Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 320 pages of information about Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland.

Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 320 pages of information about Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland.

She had taken the rich trimming from some of her plainest dresses, and wore them when she could not possibly avoid it.  She did her work with great neatness and dispatch, and was supplied with all she could possibly do, so that she remunerated the kind hearted woman who had boarded her through her apprenticeship, and been very attentive to her in many ways, for she truly pitied the poor orphan.

In the spring Mr. Clinton’s vacant office was again occupied by a young lawyer, who came into the village, from New York, named Henry Lorton, and half the young ladies’ heads were turned, by the beauty and elegance of the young northerner.  Parties were formed, walks projected up the mountains, moonlight sails upon the silvery bosom of the Juniata, and every means devised to draw the young lawyer into company, and love with the southern beauties; but they declared his heart was as cold as the region he came from.

All these things Henriette heard, as she sat plying her needle, or stood fitting a dress to the forms of some of her gay companions; but now her interests were separate from theirs, and she toiled on, through the weary day.  There were some who appreciated her motives, and spoke kindly to the poor orphan, and the sweet consciousness of well doing sweetened her cup of toil.

Henry Lorton was educated upon liberal New England principles, and his mother was a dress-maker before her marriage with his father, and besides, he had ever been taught to respect the industrious part of the community, and his high minded principles revolted from the overbearing aristocracy of the place, and therefore, he appeared reserved to those with whom he associated.

Henriette felt grieved as she visited her father’s grave; there was no monument erected at his head, while at her mother’s stood an elegant polished marble one, of great value, having a female bearing an infant in her arms, chiselled upon it, and this one thought occupied her mind; she would rise early and eat the bread of carefulness, might she but erect a monument to her father’s grave; and often she burned the midnight lamp, and rose before the stars had faded from the sky, to accomplish her holy purpose.

A young lady, who was married about that time, saw and wished to purchase an elegantly trimmed satin dress, and Henriette assented, thinking the value of it would be more sacred to her eyes, in her father’s monument, than elsewhere.  The young lady paid her the full value of this and several other articles of clothing, and she soon had the pleasure of seeing the splendid monument reared over her father’s grave.

Ellen Horton had ever met Henriette with a cordial greeting, and she did not feel the same shrinking when she was requested to spend a few days at the residence of the wealthy Edward Horton that she did in going to many other places, and she went with a cheerful heart to prepare the splendid bridal dress for Ellen.

Next day, Charles Hunter, the future bridegroom, arrived from Providence, the future home of the fair Ellen, and the young ladies and gentlemen of the place were invited to spend the evening.

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Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.