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LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY I'll |
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one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. The snowy lisse crape cap, made after the strait Quaker pattern, — the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid folds across her bosom, — the drab shawl and dress, — showed at once the community to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her Hair, partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high, placid forehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on earth, good-will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear, honest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women ? If any want to get up an inspiration under this head, we refer them to our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little rocking-chair. It had a turn for quacking and squeaking, — that chair had, — either from having taken cold in early life, or from some asthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement; but, as she gently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of subdued " creechy crawchy," that would have been intolerable in any other chair. But old Simeon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to him, and the children all avowed that they would n't miss of hearing mother's chair for anything in the world. For why ? for twenty years or more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly loving-kindness, had come from that chair; — headaches and heartaches innumerable had been cured there, — difficulties spiritual and temporal solved there, — all by one good, loving woman, God bless her!
" And so thee still thinks of going to Canada, Eliza ? " she said, as she was quietly looking over her peaches.
" Yes, ma'am," said Eliza, firmly. " I must go onward. I dare not stop." |
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