Miscellancous.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1568, 22 July 1882, Page 6

Miscellaneous.

A FIELD OF BATTLK. I had my letter to write and post, and this involved a five-mile drive by moonlight to the rear across the most ghastly field which can well be imagined. I had some trouble in finding" my carriage. I had left it at a well defined position on the battlefield of the day before, but to reach it I had to walk for more than a mile over a plain where the carcapses of men and horses were not merely thickly strewn, but frozen into* all sorts of fantastic attitudes. The theremometor had been sixteen degress below the freezing point on the previous night, and men only slightly wounded, who had not been able to crawl to their comrades had been frozen to death One man was stiff in a sitting position, with both .his arms lifted straight over his head, as though his last moments had been spent in an invocation, and it gave one a shudder in the clear moonlight to approach him. Others were crumpled up in death agony, and so frozen. In places, many togother, French, and Germans; were mingled, not because they had been at clo3e quartets, but because the same ground had first been occupied by one and then by the other, perJiaps at an , ■ interval of half a day. I think I was more comfortable with bullets dinging in my card than- .walking amid the stiffened men ; ,and ifc.was quite -a relief jtOySee a ,haystack,ton fire t and a ■regiment, warming, themselves } at, ,it and my prudent coachman within comfortable distance ,of the iiiddy" blaze. , « s The» comes, rthejhard,partof,,l;J>e^cqwespon l deja^a,life! J ' ~I had,Btill/tb-dine.;, .'.,1 had lived,; sinjse jtKe, { morning'rt coffee on. a* loaf o^bread^ V^hich I tiad'beetL picking, all^day, (|ifienvtp wri|e ' myJetfce'r,,a ,^^^ss'^?^!?, *that ( iusp6"o r thejiextVmorninijy eaply> sp^ j^^«^^g^yevme|.|iuie^|Kj[etTOTchejß.eld^fp^

chair after, breakfast for a penny, or at the most, two-pence half-penny. — Blackwood.

A WOMAN'S HEART. " lemme see," said the old man musing with bis chin on the top of his cane and speaking in the shrill falsetto voice of age, " It must be forty-seven years since Ann Maria died, yet I can remember the very gown she wore and the color of the long curls that hung down over her shoulder and the red on her cheeks that waa like a winter apple ! Dear me ! she's never faded a mite in all them years, but just sits there a lookin' at me as 6he did when I brought her home. You see there was a kind of a romance tew it, and I've offen and often thought that if I had the power and could rite it out it would read beautifulier than a novel ; the fact waa Ann Maria had another beau, but that ain't no wonder, for she was the smarted and prettiest and best girl in the hull country side, but what I mean, sho had favoured him ever so little, afore I come around, and begun keepin' her company. Folks kind of coupled their names together, and some of 'em, .to bother me, hinted that she cared a heap for him. Why, you'd orter hey seen him ! He was slim and fine as a lady, and wore gaiter shoes, and had holler eyes es if he'd never had quite euuff to eat. « Ann Maria care for him ?' why, the , girl had sense, and knew the difference atween a feller as straight as a sapling, with a color like new mahogany, and such a melancholy-looking specimen as that. Besides, I had a mortgage on the old homestead, and Ann Maria's father owed me money, but I did right by them. I told her if she'd marry me I'd deed the whole lot back to her, and I did. Well, we was married, and we made as purty a couple as ever you saw in your life. Ann Maria had a settin' out of china and linen, and I provided the house, and folks said I had the best wife a man ever had in the world, and everything just as I wanted it, and s'posed it would always be so ; but from the day we were married my wife failed in health and spirits, and in tix months I buried her ; folks said it was consumption, but it didn't run m the family. I Avas blind and full of prido then — but I've thought since," here the old man lowered his voice, '• that mebbe all the time she loved that white-faced chap as 1. , despised; a woman's heart, is a queer thing, and Love goes where it is. sent, bjijt ,$, ,B'he did and married me from ,a ,mistakened sense of duty, why all I've got to^ayjs I*,ve been punished, too, for I loye^ljier,!, I never felt it sq much as, I ..djcl when I Haw her lying white and peaceful in hor chintz gown with the. violet on < it, and something round her neck that I never*, see before — a little cheap locket, with some hair in that wasn't mine, t " Then I mistrusted that her heart was broke, and I said solemnly as I kissed her good-by : 'My dear, I'll never have a wife but you if I live the four score year and ten !' and I never have, and I think mebbe she will Bee that I loved her truly, and forgive me at last." — Detroit Free Press.

THE GERMAN WORKING CLASS. The working class particularly attract attention. The men and women that toil look so weary, so overworked, and withal so pitifully poor. Their faces look worn and wizened, and are marked with the hard lines that are the result of daily want. For the moat part these workers are exceptionally tidy, but poorly clad. They seem to show in their resignation that the hope of anything better, the expect ition of anything beyond, has been long crushed out by overwork. And yet thia working class is wonderfully industrious, saving and diligent but too often, hard, hard toil, from morning 1 until night, brings to them the pittance that barely prolongs life. All are willing to work will work well and faithfully, but there are more workers than places to be filled, and competition it so sharp, that whou work is secured, it is for a pittauce. But among the toilers, the women — oh, the women — the poor weary overburdened women, who are hero regarded as mere beasts of burden, especially awaken a thrill of sympathy in every true American heart. Certainly the prosperity of Dresden cannot bo seen in the .struggling working class. — Bulletin.