Grace Dawson [pp. 106-111]

106 APPLETONS' JO URNAL OF POPULAR [APRIL 24,
SPRING FLOWERS.
T HE loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth,
And they first feel the sun: so violets blue,
So the soft, star-like primrose, drenched in dew,
The earliest of spring-time's fragrant birth,
To gentlest touches sweetest tones reply.
Still humbleness, with her low-breathed voice,
Can steal o'er man's proud heart and win his choice
From earth to heaven with mightier witchery
Than eloquence or wisdom e'er could own.
Bloom on, then, in your shade-contented bloom,
Sweet flowers! nor deem yourselves to all unknown.
Heaven knows you, by whose gales and dews ye thrive;
They know, who one day for their altered doom
Shall thank you, taught by you t'abase themselves and live.
GRACE DAWSON.
UR heroine was not at all pretty.
0- Family traditions said that she was born in Boston-the city
celebrated for being the hub from which the spokes of the universe
radiate.
The mother of Grace died in those early years of which children
keep no memory, and God no record against them. Her father had
failed in business in New England, and when his half-brother, Jonathan Wilde, moved to Philadelphia, Mir. Dawson yielded to the suggestion that three playmates and a mother would be better for Grace
than his own desolate New England hearthstone, and the little girl
dwelt thenceforth on the banks of the Delaware.
Her uncle sent the bills for her clothing to her father, and received
pay for allowing her to eat and sleep with his children, at about that
shade under boarding-house rates, covered by the advantages of her
being "permanent and not particular." Many an older victim finds
out, when too late, that the fiction of being made "entirely at home,"
implies the utter neglect which a domestic might, perforce, submit to,
without any of the kindnesses a child might expect.
Of her father, Grace saw but little, as it was understood that he
was trying to recover his broken fortunes by the usual Wall Street
efforts, in New York City. His labors did not seem to amount to
much, and her uncle, Jonathan, had more than once rebuked the gift
of some substantial article of dress or jewelry to Grace, on the ground
that the father could not afford such extravagance.
H[Ier board and school, and store-bills, had always been promptly
paid, but there seemed, ever-present with the family of which she was
an inmate, an impression that some such payment might be the final
one; even if her father did not follow up this criminal domestic default, by applying to borrow money. Little of any definite nature was
ever said, but her two beautiful cousins, Irene and Fainny, always
treated her with the sort of condescension due to a poor relation. Her
aunt and uncle, always incidentally mentioned at the breakfast-table,
when a month's bills were due, and the little boarder felt a nervous
presentiment that if her father ever did try to borrow mon'ey of her
well-to-do uncle, there would be some little difficulty about retaining or
obtaining a house-girl, and she would quietly fall into that position.
John was the oldest child and the boasted genius of the family,
and it was considered quite a favor to be asked to wait on him in such
little matters as finding a book or bringing a hat or umbrella.
Time, for all of these people, had passed on in the most commonplace of ways, until one day in the early summer of 1865. That
morning the face and form of Grace were framed in one of the lower
windows of the red-brick house, with its contrasting trimmings of
white marble, that stood in the upper part of Chestnut Street. On
looking down, she saw her uncle coming hastily up the street, at an
hour much earlier than usual. She disappeared from the window, to
open the hall-door, and was told to dress speedily, to take the next
train for New York. A telegram had been received from her father,
stating that he was somewhat ill, and wished to see his daughter and
half-brother as soon as possible. He had removed from his lodgings,
on Eleventh Street, down to the St. Nicholas, and they were to meet
him there.
An hour later, the two were whirling over the Camden and Amboy
Railroad, and, about dusk, alighted from a Broadway stage at the
ladies' entrance of the great marble pile, which was their destination.
Our heroine had little time to decide whether she liked it better
than the Continental or not, or whether she could endure the crowd of
the great metropolitan way after the quiet streets of Philadelphia; for
she was soon standing by the bedside of the father she had seen but
once before, in that year, and who was evidently dying.
We fear her silent tears were a little embittered by the thought of
how much disturbed her uncle and aunt would be, if the next month's
bills were not paid when due.
No passing-bell helped to swell the ceaseless din of the city, which
filled all things with its steady jar, and the man retained his strength
of voice and intellectual faculties to the last. Only the nameless
something which falls like a shadow from the spread wings of death,
on the face of the dying, told that the soul had begun to withdraw
from its chrysalis of clay.
Besides the two new arrivals, there were no persons in the room,
save the physician and a gray-haired stranger of portly form, kind
face, and seemingly of some fifty-five years of age. Grace had been
too long accustomed to subdue her emotions to be very demonstrative
even in her grief, and little was said before the man who was hovering
on the confines of two worlds asked attention to his closing business
in this one, for which-as much as to have his child with him in his
last moments-he had desired her to come.
Much to the surprise of Jonathan Wilde, Mr. Dawson began to speak
of having accumulated ten thousand dollars as his interest in a partnership with the gray-haired gentleman, whom he mentioned as his friend
Mr. William Mann. Mr. Wilde had known that a little room up-stairs,
at the corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, near Wall Street,
had been the den which Mr. Dawson called his office. He, indeed, had
once been in it, without, however, seeing Mr. Mann, who, it seems,
had all along been the partner in the rent, as well as in the profits,
which had not been supposed to exist. It was easy enough in the great
city, where no one concerns himself to know what his neighbor is doing,
to accumulate much more than the few thousands mentioned, and just
as easy to lose it all in a day as to gain it by the toil of years. Mr.
Dawson had been fifteen years in New York, and Grace was now seventeen years old.
A simple will had been drawn up, leaving the ten thousand dollars
with Mr. Mann, and also a bond to Grace from the latter, to pay interest on the money at six per cent., which would give six hundred dollars a year, and pay the few customary expenses of his daughter as
usual. At her marriage, or expressing a wish to settle to herself, after
the age of twenty, the entire sum was to be paid to her. After this
disposal of his property, and a little gift to each of the two nieces,
Irene and Fanny, it seemed a little useless for the will to go on, and, in
a separate clause, make his daughter sole heiress of his property,
and Mr. Mann the executor-said property seeming to consist in the
old leather trunk standing near the bed, and the rather seedy overcoat hanging in the closet. Mr. Wilde took it to be the mere pretext of the lawyer to spin out the writing, and make show enough for
his fee. Isis thoughts were running in another channel, and at length
shaped themselves into the question, "Would it not be better, brother,
to pay the money over to me, and let me do the best I can with it, for
Grace? You know I am a good manager, and have made thirty or
forty thousand while you were making ten.":~
"I have thought of that," said the dying man, "but a man of your
standing could borrow money for business use at less than six per
cent. outside of the fluctuations of currency. The expenses of Grace
are nearly six hundred dollars a year, and, as Mr. Mann proposes to
pay that, it will perhaps save a tax on your own purse. Besides, it is
now invested in our old business, and Mr. Mann gives security."
Seeing nothing to reply, Mr. Wilde made none, and then Mr. Dawson said that he felt his end was very near, and he would like to see
his daughter alone for a little while.
All the others went to one of the parlors, and father and child
were left with no witness to their last interview, save the waiting angel
— Death.
The gentleman lay quiet a few moments, with eyes closed, hands
folded, and lips moving as if in prayer, and, when at length he spoke,
his voice was so clear and strong, that, to have heard and not seen
him, one would have supposed he had yet many years to live.
"My daughter," he said, "listen attentively, and think calmly, on
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APPLEETONS' JO U'R-NAL O_F POPULAR
[APRIL 24,