seemed merely a name, a dreadful something which could never occur But a few months had slipped by. They stood once again under the apple trees. The blossoms were all blown away. In the fervid summer sun the fruit had taken shape and matured, and the boughs were laden with the red and yellow apples. The wind blew chill and the fallen leaves rustled dismally under their feet. The parting words were being tittered. He loved her still, but she, alas! she loved him not. The chill that passed over her slight frame was not due alone to the autumn wind. Did she love another ? No. She had been mistaken, that was all, and had found it out before it was too late. The great wealth of love and affection, which is the heritage of every true woman, reach ing out for an object upon which to lavish its bounty, had fancied that this was its destiny. But reason, calm, cold and calculating, asserted itself more and more as the days went by, and branded the attachment as a mere passing fancy which could not endure because congeniality of taste was lacking. The pleasures and pursuits that to him gave life its peculiar zest to her were dis tasteful; and for him to even conceive the aspirations of her soul, the longings that filled her days, was an impossibility. So her love, anchorless, reached out again into the great un known, seeking for something tangible to materialize out of the great storehouse of the infinite that it might lay hold upon it. And they separated to go their individual ways; but both lives were the sweeter and the purer for the experience. The dry leaves rustled under their feet and the wind moaned among the branches. The shadows of evening were gathering and the first chilling frost of the season was laying its icy touch upon field and forest and meadow and in their hearts. As Nature would awaken in a few months to a new and more beautiful life, so would they in the fullness of time awaken from the lethargy of sorrow, which had fallen like a pall over their youthful spirits, to a more beauti ful life, a more spiritual life and to a deeper realization of its true si nificance. • . The Free Lance [ rEBRIJARY,
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers