A TERRIBLE AFFLICTION.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 564, 8 April 1876, Page 3

A TERRIBLE AFFLICTION.

(Max Adeler .) Mr Fisher’s wife was very ill in July, and there were serious fears that she would die. And one day when he came home they communicated to him the sad intelligence that she was no more. When the first outburst of grief had subsi icd, he seat an order to the undertaker for a coffin, he tied crape on the door-knob, he sent his hat around to the store to have it draped in black, ha advertised the death in the papers with some poetry attached to the announcement, and he made general preparations for the funeral. Then he sat down in the parlour with his great sorrow, and bis friends tried to comfort him. 1 It’s no use,’ he said, ‘ I’ll never get over it. There never Avas any woman like her, and there never will be again. Now she’s gone, I’m ready to go any time. I’d welcome the grave. What's life to a roan like me? It’s a void—an empty void ; that’s what it is ; and there is no more happiness in it for me’— ‘You must try to hear up under it,’said Dr Potts, ‘ These afflictions are meant for our good.’ ‘Oh, it’s all very well to talk,’said Mr Fisher, wiping his eyes ; ‘ but when a woman like that skips off to live among the angels, a man can’t help being miserable. Angels don’t make your home happy. Angels don’t sew on your buttons or do up your shirts, and look after the children, and boss the hired girl, and go scrubbing around, do they ? Leastways, I never heard of it, and I’d rather have a Avoman like Mrs Fisher, anyhow,’ f But you must reflect how much happier she is now ; that our loss is our gain,’said Mrs Brown. 1 Well, I don’t see it,’ replied Fisher. ‘ She was happy enough here, bustling around, making things lively, spatting with me sometimes, bless her dear heart, when I annoyed her, and jawing away all day long at the children and hired girl, making music in the house. Who’s she going to jaw now I’d like to know? How’s she going to relievo her feelings when she gets angry ? Flying around in a nightgown with wings on behind her shoulder-blades, and sitting on damp clouds banging away at some kind of a harp, ain’t going to suit a woman like her. _ She never had much of an ear for music anyway. And what I say is that if Hencrietta had her choice, I bet anything she’d rather bo at home here tending to things, even if every day in the week was a rainy wash day. Now, I know she would,’ ‘ You take a gloomy view of things, now,’ said Dr Potfs, ‘ After a while the skies will seem brighter to you ’ ‘ No, they won’t either,’ said Mr Fisher. ‘ They’ll grow darker until ther’s a regular awful thunderstorm of grief. I can’t live through it. It’ll kill me. I’ve got a notion to jump into Henerietta’s grave and be buried with her. I’ve got half a mind to commit suicide, so I can— ’ Just here the doctor came down stairs and into the parlor, with a smile on his face. Mr Fisher saw it, and stopping abruptly, 1 0 said—- ‘ Dr Burns, how can you smile in the midst of the awful desolation of this family is more than I enn understand, and I don’t—’ ‘ I’ve got some good news for you, Mr Fisher,’ said the doctor. ‘ No, you havn’t said Fisher. ‘lhere can bo no more good news for mein this world.’ ‘ Mrs Fisher is alive.’ ‘ What?’ ‘ Mrs Fisher is alive,’ said the doctor. ‘She was only in a condition of suspended animation after all. She’ll be perfectly well, I think, in a few days.’ ‘You don’t actually moan to say that woman’s going to get off of her bed and stay alive—going to shirk the grave after all?’ ‘ Precisely, and I congratulate you heartily.’ ‘Oh, you needn't congratulate me,’ said Fisher. ‘ This is a pretty piece of business, now, ain’t it? But it’s just like her. She always was the crookedest woman on earth, and I believe that if we'd got her buried, aud I’d married again, she’d ’ve kicked off the coffin-lid and got me into trouble for bigamy. Who’s going to pay that undertaker now I’d like to know ? Blamed if she mayn’t do it herself, aud the advertising, and that poetry, and the crape, and those things ? I never heard of such foolishness. I makes me mad as the mischief, women carrying on so, and I’ll be hanged if I’m going to —’ Just here the boy came in with Mr Fisher’s bat, with a weed around it, and Fisher, giving the hat a savage kick, said the boy : ' You infernal little scoundrel, get out of here, or I’ll break your neck.’ Then the company adjourned, and Fisher, with the crape off the door-knob, went around to see the undertaker,