Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The picture of "Little Draxy" grew strangely distinct in his mind; and his heart yearned towards her with a yearning akin to that which years before he had felt over the little silent form of the daughter whose eyes had never looked into his. There was no trouble with the town in regard to the land.
Then he jumped down, 'n' sez he, 'I'll tell ye what that sermon's like: it's jest like one great rainbow all round ye, and before 'n' behind 'n' everywheres, 'n' the end on't reaches way to the Throne; it jest dazzles my eyes, that's what it does." This sermon had concluded with the following hymn, which Draxy had written when Reuby was only a few weeks old:
"She was a smilin' just's you see her now," said Hannah, "'n' I couldn't ha' touched her to move her more'n I could ha' touched an angel." There are griefs, as well as joys, to which words offer insult. Draxy was dead!
She walked on the beach; she sat on the rocks; she learned to swim in one lesson, and swam so far out that her uncle dared not follow, and called to her in imploring terror to return. Her beauty grew more and more radiant every day. This the sea gave to her body. But there was a far subtler new life than the physical, a far finer new birth than the birth of beauty, which came to Draxy here.
Then week followed after week, and soon all things seemed as they had seemed before. But Draxy never died to her people. Her hymns are still sung in the little lonely church; her gospel still lives in the very air of those quiet hills, and the people smile through their tears as they teach her name to little children. Whose Wife Was She?
George Thayer, with the quick instinct of a stage-driver, was the first to see that she was a stranger. "Where d'ye wish to go, ma'am?" said he, stepping towards her. "Thank you," said Draxy, "I expected some one to meet me," and she looked uneasy; but reassured by the pleasant face, she went on: "the minister from Clairvend village was to meet me here."
He had not yet glanced at Draxy, but at her "Oh, what shall I do!" he turned back; Draxy's face held him spellbound, as it had held many a man before. He stepped near her, and taking the ticket from her hand, turned it over and over irresolutely. "I wish I could stop there, Miss," he said. "Is it any one who is sick?" for Draxy's evident distress suggested but one explanation.
"I never thought they were like that. Do they play Shakespeare?" "I don't know, I'm sure," said the conductor, puzzled enough: "but I dare say they do." "Then I'm glad I never went to the theatre," thought Draxy, as she settled herself in her new seat. For a few moments she could not banish her disturbed and unhappy feeling.
When Reuben said, "Couldn't ye arrange it so's always to eat your Sunday dinner with us, Draxy?" she replied: "Sometimes Sunday dinner; sometimes Thursday; sometimes Saturday, father dear. If we make it a fixed day, we shall not like it half so well; any of us. We'll come often enough, you may be sure." And of this, too, Reuben soon saw the wisdom.
Then she listened dreamily to the notes of the slow-tolling bell; when it ceased she closed her eyes, and her thoughts ran back, far back to the days when she was "little Draxy" and Elder Kinney was only her pastor. Slowly she lived her life since then over again, its joy and its sorrow alike softened in her tender, brooding thoughts.
Word Of The Day