WILLIAM ANDERSON'S HEART AND HAND—HIS EARLY LIFE, HOME AND SURROUNDINGS.

Two little shreds of yellow paper which would not pass current for the value of an ordinary letter stamp! And yet they are to be cherished in the family Bible as a treasure worthy of loving gaze and reverent touch.

Look at them closer. One resembles a hand and the other a heart. Even in their freshest and brightest days they would have been condemned by the artist whose standard is the ideal, and by the anatomist whose sole appreciation is for the real; for their departure from anatomical truth is not in the line of artistic license. Still they are sacred to us.

Why are the papers so yellow? you ask. Because more than half a century has elapsed since they were cut into these shapes. Why so frayed and worn? Because for years they were carried in a woman's bosom. Why so stained? Because they have been wept over; and doubtless some of the bitterest of all tears—the tears which fall from the widowed and the fatherless, have moistened them. But here is a deeper stain than any which can be made by any human tears—what is it? The blood of an honest man, a patriot; the blood which flowed from the real heart of the man whose real hand clipped these little uncouth models from the old-fashioned sheet and sent them to his lady-love.

Turn the papers over. What do you read?

"William Anderson sends this hand to his sweetheart, Emeline T. Stewart. Like myself, it is yours now and forever, if you will it so.

"NEW VINEYARD, MAINE, Christmas, 1829."

"Dear Emeline:

I offer my heart to you. Keep it if you can love me and will be my wife.

"Your true lover—and husband, as I hope to be,

WILLIAM ANDERSON."

The writing is cramped, for the hand which laboriously traced so many words within so small a space, though it belonged to the young schoolmaster of the village, was quite as well used to carrying a rifle or wielding an ax in the forest as to this scholar's work. The composition, too, is heavy: William Anderson was not a poet; he was but a plain youth whose best effort was to put his honest wish into honest words, and to send his blunt message freighted with all his hopes for the future.

Little did he know how his paper hand and heart would be hoarded to come into the loving care of his descendants! The strong man is dead—his mangled clay rests amid the decaying beauties of a city by the banks of the lordly Mississippi. The devoted woman is dead—her tortured body reposes under mighty Wasatch shadows. But the fragile papers survive; and the love which brought them into being lives. It lives eternally, if there be reward in heaven for sacrifice.

William Anderson was the son of a New Vineyard farmer—well to do with the grosser goods of this world, as well as being possessed of family pride; and the boy was taught, along with the heavy duties of the field, something of books. He was indulged, too, in the physical luxury of a yearly meeting-suit, made out of wondrous fabrics brought all the way from Boston, a city more distant and mythical in the estimation of the New Vineyard people of that day than is Benares to this age.

Large families of children were in the sturdy and healthy New England fashion of the first quarter of this century, and William's brothers and sisters numbered near a half score. So the boys were impelled to industry and self-reliance.

Religious profession of some kind was one of the common comforts of life; and Mrs. Joy Anderson was proud to marshal "for meetin'" each Sabbath a troop as numerous and well-behaved as the family party of Charity Carver or Hope Smith. William's mother was of a Puritan family, and vied with her female neighbors, whose names indicated the same proud descent, in having every able member of her household a regular attendant upon divine service.

From the country within a radius of five miles of the plain, old-fashioned, stone meeting house, came, for gossip as much as genuine worship, all the settlers—rich and poor, farmers, graziers, woodsmen and the few traffickers who were able to make their Yankee shrewdness a means of maintenance.

One of the principal men of the region comprised in the scattered village of New Vineyard, was Hugh Stewart, farmer and whilom speculator in lands and timber. His family was wont to journey from his residence to the church—a distance of two miles in a carryall.

This vehicle was the object of much reverence; and Hugh managed by frequent applications of varnish to keep it in that state of glossiness which constituted its chief awe in New Vineyard eyes. Regularly, rain or shine, its appearance at the last turn of the sandy road leading to the meeting-house was announced by some watchful youngster and the waiting worshipers, who usually assembled an hour in advance of sermon time, rushed to the porch to watch the family of the Stewarts dismount from their carriage. Though this practice was continued for a term of years, it never failed to awaken interest. I doubt if the London Lord Mayor's gilded chariot ever aroused more real excitement among his satiated townsmen than was evinced at each appearance of this ancient vehicle at the meeting-house steps.

The occupants of the carryall were invariably checked off upon a score of fingers: "There's Hugh and Martha, and there's Dan'l and Marchant and Em'line and Car'line."

If one of these usual attendants happened for any reason to be absent, there were comments and surmises without number until some active investigator could ascertain the cause; and once learned, the news was whispered about from lips quivering with eagerness to tell unto ears twitching with anxiety to hear.

One of the most intensely interested of the watches was Mrs. Joy Anderson, who felt all that her religion would permit her to entertain of envy for the almost regal state in which the Stewarts were brought to church.

More than one scathing rebuke fell from her very capable tongue upon the well-calloused understanding of William, the senior Anderson. Her stock complaint is worthy of preservation as showing how little the style of marital reproach has varied within three-quarters of a century.

"I don't care for myself, and you know I don't; I don't say a grumbling word at you for not taking me to New York when Mrs. Stewart went with her husband though you know well enough you were quite as able to pay my way as he was to take his wife; and everybody knows that if anyone deserves a rest I do; but no, I never can go to visit my cousin Faith Brewster that I think the world of, though I've never seen her and only heard from her twice in my life, and she may have been dead these ten years for all I know or you care, and even then it would only be my duty to visit her grave and I could carry along a little box of mignonette, in case of, to plant on her last resting place—no I never say one word about these things, and I always spare your feelings instead of telling you how often Mrs. Stewart looks at me as if she had a kind of contemptuous pity for my suffering; but what I feel so awfully hurt about are the airs that the Stewart children put on when they get out of the carriage on Sunday at the meeting-house door; and we've got more than half the distance to travel and you could well afford something of the kind, and then we could get to the meeting-house even if some of us were sick, and because we've had not a day's sickness in the house in fifteen years is no sign we won't have, but all the more sign that it must come sooner or later—"

Though this some what inconsistent speech was received with no apparent emotion by the substantial husband and father whom it was intended to pierce with its sharp sarcasm; it always created a little excitement among the children.

Mrs. Stewart was really a good woman who was compelled by frequent attacks of illness to pay some attention to personal comfort, and who had never thought of triumphing over her esteemed friend Joy with a glance of pity. Mrs. Anderson was also a good woman; but she unwittingly taught her children to hold envy and dislike for neighbors. Probably she was not the first woman, as she was certainly not the last to pursue this foolish, unchristianlike course.

Little William was often an attentive listener to this wail of his mother; and from it he tried to conceive a deep and bitter hatred for the rival aristocratic family at the other end of the village.

Very strangely, this effort of the boy, begun and religiously pursued under a sense of family loyalty, was utterly unavailing. There was something in the soft eyes and patient face of Mrs. Stewart which consumed all his bitter thoughts and made him feel more like kissing the lady's hand than hating her, even for his injured mother's sake.

Often and often when she was assisting the children from the carriage, while Hugh—something too careless in this respect, was taking his horse from the thills or hailing neighbors in a hearty voice, little Will Anderson felt a barely resistible inclination to rush forward and offer his help. Was he restrained by a fear of punishment from his mother, or the dread of a refusal from Mrs. Stewart, or anticipation of ridicule from the assembled villagers? Not one of these fears influenced him in the least: he was simply afraid that there was one of the children that he could not lift. It was not tall Dan, nor fat March; for he felt that he could toss them both over the meeting house if such conduct would have been advantageous to the Stewart family; though either of the boys was as large as two such chaps as Will. And of course it was not little Carrie, for she was only a baby, three years old, "lighter than goose down," as Will thought, but did not say aloud. But it was Emeline.

Will had looked this girl in the face, from a distance, two or three times—she had brown eyes, deep and true; and brown hair, in heavy, rich coils. Her face was as full of unsullied beauty as a lily blossom. It had always a thoughtful expression as if the little brain were solving some grave problem of more than human interest. At least, all this is what Will saw and felt in an indistinct sort of fashion. I doubt if she were quite so ethereally beautiful as Will imagined; for girls born and reared on New England farms are not as fragile as a hot-house flower, and I dare say that she laughed as often as other girls; I know from personal knowledge that in later life she was not too prim to play practical jokes.

But Will felt that he could not, for his very life, offer to lift this girl from the carriage step. He was stout and heavy twelve years old; and Emeline was light and slender nine; yet the exertion, especially if she should happen to look at him from her wonderful eyes, would be fatal.