Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/259

 THE OLD FARM.

��251

��THE OLD FABM.

��A STORY IN THREE CHAPTERS.

��BY EARL ANDERSON.

��CHAP. II.

A year and more has passed since Charles Bradley left his New Hampshire hillside home to win fame and honor and worldly wealth, as he fondly hoped, in the New England metropolis. During all this time the friends who have loved him so well have received no message from him in answer to all their anxious letters of inquiry as to his situation and success in life, save a single brief note to Nellie, assuring her of his devotion, but announcing his determination to write no more to any, not even her he loved so well, until he could tell of some sure progress toward the goal of his ambition ; so waiting, watching, hoping, the little family in the cottage on the hill have pursued the daily routine of labor and duty.

It is midnight in Boston. The streets are dark, deserted and desolate. The lamps afford but a dull flickering light, and the air is filled with a sleety moisture which congeals on the pavement. Now and then a belated individual passes hur- riedly along, to home of comfort or abode of wretchedness — who shall say? " Bos- ton by gaslight " is far from being at- tractive now, however different at times the case may be. Yonder, across the street, a party of young men emerge from a drinking saloon, and separating with careless words, go their various ways. Let us follow him, who crossing near us, turns into a side street and walks leisurely on, as though commun- ing with his thoughts. His figure seems familiar, and as he passes a street lamp, we discern the well-known features of Charles Bradley. There is less elasticity in his step than on that bright August morning of the previous year when he took his last walk over the old farm, and

��a look of dejection is discernable upon his countenance. We follow him on- ward, turning from street to street, till finally he passes up a narrow alley, and, enteaing a dingy-looking boarding-house ascends to the third story, where he en- ters a little room with bare floor and walls, and a single window, looking out upon no green fields and waving forests in summer, or snowy expanse of hill and vale in winter, such as greeted his wak- ing eyes each morn from the window of his room at the old homestead; but against a blank brick wall scarce a dozen feet away, across the little back court. Not a golden ray of sunlight in the morn- ing or a glimmer of stars at night finds en- trance to the room. No breath of flowers or music of wild birds, wafted on the breeze, could ever greet the senses of its occupant. A narrow bed, a solitary chair, a cheap wash-stand and a small looking-glass, with the same trunk in which he had packed his earthly posses- sions on the morning of his departure from home, constitute the entire furnish- ing of Charles Bradley's room. It is indeed a desolate retreat ; and yet it is in just such close, bare, uncomfortable rooms as this, with just such cheerless surroundings, and none of the comforts of the happy though humble homes they have left upon the farms all over New England, that hundreds and thousands of onr young men are quartered after their hard day's toil in shop, or store, or market-place, or less desirable field of labor, if it so be that they have been for- tunate enough to find any honest em- ployment ! What wonder that some of them, yielding to despondency and des- peration, wander into the dark and de- vious ways of crime and dishonor, and that many inore, unable to resist the temptations that beset them, are led by

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