THE OLD BLUE CHEST.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3023, 4 March 1881, Page 4

THE OLD BLUE CHEST.

One day last week five or six women, with serious faces and hushed voices, were gathered in a room in a houso on Fort-street east. For two years a poor old woman had lived there, not exactly a beggar nor an object of charity, but certainly in want. She had a husband when she first moved there— a poor old man whose days could not be long; but ono day he was missing. He may have fallen into the river, or he may have wandered out into the country and died. This left the old woman alone, and there were days and days in which no one went near her or addressed her. The other day, when she felt the chill of death approaching, she wanted someone with her. She had lived alone, but she could not die that way. She wept as tender hands clasped hers and Mud

voices addressed her. Death had already placed its mark on her face, and tho women could do nothing. While their tears fell upon her wrinkled hands she passed away as a child sleeps. There was but little in tho room beyond an uk! blue chest —battered nnd bruised and splintered, but yet holding together. It had seen strange times, that old blue chest. It had held silks and broadcloths perhaps —it had surely held rags. It had been moved from house to house, and from town to town. It had listened to laughter, and had heard sobs and moans. It had grown old no faster than the woman whose hands had so often lifted its lid. It had doubtless kept the company of good carpets and furniture and crockery, ancl laughing, romping children had climbed over it, or hidden in it. It had faded, and its hinges were rusty ancl weak, but it had outlived its owner.

The women looked about for garments in which to enshroud the dead. Nothing was in sight. One of them lifted the lid of the old blue chest, and colled the others to help to drag it out from its dark corner. It held treasure—such treasure as men could not buy nor poverty steal away. There was a dress of fine material, cut after a fashion of long years ago. For twenty years the chest had been its guardian. It would havo sold for a few dollars, but though the gnawings of hunger had come often, and the cold had fought its way to her marrow, that poor old i woman would not part with that relic of better days. It may have been a link to connect her with wealth and love. Beneath it was treasure still more priceless. Carefully wraj>ped in paper was a silver dime more than fifty years old. A week's fast would not have sent her to the baker's with that relic. A child, dead in its young years, had -worn that dime around its nook as a gift or talisman. There was a child's mitten, stained and worn, but a mitten knit by a proud young mother for her child. It could not speak to tell the dim past, but it had power. As the women saw it tney covered their faces with their aprons ancl wept. There was a boy's cap and a girl's hat, both so old and faded and time eaten that they had to be tenderly handled. The women looked from them to the poor old white face on the bed, ancl whispered ; " None but a good mother would have treasured these relics. She was old and poor, but her heart was pure." Deeper down, as if to baffle the search of Time itself, was a familiar toy—a child's dumb watch. Hands were broken and gone, face scratched, and case battered, but the women handled it as if a touch would shiver it. There was a doll's head, and a boy's fish-line, some toy chairs, a yarn ball, and other things to show that in the long ago that dead -woman had felt the soft kisses of children, heard their "good-nights," and thanked Gol that she was blessed. Each relic was wept over —each was replaced with fresh tear stains. They asked the old blue chest no questions. Its relics might have been voiceless to a man, but to a woman and mother each one had a tale in words as plain as print. They shed more tears as they bent again over the poor old dead, and they said to eech other :

"If she had only told us this, how we would have loved her and sought to lighten her sorows."

But she had gone. She had come and gone as a mystery, and but for the old blue chest in the corner few would have cared and none would have sorrowed.