Adam Dunlap, John McCoy, David Quintin, and William McKeen. So the record might be swelled with the names of our soldiers, their valor, and the war legislation of the town; but the want of space forbids, and all these will be found in the full "History of Windham, N. H.," devoted to such details. Suffice it to say that the record of our soldiers was valiant; the legislation of the town prompt, energetic, and patriotic; the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of our people, under all ́ the privations of war, were worthy of all honor. ETHEL FREEMAN: The Story of a Marriage that proved a Mistake. I. BY ELLEN M. MASON. No, father, I do not want Ethel to marry George Freeman. There is too much difference in their ages, in the first place. He is fifteen years older than she is in years, and twenty-five in knowledge of the wickedness of the world, hardening of the heart, and loss of the enjoyment of things innocent and simple that belong to youth, to those of Ethel's age. Then he is tyrannical and overbearing in disposition, and he is fickle like the whole of them. There never was a Freeman you could rely on!" and Mrs. Reed's white curls and purple cap-ribbons fluttered more and more disapprovingly as she went on. But you look only at the sentimental side of the question," said Ethel's father, a stout, handsome gentleman, whose calm manners and deliberate utterances were in decided contrast to his wife's impulsive ways. "George Freeman is rich; he can give Ethel a comfortable home, and she need never want for anything. He sowed his wild oats long ago, a large enough crop to last his lifetime, and is ready now to settle down, a sober, contented husband. Then Ethel is in love with him, and he is in love with her. Could there be a clearer case? Do be reasonable now, and don't let your romantic notions run away with you!" "Ethel is very young. If she cares for him, better for her to suffer a little now than to be wretched a lifetime. For she would be wretched. His love for her is only a fancy, that would pass away just as surely if she married him as though she did not. Like father, like son.' George Freeman is inconstant and treacherous, as his father was before him," said the lady, and a faint blush rose over her faded cheeks, and a pained look came into her eyes as she spoke. Mrs. Reed's youth had been darkened by the faithlessness of the father of the man who was the subject of their conversation. At middle age she had married her husband, and they had been very happy together. His calm, sure affection, which if it held none of the romance of youth, did her own, for the reason that the had none of its ficklenesss, brighten- whole interest of her girlhood had ing and making all her life pleasant. been absorbed in the ill-starred love Ethel was their only child, the darling affair whose memory had cast a of their old age. The mother, es- shadow-invisible to others and dim pecially, loved her with an intensity to herself, 't is true, but still a shadof feeling she had never felt for any ow-over her after life. "I have had being beside. And it had certainly my day, Ethel," she would say; been an advantage, and a guaranty of "now I want to see you enjoy yours. mutual respect and confidence, that Make the most of your heyday while Ethel had not made her début in so- it lasts,-your parties, your lovers, and ciety until after her mother had of all the admiration and flattery,become desirably attached to her only do not allow your head to be easy-chair and slippers, and weaned turned. One of these days you will from fashionable follies and the love lose it all, and be a thrifty housewife, of the applause of the multitude. a prudent wife, and an anxious mothThe unusually great disparity in the er. So have all the pleasure you can ages of mother and daughter had while you can." spared Mrs. Reed the humiliating discontent of a brilliant woman become a little passée at the social successes and triumphs of a beautiful daughter. And who in society has not seen the pitiable and belittling struggle between maternal gratification and unnatural envy of a daughter's bright youth and youth's delights? And yet the envy seems natural enough to some natures; to those for whom the years have only rubbed off the bloom and beautiful illusions of life, instead of developing, ripening, and sweetening the character. It is bitter hard for such a woman, once a belle and fed on flattery till it has become as her daily bread, to resign her belledom; and that her successor, whom she must in one sense at least regard as a rival, comes into her kingdom by virtue of lineal descent, makes her abdication only a trifle less bit ter. Mrs. Reed had enjoyed Ethel's conquests as though they had been her own,-in fact, more than she ever The effect of this delectable but unorthodox advice had been to beget the closest confidence. Mrs. Reed had been cognizant of the beginning and progress of every one of Ethel's affaires du cœur, from the time of the chubby little boys in pinafores, who sacrificed molasses candy and peanuts on the altars of their loves, to that of the appearance of an apprehensible husband. Against George Freeman she had steadily set her face from the first. She read him pretty well, though where a kindlier observer might have discovered pleasant possibilities and likely happy developments by reading between the lines, she was shortsighted, or saw nothing at all. Most people would have agreed with her that Freeman was not the match for her daughter, but few would have considered him a wholly undesirable match. That he had been greatly slandered every one believed. Besides being rich, he was handsome and agreeable in person, of pleasant manners, and not without ability. But Mrs. Reed unequivocally and emphatically disliked him; and on her husband's telling her that Freeman had asked their daughter's hand of him, she expressed her feelings in the foregoing decisive terms. Mr. Reed was one of those easygoing husbands, who, whenever family questions involving responsibility are at issue, always seek refuge behind the irresponsible aphorism, "I wish to avoid all domestic disturbances." So, on this occasion, having said his say, he remarked uneasily, "Well, well, mother, you and Ethel can settle it between you," and left the room. II. look upon. Her beauty, it must be confessed, was the greatest fascination she possessed, for she was neither brilliant nor very accomplished nor strikingly talented in any special direction. "I want my daughter above all things to be womanly," her father had said. "I want neither a musical genius, nor a literary genius, nor an artistical genius, nor a curiosity of any sort." So Ethel knew a little of various arts and vanities commonly termed accomplishments, but was thoroughly domestic in her tastes, while her housewifely ways were of the sort most men prize after marriage, if not so likely as more showy traits to attract regard before. Ethel Reed inherited both her But her remarkable beauty had mother's chivalrous faith in the high- thus far proven a sufficiently powerest manhood and womanhood, and ful magnet, and though it be somesomewhat Utopian tenets regarding what out of date to give the portrait marriage, and her father's practical of the heroine, yet as every one who sense and pertinacity of purpose. It knew Ethel was consciously or unwas natural to her to invest those she consciously greatly influenced by her cared for with ideal, ennobling quali- looks, they seemed so essentially an ties; but duties devolving upon her element of her very personality, that from having too fully accepted as it is manifestly desirable to describe genuine that which was only imag- her. She was tall, slender, straight, inary she would never seek to evade but of well-rounded figure, and litheshould disillusion come too late to some as a willow wand. Her head, her. Her mother, knowing this, was beautifully shaped and well set on a the more acutely sensitive to the fore- slender, graceful neck, was adorned boded consequences of the proposed with abundant masses of black hair marriage. She knew well the folly of that rare quality that seems to of direct opposition. She must pro- emit a soft sheen with every changing ceed cautiously, yet at once, and she light. Her eyes were large and decided to consider carefully her ar- black, and possessed a peculiar softguments, and present them in unas- ness and shyness, and long, thick sailable array to Ethel, trusting to lashes added to this effect;-one of the latter's strong sense and practical her admirers not inaptly compared views to be convinced, and to sub- them to deep lakes in the darkness mit. of a thick-leaved wood. She had a Ethel was extremely beautiful to brilliant brunette complexion, the cheeks always the deepest tint of theirs would be, from the reasons she the rose; her mouth was well formed, large rather than small, expressing decision and firmness, and redeeming the almost too sweet look of the eyes. Added to these was the something called style that is not the mere wearing of the most fashionable clothes, nor a certain bearing or gait or air, but an intangible but true talent given to the typical young lady of New York society; though in Ethel the usual dash and sometimes bizarre tout ensemble were tempered by-why not say domesticity? Both parents were very proud of her beauty, and Ethel herself relied too much upon it, forgetting that however attractive it might prove at first, if it were not merely a fortunate adornment to more lasting charms, it becomes often forgotten or unnoticed-valueless. The next evening Ethel was at the theatre, with George Freeman as escort. Her mother used often to sit up until after her return from opera, party, and ball, to hear her recount her gaieties, and they would sit gossipping together like two girls; but to-night she was to persuade her of the unworthiness of a favored lover, and her spirits sank at thought of the encounter. The play they had been to see was King Lear, and Mrs. Reed had an undefined belief that Ethel's feelings of duteous obedience and honor to parents would consequently be in the ascendant. She began by speaking of what her husband had told her, and of Ethel's evident favor to Mr. Freeman, while her daughter listened silently. then argued the probable, nay almost certain, results of such a marriage as She had given Ethel's father. Ethel had been standing at the window looking out into the night; she then came and sat on a low stool by her mother's knee, where she could look directly in her face. "I admit a great deal you say, mother, but I see much real goodness and latent nobleness of character in him that you have never noticed; and he says," she added, blushing rosy red, "that I can help him lead a worthier and higher life; that I should be an inspiration to him!" "Jane Eyre and Lord Rochester," said her mother, sadly scornful. "Yes, Jane Eyre and Lord Rochester, if you please to call us so, mother. I am sorry you do not like it, but indeed it is too late to talk to me now. I knew you had not a high opinion of George ;-nobody thinks half as well of him as he deserves, but I never thought you positively disliked him, as I see now you do ;and why do you?" "I suppose it is natural." And then Mrs. Reed told Ethel the story of her youth. It was a touching confidence, and when she ended tears flowed over Ethel's cheeks. "Poor mother! poor, poor mother!" she said, smoothing the thin silver hair; and the two wept together, the mother's tears being the first she had shed for years, and the last she ever shed over the old love affair, and these more for the sympathy of her daughter, and because of the fear and sorrow she felt for her, than for any lingering grief. "But we will not visit the sins of the fathers upon the children,'" said Ethel, after a little while. "George is constant, and as true as steel: you very long train, and superb point lace will see, mother." "But if I am right,-as God forbid that I should be,—if you should be wretched and miserable, what could, what should you do?" persisted Mrs. Reed. "I should do the best I could. We marry for better or for worse, and if it should be for worse instead of for better, all my life long I would never break my promise," said Ethel solemnly. "But you are so young, only eighteen, and you talk of suffering a lifetime! Child, you do not know what you are saying. Only wait a few years;—women see very differently at twenty-five from what they do at eighteen. Wait, Ethel." "No, mother, darling mother, I must not!" and the firm lines contracted around the girl's mouth; "but oh how sorry I am you do not like it. And we have always been such friends, too." "My darling, you have my consent and my blessing, and may God help you!" said Mrs. Reed tremulously; and so ended the sad and unsatisfactory interview. III. Mr. Reed was very well pleased with his prospective son-in-law, and he made a grand wedding. Hundreds of guests thronged the house. The ceremony was performed by several very High Churchmen, under the conventional marriage bell of snowy, sweet-smelling flowers. The presents were numerous and expensive, the bridal dress costly and becoming. The society papers said," The beautiful bride was charmingly attired in a magnificent white satin robe, with veil held in place with a splendid bandeau of diamonds," etc., etc. Could a young couple have set out for the matrimonial Elysian fields with more propitious wedding auguries? The bridegroom was very much in love. He had lived the life of a man of the world and of fashion, and was weary of vanities. He was also a man of letters, a dilettante in a mild way, and he fondly fancied that Ethel's home-like ways and domestic likings would combine with his poetical predilections to make an ideal home. In furtherance of his idyllic project they went to reside at P, there being a suggestiveness of the country about it that was dear to George, while the ways were not enough unlike New York ways to cause discomfort from finding an unpleasant adaptation a necessity. Ethel's young friends were loudly indignant at her being taken away to an abode that they stigmatized as being "neither fish, flesh, nor fowl; not the country, and too large for a village, but too small for a city." But Ethel did not mind, and went happily to her new home. P―, though decidedly provincial, is intensely self-respecting and ambitious. Society was intellectual, cultured, and would have been aesthetic only that the æsthetic wave had not yet rolled in upon us when the Freemans went there to live. Ethel found her brilliant beauty of much less avail than in New York, and her "manners debonair" and stylishness of not much account. Neither were the neatness, system, and comfort of her housekeeping highly appreciated, and she soon felt |