DESIRE. 
BY A. A. HOPKINS. 
Pass me tot by, O goodly Kilts! 
For I am poor, and much 1 crave; 
My life Is put to weary shifts, 
My soul to being bides a slave. 
From out my poverty I reach 
With longing arm* toward riches rare, 
And through my agony of speech 
There wells the burden of u prayer! 
Pax* me not by, O breezes sweet 1 
Blow gently on my fevered cheeks 1 
Some echo of soft words repeat 
That some one, absent, loving, speaks 1 
For all my heart Is touched to puin 
By sounds discordant, wailinR shrill; 
Then breezes sweet, bring kindly bane, 
And all the air with music thrill! 
Pa** me not by, O loving hand*! 
But touch me with your healing kind 
For I aw worn with cruel iianda, 
And little tondernen* I And. 
I faint beside the weary way, 
With cutting wounds am Rmltten sore, 
And reaching blindly out I pray 
For blessings you have borne before 1 
Pas* me not by, all gen’rou* things! 
But of your lutgess grunt me part I 
Desire goes out on tireless wings 
To eiaitn whatever good thou art. 
My selfish prayer well* upalway,— 
•‘Give, give, O Nature! Give. O Earth!” 
And through the waiting, day by day, 
1 cling to hope of glorious worth ! 
1 ° 
'turns for llwrulists. 
MISS MEEEDITH, GOVERNESS. 
BY BERTHA SIBLEY SCRANTOM. 
CHAPTER I. 
“ N’importe ! Cannot .somebody come to 
my rescue ? Or, let us drop the subject at 
once—for 1 shall go !” 
“ But," began the chorus, this time led off 
by Miss Meredith— the “ Miss ” of the fam¬ 
ily by the indisputable right of seniority— 
"absurdI And papa only dead a year, 
Geraldine 1" 
“Yes,” from the second “miss” on the 
family record of marriageable daughters, 
" and to think of how people will talk !” 
“My daughter,” from Meredith mere, 
“you have nothing better than that second¬ 
hand bombazine, and you cannot go.” 
“ Alone, too,” echoed the chorus again, in 
scorn bil soprano. 
“Well, and why not alone?" the “ sub¬ 
ject” incorrigible made answer liow. “My 
nursery maid and I parted company several 
years since., and no woman with ft strong 
constitution and twenty years experience in 
omnibus and car riding, if she confine her 
ambition to a reasonable amount of bundles, 
has any moral right to claim an escort in 
America.” 
“ Well, mamma,”—and Miss Meredith 
arose in her stately way,—“as far as my 
opinion goes, the girl is insane; if you are 
disposed to see her make a target of herself 
and tli a family," (with especial stress on this 
latter,) “ for all the slanderous tongues of 
society, of course my feelings are not of suf¬ 
ficient moment for consideration.” 
So she took herself and the basket of 
family silver (and the old butler, could he 
have seen it, would have pronounced it 
"grown powerfully small” within the last 
t welvemonth,) out. of the breakfast room. 
Then followed the silence that usually 
succeeds explosions. Miss Mabel took her 
revenge by retreating to her third story fire 
with a bitter attempt at. sarcasm about her 
lips, and mamma’s cap-strings trembled 
visibly. The “juniors" invaded the region 
of the buttered toast, and foraged undis¬ 
turbed the hallowed precincts of tl»c sugar- 
bowl. But the “subject" sat looking with 
eyes not too steady, it is true, (whatever her 
face was,) at the scarlet monogram that 
blazed from the envelope on her palm. That 
harmless little white parallel Ingram had 
worked the mischief of a veritable bomb¬ 
shell in the quiet breakfast room this 
morning. 
Looking at the low-fallen lids, the dark, 
plain face, the clear-cut, almost masculine 
style of the mouth, one felt certain, some¬ 
how, that in whatsoever she engaged, she 
would tie victorious; that plain, but forci¬ 
ble-looking girl in the rusty black morning- 
dress, yonder. 
“ Now, mamma,” when the pause that 
neither had cared to break had grown into 
a long silence, “ be reasonable. Remember 
there are six of us, and live surely would 
daunt our bank account. I’m dealing with 
the facts of the case as lawyers do, you see; 
so please observe that Joseph ink, chere, is 
of’ a too “ grande da cheese ” order to ever 
turn a hand at supporting the family, and 
Mabel lias the Meredith pride—then, too, 
she is an authoress; so it remains that I am 
tlie only one for whom Providence designed 
such a fate, (not so bad a one either, judging 
from the salary.) Then, 1 was never troubled 
with ennui, or faint-heartedness; and, as to 
protection, 1 have the Meredith crest with 
its motto, 1 Nemo me impune luccssit ;' further¬ 
more, I am too plain for sentiment and too 
manly ibr doubts as to my success. So, 
then, madame ran mere, 1 take it for grant¬ 
ed you see the necessity of my returning my 
acceptation by return post. Think, too, of 
the positive damage I am doing in tiie Mere¬ 
dith marriage market, and let me take my 
bundle and myself out into the world. 1 
am not used to plowing, I admit, but my 
hand once pul lo the handle, I shall not 
I ‘ look back.’ ” 
Somehow, the very tones of her voice in¬ 
spired one with much of her own force and 
trustfulness, it seemed unconsciously. 
A soft, a very sofi dimming came to the 
mother eyes, looking into the girl’s, for they 
I were gray, and—her father’s had been gray. 
There was a fearless sort of mother pride, 
that came from a look at those brown, firm 
bands. 
“ But, my child," she began on a sudden, 
painfully, and with a ladyish blush at the 
intrusion, even on the secrets of u daughter, 
“ You surely forget, love. How will all this 
affect Victor—M r. Lisle?” 
The gray eyes were hid, only a moment, 
though. 
“ I have been waiting until the girls were 
gone to tell you, mamma. You must know, 
you must have seen,” (with a certain impa¬ 
tient, almost scornful gesture she had,) “ how 
utterly foolish a final adjustment between 
the Victor Lisle, and Geraldine Mere¬ 
dith of to-day, and of years ago, must be. 
There is no use of trying daintily with stub¬ 
born facts. He is too keen a lover of life’s 
poetry to take up with its homespun prose 
now. This, of course, I’ve seen and known, 
but, more, that Josephine, chere, would feel 
her pride and the family’s wounded, not to 
lie able to say, after all, ‘ Victor Lisle, my 
brother-in-law.’ I’ve kept the end of the 
chain in my hand too long. I only wonder 
how he ever dared dream he loved me, 
mother. Last month I dropped the chain 
over to him. He is too proud, by far, to 
offer me the Lisle crest or the family jewels 
again; so for aught that Mr. Lisle might 
advise, I am as free to act as for the opinion 
of the Sultan himself.” 
She had spoken at length for her. It was 
never her way. There came a momentary 
and faint motion to her lips when she had 
finished. But in a moment she had arisen, 
and was tying one of the "junior” aprons, 
quietly, when the little woman from behind 
the coffee urn came over to her. 
“You make me think of him, Geral¬ 
dine,” she said, in faint, uncertain whis¬ 
pers. “I dare not tell you, my child, all I 
feel or think. If this lie the settled purpose 
it seems with yon, 1 dare not interpose. You 
seem far stronger than a son to me to-day. 
God bless you, Geraldine!” 
Then she rang for the one Meredith re¬ 
tainer, and the young lady took the "ju¬ 
niors” up to lessons. This was how it came 
about, then, that the young Keiths had a 
governess. 
If you imagine, gentle reader, (for what i 
readers are not gentle?) that this is a love 
story of the old orthodox type, leave it, and 
now. It deals with plain, home facts; it 
deals, too, with the plainest kind of a life,, 
and that, Geraldine Meredith's. 
This life was about as quiet, hi its monot¬ 
ony as ever, during the short interval between 
the conversation in the breakfast room and 
the gray, soggy morning in November when 
she stepped over the threshold of the brown- 
stone house, and found her life there had 
knitted the cords of her left side a little 
tighter to the elegant home than she knew— 
that home where so many changes had 
come ! 
She took a cab, for Josephine’s and the 
family’s sake, and saw her well-battered 
Saratoga hoisted through the dismal rain 
falling between her eyes and the group 
about the open door. Madame vat mere 
cried silently — poor helpless woman; the 
"juniors” wailed tlie loss of their chief 
amusement; and Katie, the ratainer, made 
a pleasing prospective of apron and red 
eyes. Then from a half-closed upper win¬ 
dow some one cried, “ Write soon, Gerry ;’’ 
the anakim mounted to the box; and she 
was off’ with t hat vacuum of soul that comes 
from the first leap into the world of labor, 
and to a woman’s world, more keenly than 
a man’s. 
Her first letter home was wonderfully 
characteristic. A portion ran thus: 
“Tin? family suit the monogram. The house 
Is grander than the family. There is a papa, 
never at home, und now in Europe, of whom the 
children actually Know little less than I. A 
grandmamma • Elizabethan—and my cnargee, 
—three. Boys are never romantic, yon know, 
and the girl is sickly and spoiled. I was positive 
the dowager was n catechist; she was. But, 
thanks to my French and my well-worn prayer- 
book, (for 1 We’re very high, my dear!') I eaine 
through the ordeal bravely. I’ve slipped into 
my groove easily, of course. I have a scat at 
the family table, at the queen-dowager’s left, a 
pleasant, even luxurious room, next the nur¬ 
sery, and go Into town twice n week, in the 
family coach, to execute commissions and air 
the children. There are callers that I’m not re¬ 
quired to see, and always a sublime view of the 
Hudson from my windows, besides a grand old 
library (quite as fine as ours used to be, Mabel,) 
to forage in when I grow rusty. For the sake 
of doing away with a household hallucination 
respecting Qouvertumtes, let me suggest that there 
is no romantic element in t he life of the species. 
Tell mamma she need never despair of our 4 ju¬ 
niors.’ The young Keiths are in a superior 
state of barbarity to even out home warriors. 
At first, 1 lived in daily expectation of being 
scalped." 
Josephine, chere, turned her lovely blonde 
braids to her mother. 
“What a girl! It is an actual judgment 
on her for ber preposterous conduct to Mr. 
Lisije,” she said. 
Mamma smiled, and there was nothing 
like derision in her smile. 
CHAPTER IX. 
Victor Lisle smoked a little more, when 
the letter containing the “ end of the chain ” 
reached him. He was so thoroughly a man 
of the world he never allowed himself to be 
moved from his repose by the world’s 
idiosyncrasies. 
If he had cared to analyze his soul, I dare 
say this love might have proven the truest 
thing to which he could lay claim. But he 
was too elegantly indolent to believe in 
mental chemistry. Then, too, he felt his 
pride insulted. To be sure, Meredith pere 
stood well in the money market when that 
same engagement was made. Since his 
death, and those fearful Involvements that 
startled everybody so, had he, Victor Lisle, 
ever hinted at a release ? Geraldine was 
a strange girl; and so plain! Distingue, to 
be sure. He doubted if she ever loved him 
after all. 
Ilis life had no active element in it. In¬ 
dolent from habit lather than from inclina¬ 
tion, he was goaded by those few simple, 
womanly words of hers, as never before. 
Keener the smart than she who wrote the 
words might know. “ I am to become the 
brother of the house,” she wrote. Well! lie 
knew the grain of her soul was as steady as 
her hand writing. But if she choose to re¬ 
lease him thus, she should find he could be 
“ in at the death ” as bravely as she! 
There came a quick questioning, if he had 
taken quite the true way, always, in the 
past? He had been in brilliant ball-room 
gaieties, whispering soft nothings to pretty 
faces, when this girl, with her unaided 
hands, fought out her own battle with her 
sorrows! He had let long silence come be¬ 
tween them, and she had not accused him ! 
He wrote to his uncle that night, after lio 
had smoked and sighed and suffered more 
under that letter’s import than lie cared to [ 
tell, that he had changed his traveling j 
plans. He was going to winter in Italy. 
Soon after this Mabel wrote to the girl 
who looked and waited for her answer: 
“ Geraldine, there is a huge package await¬ 
ing your The contents we surmise, 
as it. bears a host of foreign stamps, and is in 
the Lisle hieroglyphics.” 
She knew the result too well, then,—this 
girl who had gone on hungering for some¬ 
thing satisfying, and come to feed on husks, 
after all. So a dangerous little smile played 
over her lips its she wrote; “ Be my .Tugger 
naut, this once. Burn the sacrifice for me. 
What delectable things one learns in this 
world of ours sometimes!” 
For a fflw moments she sat thinking. It 
was cruel, it was unmanly in hint Then 
her old pride stirred, as she repeated the 
motto on her father’s signet ring, his gift to 
her—“ Nemo me impune lacessit," again. 
“ If 1 had been a man, Victor Lisle 1" 
she said. Then she bit the words down. 
Well, the little dream wits quite over. She 
remembered governesses were not supposed 
to be creatures of sentiment. So she went 
down to lessons. 
It was impossible but that a four months’ 
siege subdued the enemy a great, deal. Dally 
struggles with Latin, and Keith dullness, 
helped her. The solitary evenings before 
bed hour led to the discovery that she was a 
“ prime story teller.” With the boys it was 
dull, cart-horse sort of work. They would 
not recognize the civilized modes of eating. 
They thoroughly believed girls and cats to 
be articles of masculine enjoyment, solely to 
be subdued by pinching. But the new regime 
might work in time. She came down into 
the school-room one morning a little more 
hopeful. 
‘‘Miss Meredith,” said Keith, Senior, 
looking up from his Latin grammar pre¬ 
sently, “grandmother says you are desper¬ 
ately homely. Men don’t like such homely 
women either, do they ?” 
“Not often, Arthur,” she laughed, amused 
at his serious face, and it was a treat to hear 
Miss Meredith laugh, “I am fortunate, 
then, for I shall never marry.” 
But the color faded out, her eyes took on a 
far away look, an old absorbed expression 
peculiar to those other days, as the boy went 
on with his recitation. For an instant she 
had forgotten that she was “Miss Mere¬ 
dith, governess.” Then she came out of 
her dream. 
The winter was long and wearisome, 
despite her brave resolutions, and the even¬ 
ings in the library, where the stately dowa¬ 
ger slept on her velvet throne, were the 
dreariest part of her life. To tills girl, with 
all the keen, quick life that throbbed at. her 
firm wrists and vented its wealth through¬ 
out. her warm body, there was something 
stifling in this buried, hidden house. She, 
who had longed for work, for a free wide 
scope to her faculties, for a firm outlet to j 
her pain ! Was this the answer to her cry, 
she wondered, standing at her window one 
gray February twilight ? 
Afar off were snowy outlines of the buried 
hills that shut out the world teeming with 
life, and vigor, and gladness. The sodden 
clay of the fields, discolored by the melting 
drifts; the dull gray line of the Hudson, un¬ 
like its old chivalric self, that could so flash 
and sparkle, and woo a wealth of moon¬ 
beams. And behind her the children in their 
beds,—the two dull but kindly boys, and 
the quiet-faced girl. She pitied her. To¬ 
night she found her in the window-sent star¬ 
ing at the dead coloring without, with ber 
childlike eyes, and an old, pinched, almost 
repressed pain on her small white face. 
“If papa would only come, or — some¬ 
thing,'’ she said, wearily. And, as by a mu¬ 
tual pain, Geraldine had put the soft, pret¬ 
ty hair back from her face and kissed her, 
feeling the pitiful clinging of the arms that 
wound about her. 
Had she passed over this forlorn, neglect¬ 
ed child-life in looking for her mission ? 
Might it not be her work to rouse the vitali¬ 
ty of even a child’s soul, to a glad outspring- 
ing? She wondered at the lives these chil¬ 
dren led. The mother, who had died at 
Flossy’s birth, what had she been ? Most 
likely a weak, inefficient, characterless sort, 
of woman, from her doll-like face in the 
library. The father she seldom thought of. 
He had been set down as a loveless, semi- 
barimmus man from the first. And then, 
this querulous old woman, with her stately 
whims and aristocratic mannerisms ! Who 
could fancy a child loving her? 
Geraldine turned from the forlorn, gray 
world without, to the darkness within. She 
remembered how her own face, that night 
in the mirror, had seemed to be grown old, 
sad, unhappy in its plain ugliness. The 
dull, Indian-like calm, the level, heavy 
brows, the scar over the thin lips, and 
the steady, almost fierce persistency of the 
gray eyes. And she, yet, was but twenty- 
one, and life was new to her. 
She seemed to feel a kindred pity for the 
little heads on the nursery pillows as she 
passed them, looking in. The pugilistic cle¬ 
ment had departed from the two brown pair 
of hands on the coverlet., and little Flossy, 
in the inner nursery, had a soft pink flush 
on her face, as though her dreams were glad. 
And yet, was this the work she sought— 
the glory of a promise she had longed to 
find ? It was a remorse beyond sitting down 
at home, behind those stately lace draper¬ 
ies,—“ Relics of former grandeur,” she called 
them, sadly,—and plotting about one’s dress¬ 
es, and frying to keep up old ways on less 
than half, ami stifling out. the proud pain, 
and forgetting the whitening of her mother’s 
hair or the. weary lines conn; to her lips. 
And the callers’ cards on the front hall 
table, why had they grown so few ? And 
Josephine and Mabel, —were they not glad 
of the conventional seclusion that, “mourn¬ 
ing, necessitated, and that covered the lack 
of invitation and patronage? True, Jose¬ 
phine, chere , was it great belle once, and 
might yet, win a plethoric pnrse and a name, 
from her beautiful face ! But this deceiving, 
deadening sort of life would have crushed 
her, in Josephine’s stead. 
No! let them go on turning their dresses 
and saving their crape, they were, after all, 
no happier t han sin:, in the dull, snow-bound 
life she led. And yet, it was one of her fa¬ 
vorite maxims:— “God sends no shadow 
that does not come to make place lor a sun¬ 
beam 1” 
So she went down to the library with her 
mending basket, and the long evening 
seemed somehow less gloomy, and the state¬ 
ly old lady was so far unbending as to say 
she “ was pleased to find the children’s man¬ 
ner at table so improved,—in fact, they were 
greatly changed, etc., etc.” 
Well, even the poorest life holds its germ 
of good, its little atom of joy, else God were 
cruel, thought Geraldine. 
HAPTEH XXX. 
The early spring days were melting the 
cloaks from off the shoulders of the Catskills, 
and soggy, damp as it was, Geraldine found 
time for some breezy invigorating walks 
again. 1 he very stimulus of the crisp strong 
air cheered, gladdened her. The streams 
were melting from out their shrouds of ice. 
All of the rivers were running down to the 
sea, again. Might not her life too, find a 
re-awakening ? 
Coming in our twilight, she found the 
children clustered in the nursery in whispered 
consultation. 
“ Grandmamma has a shock, or someth¬ 
ing,” said Arthur, in a terrified way. 
And so it proved. For weeks after, lessons 
were abandoned, and Geraldine kept her 
place as nurse in the gloomy old room, where 
the querulous face, without its curls and 
rice-powder looked far more pitiful and less 
stately from between the heavy counterpane 
and velvet curtains. 
Bo she only came up-stairs to quell the 
irrepressible skirmishes there at intervals, 
with heavy eyes and a smell of ammonia and 
strange herbs about her. All these weeks 
she scarce could rest from that vigil, for when 
speech returned, haltingly, that pallid and 
wrinkled old face looked from its pillow in 
pitiful complaining at the “ roughness of 
these servants,” or “ the awkward manner¬ 
isms of the nurseso Geraldine was con¬ 
tent to stay. 
It, was at the close of that dreary, lower¬ 
ing Saturday. The doctor motioned to her 
as she came in from a short walk outside 
for air and rest He opened the sick room 
door cautiously and came up to her. 
“ She lias another attack. I have written 
Mr. Keith. He can never see her alive. 
The worst will come to-night. Keep the 
house still; I shall stay. Are you able to 
sit up this night also, Miss?” 
Her face grew strangely white to her lips, 
at the terse, sharp sentences of the little 
man. Then an instant after she drew her 
shawl about, her broad shoulders slowly and 
said, “ Quite able, sir,” with no other word. 
The little bald-headed man went in beside 
that bed, and Geraldine passed up to the 
children. They were asleep. She would 
not waken them* it could do no good. She 
stood and drew her warm firm fingers down 
the pain for a while. Death seemed a pal¬ 
lid, gray presence, shutting the last link 
from those little heads yonder. She won 
clerecl how the father could have left them so 
long 1 He must be a cruel man. But there 
might be much in that home to make his 
life miserable, after all. Alas! poor queru¬ 
lous old soul I It would be over with its 
battle so soou. It had not been a happy, 
fresh life. Would it regain the buoyancy it 
might have had, once, when it first began, 
back in a girlhood that was a dream ? Who 
knew ? And was life worth caring for, with 
its crosses and burdens shutting us down 
with our faces from the sunlight? 
A swift vision dimmed her eyes; it was 
her father’s death-bed scene. She recalled 
the agony in which she strove for look, for 
recognition even by a tightening of those 
firm, cold hands. Did there come a quick 
pang of reproach for the dread revelation of 
those after days ? When the rest were pal¬ 
sied with grief, and it was “ Geraldine, 
you do not mind such things as much,” that 
greeted her, when she went to Josephine 
for some aid in the responsibility coming on 
them ? Did she think, too, of the days when 
she had borne the household up, when pa¬ 
tient, obtuse, dry-eyed as she was, the weight 
lay deader, heavier than she dare think ? Or 
of the silence of the man who had vowed to 
put himself between her sorrows and the 
world, did there come a haunting recollec¬ 
tion? How she had waited for the word 
that did not come, the comfort that was not 
liers, during those fearful, fearful days? 
No! I know she did not blame him now, 
this quiet woman standing in the chill of a 
March evening. She only knew that trouble 
seemed her strong dower, that other’s woes 
were her own, somehow. That, she was 
called to bear the burden, who might not 
wear the reward? But she felt a thankful 
pride In it. ner tall frame straightened 
under the weight; she seemed a firmer, 
calmer being, as she went down stairs again. 
For underneath the stem, set mouth, and 
quietly-controlled whisper, a cry for more 
than she had known, was stifling for utter¬ 
ance. God was already answering her. 
Throughout- the night lights glanced to 
and iVo down below stairs. Servants crept 
with pale faces and sick-room whispers 
through the passage ways, and by that door. 
There was no sound or bustle; all was as 
noiseless as the great ball clock itself. Only 
at faint, gray dawn the door opened and the 
doctor went out to his carriage. 
It whb very still—so still that one could 
hear the wind down among the frees along 
shore, and Geraldine paused on the upper 
landing of the stair, and looked out at the 
filmy nver fog creeping up the sky. Then 
she went on to her room, with a hasty, piti¬ 
ful glance in at the nursery door and the 
faces of the children asleep. 
It was weeks and weeks after the funeral 
that she came in from a drive with the chil¬ 
dren one early May twilight. How busy 
those days had been! She had had no 
time from answering necessary letters, di¬ 
recting servants, superintending orders and 
executing commissions, to resume lessons. 
Then, with all this pressure on her life, a 
sentence in Mabel's last letter hud been left 
to haunt her: 
"These spring days find us all a little unfit for 
them. The children have hud a siege with scar¬ 
let fever. Mamma is no worn from watching 
that she is keeping her room at present. The 
garrison is bo reduced we shall have to beg lor 
quarter, und you , I fancy. Weave just finding 
out you were inUiapensable to us, Gkualdine. 
If she had had time for idle thinking, she 
would have found the life she led was crush¬ 
ing her. Yet she never repined at, what 
came, because it came from God. So she 
went about, airing the great, dark rooms, 
letting in plashes of sunlight on the walls, 
and becoming the guiding spirit to all the 
household. 
It had been pleasant, this drive, and tlie 
children had awakened - to the call of birds 
in the hedges, springing grass, and early 
flowers, to a sweet, fresh mood. Coming 
back to the house, they saw from the drive 
there were lights In the hall and library, a 
pile of shawls and luggage in the vestibule, 
and commotion in the air.—[Concluded next 
week. 
