838 
THE RURAL MIIW-YORKIR. 
DEC 8 
a candle to her;” and yet she’s a good sweet 
deary.” 
As soon as he was left alone. Patience 
hastened to barricade the rickety door. She 
wheeled the bedstead up to it and sought for 
something by which she could brace it against 
the door. Nothing loose was in the room but 
two chairs and they were too short, A cup* 
board was in one corner and she tried to take 
off the door. The whole thing was loosely 
fastened and the door with one of the cheeks 
came off together. As the woodwork came 
apart, a paper dropped out upon the floor. 
The door fitted exactly as a brace from the 
bed to the opposite wall and she felt safe from 
intrifkion by any force save that which would 
burst in the door. Then she sat upon the bed 
and wrapped a blanket about her, for the 
evening was chilly. The paper on the floor 
caught her eye. More secrets and more vil- 
lianv perhapsshe thought to herselT. And in- 
deedso she found it. It was a will; the will of 
John Merritt bequeathing the low farm and 
all the stock and house furniture to Barley 
Meritt. It had been stolen and hidden in tnis 
old closet behind the casing, and the place 
had been forgotten. 
Patience read and re-read the will So the 
rep >rt is true, and Jonas Pratt is a forger and 
a thief as well asall that is mean an i despica¬ 
ble. This is not his and I may take it justly 
for those to whom it belongs.’” And she 
quickly secured the paper in her clothing. 
An approaching footfall seemed to catch 
her ear. Alert, she placed the lamp on a 
stand in the corner and quietly opened the 
window. She had a way of escape there and 
she breathed more freely. The foot fal I be¬ 
came more distinct and soon the handle of 
the door turned. “Who isthere” demanded Pa¬ 
tience. 
“ Open the door I want to speak to you.’’ 
“ Speak where you are. What ha ve you to 
say ? You gave me your word that you 
would never come to the room I chose for my 
own, and now you break your solemn promise. 
I will not open the door.” 
“I will break it down, No one is in the 
house but my mother and she is a hard 
sleeper. You had better open the door quietly. 
I only want to speak to you This is no place 
for you.” “I won’t trust you. You can 
speak where you are.” 
A thrust at tha door would have burst it in 
had it not been securely braced. “I will tame 
you you vixen,” cried the baffHd villain. 
“I can beat your father at his own game and 
I’ll let you know it.” 
“My father is not a villain nor a forger, 
nor a thief, Jonas Pratt; and I vrarn you 
again. You have deceived him and played 
upon him for your own base purposes.” 
“Oh! I’ll soon, have this dratted crazy door 
down I tell you,” and he threw himself upon 
it and burst it from the hinges; a little more 
and it would be down. 
Patience fled from the window; slipped 
down the wet roof; guiding herself by the 
branches of the apple tree and came easily to 
the ground, when she sped like a frightened 
deer down the lane to her father’s house. The 
back windows were rarely fastened; no fear 
of intruders alarming the quiet dwellers of the 
secluded valley She was drenched with the 
rain, fevered by the excitement; and as she 
rushed to her own room and felt herself safer 
within it, her strength gave way under the 
long strain, uttering piercing shrieks she fell 
heavily to the floor in a swoon. 
The door soon gave way under the vigorous 
thrusts of the furious man r.nd Jonas entered 
the chamber to find it empty and his captive 
escaped. The open window caught his eye 
and he had a. gleam of hope But hastening 
to the rear kitchen he found that Patience had 
indeed escaped, and again be was baffled. 
“Drat my fools head, I’ve missed it again. 
What made me let her go in there. What’s 
to be done now.” She’s gone home. She said 
forger and thief. Does s' e know it too? 
Mebbe I’ve made a fool of n.ypelf agin.” 
Defiance was still sitting in he front kitchen 
musing over the events of the day in no pleas¬ 
ant or satisfied mood. His own sharo in the 
business began to rankle in bis mind, con¬ 
science, it could scarcely be called, for of that 
he never had possesfed any that he could dis¬ 
cover. The villainous plot by which he had 
been overreached by Pratt, angered him; not 
so much by its heartless) ess, but that he 
had been duped by it. In the midst of these 
disagreeable thoughts the piercing shrieks 
which came suddenly from above curdled his 
blood and froze him with dread. He was 
alone in the house. The shri- ks came with re¬ 
doubled volume and from bis wife’s room he 
thought. Had his wife returned to haunt and 
punish him for bis long continued cruelty and 
this last outrage upon his daughter; her cher¬ 
ished child. The crash of th« fall resouuded 
through the house heretofon silent and dreary 
as a tomb. 
He would brave all. Nothing living could 
frighten him, and why shouldany dead thing. 
He seized the lamp and rushed up stairs and 
into the room, and nearly stumbled over the 
wmte form; marked with bloody streaks and 
patches. He stooped to examine it and found 
his daughter senseless, with a crimson stream 
escaping from her lips to the floor. Hastily 
raising her and laying her upon the bed, he 
l ushed from the house in search of the doctor. 
On uis way he stopped at Mrs. Merritt’s and 
told her Patience was dying, and begged her 
to hasten to the house and not wait for him 
but do what she could for her until the 
doctor came. 
(To be continued.) 
HOW HE WON HIS WIFE. 
A poet once observed that “ the course of 
true love never did run smooth,” his mind’s 
eye must have been prophetically perceptive 
of the disappointments and delays undergone 
by a young couple residiug in one of our large 
cities, ere connubial bliss at length rewarded 
their magnificent constancy. Forty-eight 
years ago Edward Marsh, then a penniless 
youth of 20, became enamored of a local heir¬ 
ess, who returned his passion. Her papa, 
however, would not hear of her engagement 
to a wooer less wealthy than herself. 
“ She is my only child,’ heremarked, after 
rejecting Marsh's addresses, “and all I have 
will come to her some day.” 
“Pray, bow much might you be worth ?” re¬ 
joined the lover. 
“ A million dollars 1” was the haughty reply. 
“Very well. I shall go West to-morrow, 
and I vow to you that I will not seek your 
daughter's hand until I return hither with a 
fortune equal to your own.” 
Tender farewells having been interchanged 
by the youthful victims of paternal sternness. 
Marsh started upon his quest after a million. 
It is, seemingly, no eaRy matter, even here in 
America, to make that sum out of nothiug; 
for, although the young man prospered in his 
undertakings, it took him half a century, less 
two years, to put by the amount he had 
pledged himself to earn before claiming his 
bride. 
Balancing his books a few weeks ago, at the 
close of a highly profitable transaction in live 
stock, he found, however, that he was an in¬ 
disputable millionaire. Without an instant’s 
delay he wound up his business, traveled 
back to his native place, and married his old 
love Offhand. 
She had been faithful to her plighted troth, 
despite countless offers from eligible wooers. 
Thus the two millions were joined at last, 
and the longest engagement oa record cul¬ 
minated in a joyful wedding between a bride 
of 61 and a bridegroom of 68. 
BOOKS AND MAGAZINES. 
Messrs Lee & ShepaRd have produced 
in a new form their standard poems which are 
so familiar to niauy, “Ring out Wild Bells;” 
“ He Giveth his Beloved Sleep;” Abide with 
Me;” Rock of Ages;” Home Sweet Home;” 
The Breaking Waves Dashed High;” Nearer 
My God to Thee;”Oh ! Why should the Spirit 
of Mortal be Proud.” Each book has a cover 
upon which is wrought a most exquisite de¬ 
sign on a gold ground. The edges are trim¬ 
med with silk fringe. As a souvenir for holi¬ 
days, Easter, birthdays, nothing can be more 
chaste or elegant. These beautifully illus¬ 
trated poems should be on the list of everyone 
calculating (heir Chrislmas gifts. The entire 
eight are called “ Golden Fjoral” and would 
make a rich wedding gift. The price of each 
poem is $1.75. 
The Longfellow Calendar for 1883.— 
This calendar published by Houghton Mifflin 
& Co., Boston, is printed in twenty colors, so 
blended and distributed as to produce a very 
rich and tasteful effect. It has a portrait, 
which is pronouncee excellent by those who 
knew Mr. Longfellow most intimately. On 
one side of the medallion containing it is a 
view of Mr. Longfellow's Cambridge Home, 
and on the other the Belfry of Bruges. Be¬ 
low', on the right, is a picture of Evangeline 
standing on her father’s vine-clad porch; on 
the left a Priscilla in the snow carrying food 
to the poor. A band of golden daisies, with 
panels bearing the names of Mr. Longfellow’s 
most famous works, incloses the whole. 
The selections from Mr. Longfellow’s writ¬ 
ing’s for each day of the year are carefully 
chosen, and form a series of passages of great 
beauty and excellence. Price $1,00. 
The Co operutive Dress Association, 31 and 
33 West £3rd St., New York, has just issued 
au illustrated catalogue, of 128 pages. It is the 
best of the kind we have ever seen, and leaves 
no opportunity for asking a questiou us it 
covers everything needed for personal wear 
from a seal skin sacque to a three cent hair 
crimper. A feature of the Co-operative Dress 
Association is the order Bureau, through 
which goods may be purchased at city prices, 
and forwarded to all parts of the country. 
“Ring Out, Wild Bells:” By Alfred 
Tennyson. — Elegantly illustrated by Miss 
Humphrey, in full-page and letter-press 
drawings. Engraved by Andrew. Cloth, 
full gilt, $1.50. 
A happy thought has prompted Lee & 
Shepard, of Boston, to bring out this favorite 
song, especially fitting as a reminder of the 
Christma9-tide, in a new and elegantly illus¬ 
trated form, suitable for presentation. “Ring 
out, Wild Bells,” is a new volume, equally 
characterized by the richest paper, faultless 
letter press, the finest of artistic embellish¬ 
ment, and a sumptuous binding. 
Mother Goose, for Grown Folks. By 
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co., Publishers. Price, $1 50. 
An enlarged and revised edition of this 
work, and one very unique in its style; re¬ 
freshing the minds of older people by head¬ 
ing each chapter with the old nursery rhymes 
learned in childhood, and strengthening 
them by making each applicable to the every 
day life of maturity. 
Youth; Its Care and Culture. ByJ. 
Mortimer Granville. Published by M. L. 
Holbrook & Co., N. Y. City. Price, $1.00. 
The chief aim of this work being, so its 
author says, to expose certain fallacies which 
prevail on the subject of child management 
aud education. 
The Jolly Rover. ByJ. T. Trowbridge. 
Illustrated. $1.24. Lee & Shepard, Pub 
lishers. 
The announcement of a new story by this 
writer ought always to be welcomed with 
as much satisfaction by parents as it is by all 
young people, for he stauds foremost among 
American writers for the young. It should 
go into the stocking of every well-behaved 
school boy at Christmas time. 
conducted by mjss ray clark. 
SKETCHES OF GERMAN LIFE. 
BERTHA A. ZED! WINKLER. 
Bumper-nickel. 
About the most disagreeable tasting food 
we know of is a kind of bread with the above 
name. We have seen it grace many.a well- 
supplied table, but the first we tasted was the 
last. Yet it i3 the great staple in the Black 
Fores', regions of Germany, in Bohemia aud 
the Alps of Switzerland, 
A genuine bumper-nickel is composed of two 
parts of bran, one part of bran-flour and one 
part of boiled potatoes, mashed and added 
with the akin on. The brewers’ yeast which 
is used “to make it keep” gives it a very dis¬ 
agreeable taste, and one uuused to it is very 
sparing of the great brown staple notwith¬ 
standing it is frequently poked under one’s 
nose with a cordial “tempt your appetite;” 
or, if one happens to be eating with drink¬ 
ing, the phrase is changed to “help your 
health.” The prevalent idea being that one 
drinks to get merry, and eats bumper-nickel 
with it to keep well. Being really nourishing 
and easily digested, it is quite possible that 
many a glass too much has been tolerated by 
a stomach conciliated with bumper-nickel. 
So trusted a favorite is it in the regions men¬ 
tioned that no inn-keeper is ever without it. 
We remember once having ordered dinner at 
a Black-forest inn without bumper-nickel. 
The waitress, pointiug to three glasses of wine 
each covered with a slice of bumper-nickel, 
said: “ It wasn’t in your order; but I brought 
it anyway, for no one ever drinks wine with¬ 
out eating burnpe.'-nickel.” Determined to 
show that beyond her little ovorld bumper- 
nickel could be very well dispensed w ith, we 
emptied every dish of eatableB, drank the wine, 
and replaced the Blices uutasted on the three 
empty glasses. The poor girl looked really 
perplexed, and declared that she would sooner 
go without her dinner than drink wine with¬ 
out bumper-nickel. 
Home-made bumper-nickels are baked in 
sponge-cake shape, with a hole in the center. 
They weigh from 10 to 15 pounds, and with 
other bread often last a month. We were sur¬ 
prised one day on the road by the sight of a 
man who, from the distance, looked as if he 
had a great black yoke pressing on his shoul¬ 
ders. Upon drawing nearer, with pardonable 
curiosity the man laughed and explained that 
it was a bumpei -nickel, which, for convenient 
carrying, he had slipped over his head—a ver¬ 
itable collar of bread. It was the largest 
bumper-nickel we ever saw, and weighed 20 
pounds. When we asked if it lnd not got 
stale, ne replied that it would taste good 
enough with a slice of bacon or cheese. 
Demonstrative of the New World’s wealth 
and very gratifying, is the fact that a Ger¬ 
man housewife, after her settlement in 
America, is quick to discard the old way of 
plain and coarse cooking for the easy art of 
producing everything from everything. It is 
wonderful how soon she forgets to make 
“ bread soup,” “ burnt soup,” “potato salad,” 
“ dumplings,” “ pan-cakes,” and a hundred 
other dishes the rich make palatable with 
those requisite ingredients which the poor, 
such as emigrate, must add in their imagina¬ 
tion. She has the names of the finest German 
dishes at her tongue’s end because she has 
been so ofteu at her wits’ end how- to make 
them without means. Your German neigh¬ 
bor extols, and glories in, her native culi¬ 
nary art, after she getB to America, and 
hands you over the fence a sample of such 
delicious noodle-soup that you will never 
have the courage to present her with an ordi¬ 
nary slice of pie. But she will not tell you 
how of Ion she has, in the old country, made 
soup without meat, pancakes without eggs or 
milk, and pie crust without lard. This love 
of showing off may. however, be carried too 
far, as in the case of a German neighbor who 
promising to bake us a real little lumper- 
nickel, set to work upon tbis great German 
all filled and fill-all, and produced no less 
than an egg-battered, butter-shortened, sugar- 
sweetened, milk-tempered bran cake. Think 
of such n delicacy being placed in the midst 
of a hungry Black-Forest family who expect 
to soften the tasteof a real bumper-nickel with 
layers of fat bacon! It would be dreadfully 
demoralizing to the palate. 
Another coarse, less digestible dish, and one 
we have ofteu seen grace a burgomaster’s ta¬ 
ble, is the dried, empty bean pods. When the 
beans are shelled the pods are stored equally 
careful as so many Winter meals. They are 
boiled one day in salt water, and left to drain 
overnight. The next day after another boil¬ 
ing with smoked meat, potatoes or dumplings 
are mixed with them and the whole served 
like pepper-pot. Having been so often com¬ 
pelled to eat it ourselves, without daring to 
gag even on the sly, we take a sort of re¬ 
vengeful pleasure in pronouncing it the most 
unpalatable and unprofitable food that was 
ever frightened down a child’s throat. Econ¬ 
omy and conservatism rule the German peas¬ 
ants. As long as they remember that their 
greatgrandparents have fared and grown 
strong upon certain food, they are content 
with it, aud would not for the world degener¬ 
ate into confectionary propensities. But 
once in America, where everything but want 
and conservatism flourishes, even a German 
peasant learns to discard the shell for the bean. 
THEY LOOK GOOD. 
“They look good,” said a friend of mine 
with laughing eyes, as she looked at a pile of 
magazines I had sent over for her to read. 
But I must finish this piece of sewing before 
I begin them.” 
I thought of L her this morning as I laid the 
good Rubai, aud another beloved magazine 
fresh from the morning mail, upon my writ¬ 
ing table and turned away to the beds to be 
made, the windows to bo opened, the clothes 
sent home from the wash to be looked over 
and mended and laid away. Bat the papers 
“looked good” though still unopened. They 
did me good as I went about my work helped 
to quicken my movements because they made 
the spirits brighter by anticipation. It is al¬ 
ways inspiring to have some such little re¬ 
serve treat just ahead. We go on so much 
more cheerily and briskly. To use a very 
plain and homely compirison, but one just 
in point, it is like a good old man I see take 
his cow home past my door by the means of 
a pumpkin on n pitchfork held just above her 
nose as he jogs along. He used to have a good 
deal of trouble with that cow before he in¬ 
vented this plan. I hope he gives it to her 
when she gets home. 
There is nothing more restful to the mind 
and body too, than a good chatty paper to 
take up when work is over, or when there 
comes a little “intermission” which we all 
need as much as the school children and it 
will do us good by anticipation and also by 
reflection afterwards. Olive. 
- — 
SO WEARY. 
So Weary! There are so many weary ones 
to-night in our busy, hurry-away Ameri¬ 
ca ! “So weary!” pays the merchant as he 
closes the door of his couuting-room, and 
turns his feet languidly towards hi 3 home. 
“So weary!”exclaims the self-sacrificing 
physician as be leans back in his easy chair 
for the first time in hours, 
“ So weary!” ^ys the patient housewife af¬ 
ter she has performed the lust duty, and 
tucked the last child into bed, aud then drops 
herself down into the nearest chair, undecided 
whether it would be best to rest a few mo¬ 
ments here, or retire immediately, feeling that 
sleep would bring to her so much needed rest. 
So weary! Such is the exclamation of 
every one who hns labored hard all the day 
long. Sunset has been watched for and her¬ 
alded with joy. But there are many weary 
ones besides those whose strength has been 
strained every day to its utmost; there are 
those whose hearts are weary of aching; 
those who are constantly feeling the shame 
