The Newark Journal.
. _ o F. CWAKJ, Kdltor.
NEWARK- - , ARKANSAS^
MRS. REED'S
NEW CARPET.
nv EHE\ E. IIE.YKOIID.
All her life long, Mrs. Reed had
wanted a “bougliten” carpet. She
had made rag carpets, at different
times, thereby depriving the most
of the family of the larger share
of its wardrobe for the time being;
but she had steadily refused to
compromise on an ingrain, as her
husband urged her to do.
“It'd be cheaper to buy that kind
of a carpet than it is to make rag
ones,” he declared. ‘A ou use up
just about everything we’ve got in
the shape o’ do’s, ev’ry time you
go into the carpet bis ness; an the
money it takes to stock us up
ag’in, put into what you pay out
for sewin’ rags an weavin , an
the* etcettery, ’ud buy a real ni< e
carpet.”
' lint 1 don’t want an ingrain
carpet,” Mrs. Reed would re
spond. “1 won’t have one. I've
set iiiv mind on a Brussels, an
till I can have one o’ that kind I’ll
git along with a rag carpet. 1 in
’shamed to have folks see a rag
carpet in the parlor, of course—it
looks as if we was poor as -Tob s
turkey, or stingy. Rut 1 won t
have anything else put down on
the floor till I can have a real nice
Brussels. I've be n a-savin up
for it a long spell back, an bv m
by I reckon I'll get enough to
got her to git it.”
The Reed parlor was a pleas
ant room, with comfortable fur
niture in it, and the young people
of the family enjoyed using it.
Its homelike air made it more at
tractive for the average visitor
than many rooms more preten
tiouslv furnished. Rut it would
never be what it ought to be, to
Mrs. Reed, until the* long-desired
‘‘Brussels” was to be seen there.
So she worked and “saved
until she got enough money
together to gratify the ambi
tion of her life. It was an im
portant day in the annals of the
Reed family when she announced
that at last the carpet fund was
complete.
I do hope you’ll go right oil to
town an’ buy it, then, said Mr.
Heed. “I've pot tired o’ bearin’
about it.’’
“I’m poin’ to--morrer,” an
rouneed Mrs. Hoed. “I guess I’m
•as anxious to have it bought as
you be. I declare, it seems tome
I hain’t had hardly anything as
I'd like to had it for the las’ six or
seven years, jest because o’savin
up for that carpet. I ought to
take a pood ’cal o’ comfort out of
it when I pit it, to make up for
what I’ve gone ’itliout, for its
sake.”
“1 don’t b’leeve you will,
though,” said Mr. Heed. “You’ve
jest b’ i a livin’ fer that carpet,
ever s nee you begun scrimpin’ to
pit it, an’ when it’s pot you won't
have anything left to live for.
The ambition of your life will bo
gratified, so to speak, an’ I s'pose
you’ll jest set down in the front
room an’ look an’ look at the car
pet.”
“Oh, you quit your hectorin’,”
said Mrs. lteed, too good-natured
over the prospect of her carpet to
be offended at anything her bus
band could say. “I shouldn’t
wonder? f you admired it as much
as any! >dy.”
She had “a dretful time” in se
lecting her carpet, she informed
the family, on her return from
town. “If there hadn’t b’en so
many of ’em, ’twouldn’t ha’ b’en
so hard, but when you come to
have as many’s 20 pieces spread
out on the floor at one time to
look at, an’ ev’ry one real han’
some, it was jest distractin’ to
make up yer mind. There was
somethin’ in this one I liked aw
ful well, an’ somethin’ jest lovely
in that one, an’ when I looked at
the other one I see somethin’ that
was nicer’n I’s Ij’en .a lookin’ at,
an’ I did jest get so muddled up
over ’em that fln’ly says I to the
man who was a-showin’ ’em to
me: ‘I’m goin’ to shet my eyes an’
turn ’round twice, an’ p’int with
my parasol, an’ the one I p’int at
is the one I’m goin’ to take.’ An'
I did jest that. Ef I hadn’t, I
guess I’d ha’ b’en there a-tryin’ to
make up my mind yet.”
“Where is it?” asked Mr. Reed.
“Le’s see it, won’t ye?—or is it
too nice to be looked at by com
mon folks?”
“Oh, ’tain’t come yet,” answered
Mrs. Reed. “They’re goin’ to
make it—they throw in the mak
ing you know.”
In about a week the wonderful
carpet arrived, and when Mr.
Heed came in from work, at sup
per time, he was invited to in
spect it. Mrs. Reed opened the
parlor door, and allowed him to
behold its beauties across the
threshold.
“Don’t step on it!” she cried, as
he showed a disposition to enter
the room.
“Ain’t it made to walk on?”
asked the poor man.
“Well, — yes,” answered Mrs.
Reed, “but not to be used the way
we used the old rag carpet. 1
don't want it to get s’iled—or
faded,” she added, pulling down
the shade.
“Then I s’pose we ain't to use
the room,” said Mr. Reed. “That’s
what you mean, is it?”
"Why, of course we’ll use the
room,” responded Mrs. Reed, not
feeling quite at ease by her hus
band's look and tone, “but not so
common as we did when the old
rag carpet was down.”
"All right,” said Mr. Reed, “I'll
get ye a lock an’ key, lirst time I
go up to the store, an’you can lock
up yer carpet. 1 don’t need the
lock myself—I wouldn't think o’
set tin’ my foot on your carpet,
but other folks might, an’ it’ll be
well to guard ag’inst it. Oh,” he
I added, sarcastically, “mebbe a
sign of ‘No Admittance' on the
door ’ud answer est as well.”
“I do think you’re real provok
in’,” said Mrs. Reed. “You can't
blame me for not wantin’ it s’iled,
i the lirst thing, after the way I've
i saved for it.”
“Oli, that's all right,” said Mr.
Reed. ‘‘I wouldn't want it walked
on, I s’pose, if 1 was you. It’s like
a picter—to be looked at. I hope
you’ll enjoy it,’’ and with that lie
went away, and poor Mrs. Reed
sat down and cried.
“He says such mean things,
when lie feels like it,” she told her
self. “I didn’t mean it was too
good to be used, an’ he knows it,
but I don’t want it to be used
ev’ry day. How long ’ml it be, if
we set in the parlor for common,
an’ had the shades up, afore it’d
fade. Men don’t have much sense
about some things.”
The “young folks” of the Reetf
family resented her anxiety about
rhe new carpet quite as much as
Mr. Reed did, and they gave her to
understand that she need have
no fears of their ever soiling it.
The parlor became a deserted
room.
“I’d just as soon go and set in
the cemetery,” said Phoebe to
Ruth, one day, in their mother's
hearing. “If we only had a pic
ture to hang up there, ‘sacred to
the memory' of somebody, it’d be
quite appropriate. I hate tin*
sight of the carpet!”
“So do 1!” said Ruth. “The idea
of shutting up the pleasantest
part of the house for the
sake of that old carpet! It
doesn’t fit in well with a
single thing in the room. It ought
to have new furniture to go with
it, and new paper and curtains. It
makemne think, every time I look
into the room, of a woman with a
fancy hat and a cheap dress on.
The new carpet and the old furni
ture don’t harmonize. But we
didn't think anything about tin*
furnit ure before the carpet came.
It looked all right, because it was
comfortable, and we enjoyed it
because it wasn’t too good /for
everyday use, 1 hope mother en
r
joys her carpet, but I know no one
else in the family does.”
It wasn't lon^ before Mrs. Reed
came to hate the sight of her car
pet. She had to acknowledge to
herself the justness of the fam
ily’s criticism, but she could not
bring herself to throw open the
doors of the parlor and ask them
to use the room, as of old. Re
gard for the carpet, and resent
ment of their remarks about it,
prevented her from doing that.
Spring came, with house clean
ing time. Though the new carpet
had not been soiled, as none of the
family would set a desecrating
foot on it, and but few visitors had
profaned it by wiping off the dust
of their feet on its roses and lilies,
it would never do to pass it by, at
housecleaning. It had been the
rule, from time immemorial, to
take up every carpet in the house
each spring, and the new carpet
could not expect any exception
made in its favor.
So it happened that it was tak
en up—Mrs. Reed had to do the
work alone—and hung up on a
line in the back yard to be dusted.
John Henry, the ten-year-old
hopeful, was raking up leaves and
dead grass there, when it was
hung out, and he was ordered to
procure some willow’ switches as
soon as he had finished the job of
raking, with which to whip the
dust out of the corpet.
“Yes’m,” said John Henry.
“You want the rakin’s burnt up.
don’t you. ma?”
Mrs. Reed wasn’t thinking
about what he said to her, and
gave some kind of a reply, out of
her abstraction, which John
Henry understood to be in favor
of his suggestion. Therefore,
when he had finished raking the
yard, he touched a match to the
combustible stuff he had gath
ered together, and set off in search
of the switches his mother had or
dered.
“Oh, ma, ma!” cried Ann Eliza,
from the back door a few minutes
later, with dire dismay in her shill
font’s, “John Henry’s set the
grass afire, an’ it’s got into your
carjK't.”
“I’m glad of it—I hope it’ll burn
the old thing up!” said Ruth to
Phoebe, as they ran for the back
vard.
“Don’t make much of an effort
to put out the fire if it in in the
carpet,” said Phoebe. “And it is
there, sure enough!” she added, as
they reached the yard. The
flames had blown up against it
from John Henry’s pile of refuse,
and they were running up the
pendant breadths in a dozen
places.
Mrs. Reed came into the yard
just as the girls did. Ruth and
Phoebe expected her to faint
away. Rut she didn’t. Neither
did she make an effort to save the
carpet from destruction. On the
contrary, to their great surprise,
she sat down on an old box and
looked at it as the flames de
voured its beauty.
“I’m glad of it!” she said, pres
ently. “I’ve heard you say, girls,
that you hated the sight of it. So
do 1! Let it burn!”
I don’t suppose that Mrs. Reed
had ever heard of Nero’s enjoy
ment of the burning of Rome, but
I am quite sure that she experi
enced something of the savage
pleasure that was Nero’s as she
saw the carpet that had once been
the pride of her heart turn to
ashes.
“It's made my life missable
ever sence I got it. with the way
you an’ your father’s acted about
it,” she said. “An’ I dun know’s I
blame you either. I guess com
fort’s more’n carpets, after all.
It’s lucky we’ve got the old one to
put down in the parlor, ain’t it? 1
shouldn’t wonder if your father’d
be glad to see it ag’in.”
Mr. Reed tried to Is* sympathet
ic when told of the loss of the
forenoon, but lie didn’t look very
sorry. As he passed the parlor
door at supper time, and saw it
wide open, with the familiar old
rag carpet on tin* floor, and the
shades up, and everything else in
the room looking as if it wanted
to be used, he said:
“That looks somethin’ like it!*1
Mrs. Reed hasn’t wanted a now
carpet since then. But Mr. Reed
has bought a pretty, cheerful in
grain for the parlor, with the ex
plicit statement that it “wa’n’t
too good to be walked on,” and
the family is enjoying it every
day, “an’ gittin’ tin* good out of
it,” as Mr. Reed declares.—Farm
and Home.
A WARNING—AND ITS SEQUEL.
Story of a Premonition with an Un
usual Ending.
Mv brother went into the death
trap at the Colenso river with the
Irish brigade under Fitzroy Hart.
He was a captain in the Royal
Dublin fusiliers — he is so no
longer.
One bright moonlit night in De
cember, 189b, my wife, her moth
er and myself were sitting in the
drawing-room talking of the
South African war, when sudden
and unexpectedly a gunshot in
the immediate vicinity was heard,
and simultaneously something
fell in the room.
Before we were aware of what
had actually fallen my mother-in
law, who is highland, instinctive
ly exclaimed: “<'harley’s photo!”
On rising to look, sure enough I
found that my brother’s photo
had fallen out of its frame, and
was lying face downward on the
floor. On the next day we heard
of the appalling disaster at Co
lenso.
These absolutely true facts
should surely convert the most
skeptical of premonitory warn
ings, yet the explanation might
possibly shake their new found
fait h.
My nextdoor neighbor was hav
ing a pot shot at a rabbit in his
garden, the photo frame was old
and of the cheap foreign “dump”
order, and my rheumatic but un
scarred brother is now in the
army pay department.—London
Spectator.
DIPLOMACY.
How the Thin Man Mollified th*
Plump Lady on a Street Car.
The plump lady scrambled inlo
the front seat of a Roland park
car, says the Baltimore Ameri
can.
The seat facing forward was
filled, containing six women and
one man.
So the newcomer had to sit on
the other seat, facing the entire
carload of passengers.
As the conductor’s bell rang its
startling ‘•Ding-ding,” and the
motorman turned on tin* current,
the plump woman said severely to
the solitary man occupying a
place on tin* other side:
"1 think you might have been at
least enough of a gentleman to of
fer to change places with me!”
“I had carefully considered
that matter, madam, before you
spoke,” rejoined the man, ear
nestly, “and had decided that for
the good of all, we had better re
main as we are. It would be an
insult to the passengers back of
us for me to sit facing them, and
showing my homely features
after they had caught even a
glimpse of your pronounced come
liness. They would resent the
substitution and possibly do vi
olence to both of us—do you un
derstand?”*
“Perfectly, my dear sir,” replied
she with a smile, “and 1 wish to
implore your pardon for having so
underrated your gallantry.”
Biggest Dog on Earth.
A dog, supposed to have been
the biggest in the world, has just
died in Rutland, Vt., at the age of
ten years. He was a cross of Eng
lish and Herman mastiff, and
weighed 284 pounds. At the
shoulder he was three feet high,
as tall as a full grown lion, but he
had not the lion’s massive legs and
shoulders nor his impressive
length, being only six feet “from
tip to tip.” But he was a terror
to evil doers on dark nights. IIis
chest measured 35 inches and his
mighty neck required a iuoh
collar.
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Newark, - - Arkansas.