THE OLD BLUE CHEST.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2149, 14 January 1881, Page 3

THE OLD BLUE CHEST.

j One dav last week five or six women with; ! serious faces and hushed voices were gathered in. a room ia a hoaee on Port street Fait. For two years a poor old woman had. lived there, not exactly a beggar nor an objact 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 one day he was> missing. He may have fallen into the river, or he may have wandered oat into the country and died. This left the old woman alone, sad 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 some one with her. She had lived alone, bat shecould not die that way. She wept as tender hands clasped hers and kind voices addressed her. Death had already placed its mark on her face, and the women could do nothing. While her tears fell upon her wrinkled hands she passed away as a child sleeps. There was little in the room beyond an old bine chest—battered and 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 fiom 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, and laughing romping children had climbed over it or hidden in it. It had', faded, and its hinges were rusty and weak, but it had outlived its owner.

The women looked abont for garments in which to enshroud the dead. Nothing wagin sight. One of them lifted the lido? the old blue cheB 1 -, and called the others to help 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 bean its guardian. It would have sold for a few dollars, bat though the gnawings of hunger had come often, and the cold had fought' its way to her marrow, that poor old woman would not part with that relio of better days. _ It may have been a link to connect her with wealth and love. Beneath it was treasure still more priceless. Carefully wrapped 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 relio. A child, dead in its young years, bad worn that dime around its neck as a gift or talisman. There was a child's mitten, stained and worn, bnt a mitten knit by a proud young for her child. It could not speak to tell the dim past, but it had power. Ab the women saw it they covered their faces with their aprons and wept. There was a boy's cap and a girl's hat, both to 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, and 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 - searoh of Time itself, was a familiar toy—a child'sdumb 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 dolls head, a boy's fishline, some toy chairs, a yarn ball, and other things to show that in the long ago that' dead woman had felt the soft kiss- of children, heard their "good nights," and thanked God that she was blessed. Each relio was wept over—each was replaced with: fresh tea,- stains. They asked the old blue chest no qucstione. 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 each other:

'lf she had only told us of this, how we would have loved her and sought to lighten her sorrows.'

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