HIS
LITTLE
ERROR .
BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT . THE old brown house stood on the slope of the hill, a long way back from the road, and in the very center of the great orchard, much to the indignation of all the neighbors, who set their houses in the road, and could imagine no other reason for old Squire Elwyn's putting his where he had, " half a mile from nowhere," than that he was " allers a cross-grained critter that wanted to be different from other folks." But the old man had been many years gone too far away to hear their complaints ; and his widowed daughter, who owned the place now, was not of a disposition to trouble herself much more about their opinions than her father had done before her. She was not fond of company, and, perhaps, was glad the steep hill stretched between her domain and the little attempt at a village, which had no more dignified appellation than the 66 Corners." Probably, no lover of the beautiful would have found fault with Squire Elwyn's choice. The great orchard could be seen for miles, for he had taken possession of the loftiest hill in the valley region ; and whether spring made it look in the distance like a white cloud settling slowly down, or in summer it stretched out in a long, green sweep, like the graceful swell of billows, it was always a picturesque feature in the landscape. Forty years before, the old man had planted his first trees, and laid the foundation of his house ; and though the dwelling was an ordinary affair enough originally, age had invested it with certain charms, though scarcely of the sort to appeal loudly to the practical people of the neighborhood. There was a long porch covered with woodbine and bitter-sweet ; stout, old running roses clambered up the windows ; violets and flowering almonds, and white and yellow lilies, and wild geraniums and pinks, and hosts of other common flowers-the commonest and the most beautiful in the worldgrew in luxuriance about the lawn- not that it was ever called that ; and the robins and catbirds, and even the shy, brown thrushes, loved to make their nests in the trees ; and all summer long golden orioles flitted about the porch, and wrens, and bobolinks, and song sparrows, haunted the garden ; so that, from the first peep of dawn till sunset, the air was vocal with music that could not be surpassed.
It was late in May, one year, when the apple- . trees were in their fullest blossom, and the old house like a bower, that Forey Elwyn came back to it to die. He was not forty years old yet, but he had worn life thread-bare, and life had worn him out completely ; so he had returned to the old house, that he had not seen for almost twenty years, to sit on the porch in the pleasant spring light and listen to the songs of the birds, and enjoy the fragrance of the apple-blossoms, as he had done in his childish days. "I used to dream about them, " he said to his sister. " I could not die till I had seen it all once more." And Mrs. Forrest looked very grim in her effort to hide how shocked she was by the changes in him, and said only that she'd no doubt he'd be better there- nothing like native air for people that were not strong. Verily, he had never been strong physically or mentally, this poor Forey Elwyn ; yet it would have been difficult to tell exactly what was wanting. His life, like many another life that never is written, had been a failure ; yet at no stage of it would Solomon himself have known exactly how to bid him set it right ; nor had it been such from indolence or vice. We say certain people are born to ill luck, or under an evil star ; it was said, long before our time, of past and gone unfortunates, and will be said in time to come ; and nobody means the phrase to sound either atheistical or paganish, and yet it has both significations if we were to analyze it. But it matters little- Forey Elwyn's life had been a failure, or seemed such ; though, I suppose, when we reach a higher sphere of existence, somewhere away off, up among the endless cycles, we shall be able to understand the things which have perplexed us here, and comprehend the meaning of each of these incomplete lives, and see how, in spite of their imperfections and their incompleteness, they served their purpose in the perfect fullness of the plan of the Almighty Father. And Forey had come back to the old house to die-it was well. In spite of our tears and our lamentations, it is always well when tired men and women go away from this world. It is that meanest sort of sin, weakness, when we mean 137
