HIS
LITTLE
ERROR .
BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT .
THE old brown house stood on the slope of It was late in May, one year, when the apple- . the hill, a long way back from the road, and in trees were in their fullest blossom, and the the very center of the great orchard, much to old house like a bower, that Forey Elwyn came the indignation of all the neighbors, who set back to it to die. their houses in the road, and could imagine no He was not forty years old yet, but he had other reason for old Squire Elwyn's putting his worn life thread -bare, and life had worn him where he had , " half a mile from nowhere, " out completely ; so he had returned to the old than that he was " allers a cross - grained critterhouse, that he had not seen for almost twenty that wanted to be different from other folks. " years, to sit on the porch in the pleasant spring But the old man had been many years gone light and listen to the songs of the birds, and too far away to hear their complaints ; and his enjoy the fragrance of the apple-blossoms, as he widowed daughter, who owned the place now, had done in his childish days. was not of a disposition to trouble herself much "I used to dream about them," he said to his more about their opinions than her father had sister. "I could not die till I had seen it all done before her. She was not fond of company, once more." And Mrs. Forrest looked very grim in her and, perhaps, was glad the steep hill stretched between her domain and the little attempt at a effort to hide how shocked she was by the village, which had no more dignified appellation changes in him, and said only that she'd no than the " Corners." doubt he'd be better there-nothing like native Probably, no lover of the beautiful would have air for people that were not strong. found fault with Squire Elwyn's choice. The Verily, he had never been strong physically great orchard could be seen for miles, for he or mentally, this poor Forey Elwyn ; yet it would had taken possession of the loftiest hill in the have been difficult to tell exactly what was valley region ; and whether spring made it look wanting. in the distance like a white cloud settling slowly His life, like many another life that never is down, or in summer it stretched out in a long, written, had been a failure ; yet at no stage of green sweep, like the graceful swell of billows, it would Solomon himself have known exactly it was always a picturesque feature in the land- how to bid him set it right ; nor had it been such from indolence or vice. We say certain scape. Forty years before, the old man had planted people are born to ill luck, or under an evil his first trees, and laid the foundation of his star ; it was said, long before our time, of past house ; and though the dwelling was an ordi- and gone unfortunates, and will be said in time nary affair enough originally, age had invested to come ; and nobody means the phrase to sound it with certain charms, though scarcely of the either atheistical or paganish, and yet it has sort to appeal loudly to the practical people of both significations if we were to analyze it. the neighborhood . There was a long porch But it matters little-Forey Elwyn's life had covered with woodbine and bitter-sweet ; stout, been a failure, or seemed such ; though, I supold running roses clambered up the windows ; pose, when we reach a higher sphere of existviolets and flowering almonds, and white and ence, somewhere away off, up among the endless yellow lilies, and wild geraniums and pinks, cycles, we shall be able to understand the things and hosts of other common flowers-the com- which have perplexed us here, and comprehend monest and the most beautiful in the world- the meaning of each of these incomplete lives, grew in luxuriance about the lawn-not that it and see how, in spite of their imperfections and was ever called that ; and the robins and cat- their incompleteness, they served their purpose birds, and even the shy, brown thrushes, loved in the perfect fullness ofthe plan of the Almighty to make their nests in the trees ; and all sum- Father. And Forey had come back to the old house to mer long golden orioles flitted about the porch, and wrens, and bobolinks, and song sparrows, die-it was well. In spite of our tears and our haunted the garden ; so that, from the first peep lamentations, it is always well when tired men of dawn till sunset, the air was vocal with music and women go away from this world. It is that meanest sort of sin, weakness, when we mean that could not be surpassed. 137
