Opposite neighbours

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

Madge, as we have said, is much improved in appearance. She is now nearly seventeen. Her general health is good, and she seems to have outgrown her childish predisposition to brooding melancholy; for she is as bright and merry as the day is long. Letty, often calls her the sunshine of the house. She has an insatiable appetite for books of all sorts,—especially books of travel and adventure; and it is necessary to put some check upon the supply, lest she should injure herself by too close application. She has learned to draw, and shows great talent for the art. It is she who taught the two elder children to read and write, and hears their daily lessons; and she has lately occupied some hours of every day with a class of children from the neighbourhood, whose parents do not like to send them to the public school.

Letty at first feared that the work would be too much for her strength; but Madge seems so much to enjoy the occupation, and also the feeling that she is earning something, that she has not the heart to oppose her.

Years have passed since Madge has heard any thing from her father. They had learned from Gatty De Witt (now Mrs. Henry Woodman) that the establishment in Gay Street was broken up, and that the Van Horns had left the city and, it was supposed, had gone South; but they could hear no tidings of Joseph.

And here our story ends. We have seen Joseph and Agnes Emerson begin their married life under much the same circumstances as John and Letty Caswell. If there was any difference, the first couple had the advantage; for Joseph was earning higher wages than John, and he had better natural abilities. But there was from the first a radical difference between the two families.

John and Letty made the resolution, at the outset, never to run in debt if debt could possibly be avoided. Their house was, as far as practicable, paid for before they went into it; their furniture, when it was purchased. If they had no money to buy what they wanted, they went without. Letty did her own work, and knew, from previous training, how to turn every scrap and crumb to advantage. She did not think it beneath her to save odds and ends of grease and make her own soap, or to weed her own beds of cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes, thereby saving many a shilling and sixpence which would otherwise have gone to the market-man and the pedlar.

Agnes had little knowledge of household work. Her mother had always taken all such matters into her own hands, in order, as she said, that her daughter might grow up a lady and not a drudge. Agnes thought it mean and stingy to save, and a derogation of her dignity to do the work of her own household.

John and Letty were always thinking what each could do to make the other happy and to lighten necessary toil. Joseph and Agnes were each thinking what the other ought to do, and each trying to throw upon the other the responsibility and the burden. If they fancied any thing, they bought it, and never troubled themselves about pay-day till the bill was actually presented,—when it was always found to be larger than any one supposed. They felt it incumbent on them to maintain as much show in dress and furniture as persons who had twice their income.

And Joseph was always delighted when people noticed the elegance of his wife's dress; but at the same time, she was never fit to be seen while about the house. Letty's nice dresses lasted three times as long as her cousin's, because she did not wear them to work about the stove or in the garden; while at the same time she always looked like a lady, whatever she might be doing. She cared nothing for being thought fashionable, and was not ashamed to wear the same simple straw bonnet two summers running; while the eight or ten dollars saved in this way was much more satisfactorily invested.

But there was a still greater difference,—one which lay at the bottom of all the others. John and Letty Caswell set up their household in the fear and love of God. They acknowledged him in all their ways, and besought him to direct their paths. They had given themselves to God, and he, in return, had drawn nigh to them, according to his covenant. True, they had known sorrow; but that affliction had worked in them comfort and peace, because they looked not at the things which were seen, but at those which were unseen. They had lived for God and for eternity, feeling that they had already entered upon that eternal life which the Son has secured for them that love him; and their path was as the path of the just,—a shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.

To Joseph, Sunday was distinguished as a day when he did not have to go to the shop, and might lie abed in the morning as late as he liked; when he had a better dinner than ordinary, and time to read the papers, look over accounts and smoke half a dozen extra pipes. He seldom went to church, because he said he could not afford to buy or rent a pew,—though the cost of the concert and theatre tickets in which he indulged would have more than defrayed it twenty times over. To Agnes it was a day for extra cooking; for sitting behind the blinds and watching the passers-by; for reading any stuff she could lay her hands on, and for an extra long afternoon nap. Once in a great while she went to church when she had any thing new in the way of dress to display, and came home prepared to give a full and particular account of every bonnet, dress and shawl within reach of her eyes. She had no time, she said, to go to church Sundays and weekdays, as Letty did:—she must stay at home and attend to her family. God was not in all her thoughts; and, if she did remember him, it was with an uneasy feeling, as of some one who was spying out her shortcomings, and might one day take her to task for them, unless he was propitiated in time by a better service. When her first child was born, she was much more serious for a while, and Letty began to have great hopes of her; but then the Van Horns came in with their influence, and her last state was worse than the first. Agnes became wholly occupied with the things of this world; in their poorest and most unsatisfactory forms. She withdrew herself from all sacred influences, and seemed actually to forget that there is a God.