--_Othello_.


I


When James Graham, carpenter, enlisted, it was with the assurance that
if he lost his life his grateful country would provide for his widow.
He did lose it, and Mrs. Graham received, in exchange for a husband
and his small earnings, the sum of $12 a month. But when you own your
own very little house, with a dooryard for chickens (and such stray
dogs and cats as quarter themselves upon you), and enough grass for a
cow, and a friendly neighbor to remember your potato-barrel, why, you
can get along--somehow. In Lizzie Graham's case nobody knew just how,
because she was not one of the confidential kind. But certainly there
were days in winter when the house was chilly, and months when fresh
meat was unknown, and years when a new dress was not thought of. This
state of things is not remarkable, taken in connection with an income
of $144 a year, and a New England village where people all do their
own work, so that a woman has no chance to hire out.

All the same, Mrs. Graham was not an object of charity. Had she been
that, she would have been promptly sent to the Poor Farm. No sentimental
consideration of a grateful country would have moved Jonesville to
philanthropy; it sent its paupers to the Poor Farm with prompt common
sense.

When Jonesville's old school-teacher, Mr. Nathaniel May, came wandering
back from the great world, quite penniless, almost blind, and with a
faint mist across his pleasant mind, Jonesville saw nothing for him