“They are all three yonder in the field,” she said, and I knew they all slept in narrow houses there. This seemed to let loose the flood that held her feelings since the night before. “But for my husband,” she added, “I should go home ere this. He promised me to go as soon as the road was built; but then it costs so much, we keep on putting off from year to year. But I am longing so much to go! And when I heard that word Hillsdale last night, it filled me so full of home I could not contain myself. I hope you were not offended; but it seemed if some one would come and talk to me, my life would all be new again! It is so blank, so bleak, so cold and desolate, and I am heart hungry.” The tears came fast, and filled her large dark eyes and softened down her voice to tones of confidence. With eagerness she spoke of care, and work and trouble, sorrow and neglect; for, in his greed of gain, he had forgotten her as year by year rolled on, and both were growing older fast, and he not heeding it,—living on in his farm, reapers, sheep and crops; his heart was full of such, and had no room for her, no room for life.
“And you have been out here for fifteen years?” I said. “How many years in that long time have you really lived?”
“Lived!” said Grace—for this was Grace and Richard, as you must know ere this—“lived!” she replied;—“in work and trouble a long life indeed; in happiness, not one year yet. We have been waiting every year for that good time to come when we would find our happiness; we have not found it yet. The more he gets, the more he wants. Land means care, and taxes, and hired men, anxiety of crops, and overwork.
“I had rather live one year back by the old farm school-house, when I carried my dinner to my school, and had a loving group of faces looking into my eyes each noon, and loving me, than own all our acres and be here a dozen years.
“Life is not all in years to me! I have learned that lesson dearly, learned it living where we see so little of real life that memory is all the hope I have.”
“Starving amid plenty is cruelty,” I said. “Sell half and live while you may. You are wasting your whole lives in a fruitless hunt for happiness.”
I have since learned that my visit was a revolution and reform, and that they are living better.
And I thought, as I turned to the States and cast a long sad look at the lonely form in the doorway, and one at the bundle of robes beside me, who was driving me to the land of daily enjoyment, if their children had grown up and lived in such a place, where would have been their hope? In land and horses! Where their company? The company of flocks and cattle. The hope of sometime finding more congenial quarters. I turned in sadness, saying inwardly, “God pity the land-poor farmers, and pity their wives, and show them the lives they are leading!”
THE SCIENCE OF A NEW LIFE.