pride since her marriage,
but suffered all things to go at loose ends. But now that she
sat beside her, and saw her thin cheek and old faded dress, and
saw, too, the bundle of coarse patched shirts she was mending,
her heart was softened towards her and hardened proportionably
as is human nature, under the circumstances, she could not
forbear speaking more than she really thought, or more than at
another time she would have thought. She even proposed, in
the heat of her zeal for her friend, “to give Timothy a talking
to.”
Many things about her own private affairs she put into the
keeping of her friend, Sally Walden, such as that Peter Bates
did not always give her money for the asking—that herself did
a good deal of the managing that he had credit for, and that her
daughter Kate would not now be, as she was, one of the very
leaders of society, but for her special exertion. And here she
whispered very confidentially that Dr. Meredith had been two
or three times to see Kate, and that she had reason to believe
it would be a match. When Mrs. Walden arose to make some
preparation about dinner, “Don't, dear Sally,” said the confidant,
“I can eat anything that you can, so don't give yourself
any trouble.”
“I could not give you anything if I were disposed,” answered
Mrs. Walden; “there is nothing but ham and potatoes about
the house.”
“No matter, I had rather talk than eat,” replied the confidant;
and to ham and potatoes the neighbors sat down. Matty came
from her spinning, and the boys from the field, but Mr. Walden
did not come in to eat, he could not take time, as he was working
hard to get some grain in the barn before it should rain.
The neighbors had not noticed till then how cloudy it was, and
Mrs. Bates cut her visit short as soon as the meal was concluded,
assuring Sally, by way of parting consolation, that she
would come again soon, and that she would not fail to give
Mrs. Walden, for vexation with herself was struggling with
gratitude to her confidant, and the annoyance was not lessened,
when Mrs. Bates said, pointing to the worn-out shirts, “I'll
declare, I would not try to mend such things, you lose more
time than you gain, and if Timothy Walden would not buy
better shirts, he might go without any for all of me.”
Mrs. Walden did not say, “Timothy has a dozen better
shirts,” but she thought it, for her heart was beginning to turn
to its true allegiance. And the two boys returned back to the
field, and Matty to her spinning work, and Mrs. Walden put
away the dinner things with a heavy heart, and sat down alone,
trying in vain to reconcile herself to herself—she could not do
that, nor see a clear way before her; a feeling of bitterness
and blindness, of inability and impossibility, kept her hands
idle and drew her face into a frown. She did not see as she
could do anything, and she did not know as she would if she
could.
As she sat so, she failed to see or hear the flies that came
humming thick and black along the ceiling, and the shadows
that deepened and deepened where the sunshine had been; she
did not see the leaves turning their grey linings out, nor the
clouds of dust that blew up along the road; the tempest in her
heart did not allow her to see the one along the sky. Suddenly
a bright flash opened, and at the same time blinded her eyes,
and the crash that came after it deafened her ears, and at the
same moment made them sensible of voices, reproachful voices,
that she had never heard so distinctly before. Quick she hurried
to the door, and strained her eyes towards the meadow, that was
divided from her now by the blackness of the storm; a strong
branches breaking, and the frightened cattle lowing as they ran
hither and thither; the rain dashed heavily on roof and grass
and dry dust; and the eave-ducts ran over, and the wind as it
came, bent in the very walls of the house. Matty left her spinning
and clung to her mother as the lightning flashed again
and again, and the thunder rolled as though breaking its way
along the heavens. Awe-struck and trembling stood the
mother, her eyes still bent on the meadow.
“Oh, they are coming,” cried Matty, “I am so glad;” but
scarcely had she spoken the words when it was discovered that
the children came alone; to the frantic inquiries, for they came
crying as they ran, they replied that a tree under which they
had taken shelter was struck, and that their father was killed.
“Heaven have mercy on us!” cried Mrs. Walden, her face
growing white, and her limbs sinking beneath her, and her
daughter and sons answered by sobs and cries.
“What is the matter, my good friends?” said a voice, kindly
and earnestly, and a young man, that Matilda recognized as
Dr. Meredith, stood in their midst. The awful calamity was
explained, and the young man hastened to call the assistance
of another neighbor, who was returning like himself from the
celebration, and with a brief word of comfort and hope hurried
to the field, accompanied by the oldest son.
Ages seemed to pass in the minutes till their return, and
when they came, the pain and weight of ages seemed to crush
down the hearts of the mother and her children.
Dead—they were bearing him home dead!
“Let me die, too,” exclaimed the almost distracted wife,
throwing herself on his bosom; but when the doctor said there
struggle between hope and despair became almost frenzy!
never till now had she known how good Timothy was, and how
much she loved him. With almost superhuman faith and
energy the young doctor strove to subdue the last enemy, for
he was not yet quite triumphant. “Oh! if he were only well—
if he could only speak to me once more, and say I was forgiven,”
cried the poor wife, as she rocked herself to and fro and moaned
for her own wicked accusations, as she now thought them,
almost as much as for the lost; for there is no thought so bitter
as the memory of a wrong to the dead. In her heart she
accused herself of being his murderer; it was as if heaven had
taken him away to show her how good he was. One who went
to see how the tree was divided by the lightning, returned
carrying a pitcher of blackberries, seeing which the youngest
boy began to cry all the more; “he was picking them for you,
mother,” he said, “it was the last thing he did.” Mrs. Walden
could not speak; everything seemed to show her that herself
was more and more to blame. Suddenly there was a cry of
joy—the dead man was alive! No enemy, even death itself,
it seemed, could stand before the love that fought him back.
Words would fail to describe the joy of that household when
the husband and father was able to sit up and speak.
The storm swept by—the breeze came fresh and cool from
the meadow—the clouds broke to pieces and scattered from
the heavens, and the sun came out broad and bright for the
setting. Dr. Meredith's reputation was established, for all the
people said “If he can bring Timothy Walden to life, what is
there he can't do?” and so came one and another for his medical
advice and assistance. Perhaps, the faith of his patients
attended him.
As may be supposed, Mrs. Walden found it the easiest and
most natural thing in the world to say, “Dr. Meredith”—indeed,
she quite forgot whether the coat he used to wear was
black or brown, and as for the two shirts, she would not be
positive but that he had had three; and she was quite sure she
had seen him at work in his mother's garden a thousand times
when other boys were playing. There was new light come
into her world, and as the work and bustle of her life stood
still while she waited at Timothy's sick bed, she found time
to see how many blessings she had, and how many she had
neglected.
She made no complaint of the time she was losing—on the
contrary, she had never talked so cheerfully and hopefully in
her life, and it was perhaps as much owing to her good nursing,
as to Dr. Meredith, that Timothy was so soon able to be
about his work again.
“Now be careful, Timothy, and don't try to do much,” said
Mrs. Walden, as after a fortnight's illness he went forth from
the house. He looked up in astonishment—came back a step
or two—asked her what she said—perhaps for the pleasure of
hearing it over, and when in substance it was repeated, he said
he felt stronger and could walk better than he supposed he
could. So grateful and so loving was the look he bestowed on
her that Sally could not help saying, “Eliza Bates give him a
piece of her mind, indeed—she had better attend her own
affairs, and I will tell her so if she comes here meddling.”
And as she went from room to room to see what could be done
with their contents, she kept communing with herself something
were sewed, and here are heaps and heaps of bed clothing—
enough to last all my life, and Matty, poor girl, has been spinning
all the summer to make more. I'll take the yarn I proposed
to have made into coverlids, and have it colored and
woven into carpets—I will see if I can't have carpets as well as
Eliza Bates, and though we have not money to buy new furniture
just now, we can make what we have appear better. So
she worked on and on, and at the bottom of all her work was
the thought that she would show Mrs. Bates that she had the
best husband in the world.
Matty clapped her hands in glee when her mother told her
she had concluded to make carpets and not coverlids of the wool
she was spinning. “Oh, it will look so much better,” she said,
“when anybody comes,” but she thought when Dr. Meredith
comes. It was easy work spinning after that, and very soon
the wool was made into yarn, and sent away to be colored and
woven. Then the rags which had cumbered the house so long
were cut and sewed and sent to the weaver's. Barrels and
boxes were removed to the barn, and some curtains for the windows
were made of chintz, and Matty and her mother thought
they would look almost as well as bought curtains, when they
were washed and ironed smoothly. At any rate, they were
better than Mrs. Bates'—both were sure of that. And all the
while the work was going forward, there was cheerfulness in
the house that had never been there before.
They had so much more time than formerly, they could not
understand how it was, for though they were getting so much
done they were not all the time working—for now and then they
stopped to plan and sometimes to admire what was completed,
not taken time to speak in all the day. “If Mrs. Bates can
make dresses for Kate out of hers, perhaps I can make some
for you out of mine,” said Mrs. Walden to Matty, one day,
“there is my wedding dress, and my old black silk and my
white dress, and one or two ginghams and calicoes, I believe,
in the old chest up stairs, and I shall never wear them again.”
The chest was accordingly opened and the dresses examined—
the white one was bleached, and with the addition of a yard or
two of new cloth made Matty the prettiest dress she had ever
worn—the silk, which had been an ample pattern in its time,
proved all sufficient; the calicoes were made to assume new
fashions, and Matty was dressed like other girls.
“There, Sally, you have been doing so much lately you deserve
some pay for it,” said Timothy, as he threw a neat parcel
into the lap of his wife one evening. It was a new dress, the
first one she had had for a long time, and when she laid it in
the closet she stopped to wipe her eyes, and having done so,
she removed the old coarse shirts—they were just fit to wash
windows with, she said, and she guessed her husband could
afford to wear as good a shirt as Mr. Bates.
“No, Sally,” said Mr. Walden, “I must wear the old ones a
little while longer till we get the doctor's bill paid.” And he
untied his purse and began counting the money he had already
saved for the purpose mentioned.
“If it were not for that debt,” said Matty, archly, “we
might have got the house plastered, might we not, father?”
She blushed and lowered her voice, for the doctor was already
at the door.
“We were just talking of you,” said Mr. Walden, “and
you for your services to me?”
“Not a cent,” said Dr. Meredith, “my little service was
nothing compared to the great service you have done me, for
it was through you that I obtained the confidence of all the
village people.”
“What a nice man he is,” whispered Mrs. Walden to her
husband, when the young people had walked apart; and she
added, “if he is in love with Katy Bates I don't see what he
comes here for.”
Mr. Walden smiled, and said he would see about the plastering
the next day.
“Now, boys,” he continued, “if you are a mind to help, I'll
pay you the same that I do my other hands.” Of course they
were delighted, and when the house was plastered, half the
money had still been saved, for to give it to the children seemed
the same thing.
“Is it not beautiful!” exclaimed Matty, when the walls were
finished and the curtains hung up and the carpets laid down—
“why I never saw such a change with so little money.”
“I wonder if Mrs. Bates' house looks any better?” replied
Mrs. Walden, as she walked from one room to the other, not
knowing which to admire most.
“Mother and Matty have made the house so nice,” said the
boys, “we must see if we can't improve the yard a little.” So
they trimmed up the rose-bushes and swept off the grass and
white-washed the fence, and the more they did the more they
found they were capable of doing, and that a little will was
better than a good deal of money. They even began to believe
they could, the next year, make as good a garden as anybody.
“To be sure you can,” said their mother; “but, somehow or
other we get along with the table much better than we used
to”—
But the “somehow or other” was that she herself made the
most of what she had; and when she had flour and lard, and
sugar and fruit, it was easy to make short-cakes and pies. She
had, too, butter and milk, and eggs—not so many as she would
like—another year she must try to raise more poultry—she did
not complain, however—the potatoes were excellent—the apples
had never been finer, and she could exchange her extra butter
for such articles at the grocery as they had not at home; and
she always finished her congratulations by saying, while they
were all alive and well they must not complain, for she never
forgot the terrible day that Timothy was brought home dead.
Neither could she quite forgive Mrs. Bates, she often said she
was sure she wished her well, and that she would not lay a
straw in her way. Three months were gone since Mrs. Bates
had made the proposal of giving Timothy a piece of her mind,
and still that malicious work had not been performed.
“Suppose we give her an opportunity by inviting her here to
supper,” said Mr. Walden.
Matty warmly seconded the plan, and a day was at once
fixed. Such a busy time there had never been seen at Mrs.
Walden's as the supper induced. The house was set in complete
order—the nicest coverlids were spread on the beds, and
the frilled pillow-cases brought from the closets—a half dozen
new chairs were bought—the silver was polished, and the
china set in the nicest order. Mr. Walden was to wear his new
clothes, and Mrs. Walden the new dress; the boys were to
make special preparation, and Matty was to wear her white dress.
Cakes were made, and custards, and a variety of delicacies
I need not enumerate prepared for Katy Bates and her mother,
in the most excellent style; and as a crowning triumph, Dr.
Meredith was invited.
“It is all admirable,” he said, when he was told why the
supper was made, for since the Fourth of July he had been
very intimate at Mrs. Walden's, “but I have an amendment to
suggest, which is, that my mother and the parson shall be invited.”
I need scarcely say that Mrs. Bates, notwithstanding the
charming occasion offered her, never gave Timothy a piece of
her mind. Training day saw the completion of the third story
of the North American Hotel, and brighter even than the new
sign, shone, upon that occasion, the faces of Dr. Meredith and
his bride.
| Pictures of country life | |