God grant the times approaching
Be full of glad events,
No unheroic aims reproaching
Our line of Presidents.
* * * * *
V.
TWO NEIGHBOURS.
WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE.
It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July afternoons.
Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her clean cap and apron,
and was sitting on the north porch, making an unbleached cotton shirt
for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore unbleached shirts at harvest-time.
Mrs. Hill was a thrifty housewife. She had pursued this economical
avocation for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to
"_shu_!" away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about
the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden shutting
down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to drop her work, and
exclaim:
"Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever _would_ come to
see me!"
"Why, I have thought a great many times I would come," said the visitor,
stamping her little feet--for she was a little woman--briskly on the
blue flag-stones, and then dusting them nicely with her white cambric
handkerchief, before venturing on the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And,
shaking hands, she added, "It _has_ been a good while, for I remember
when I was here last I had my Jane with me--quite a baby then, if you
mind--and she is three years old now."
"Is it possible?" said Mrs.
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