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Miss Ludington's Sister By: Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) |
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MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER by EDWARD BELLAMY CHAPTER I. The happiness of some lives is distributed pretty evenly over the whole
stretch from the cradle to the grave, while that of others comes all at
once, glorifying some particular epoch and leaving the rest in shadow.
During one, five, or ten blithe years, as the case may be, all the
springs of life send up sweet waters; joy is in the very air we breathe;
happiness seems our native element. During this period we know what is
the zest of living, as compared with the mere endurance of existence,
which is, perhaps, the most we have attained to before or since. With men
this culminating epoch comes often in manhood, or even at maturity,
especially with men of arduous and successful careers. But with women it
comes most frequently perhaps in girlhood and young womanhood.
Particularly is this wont to be the fact with women who do not marry, and
with whom, as the years glide on, life becomes lonelier and its interests
fewer. By the time Miss Ida Ludington was twenty five years old she recognised
that she had done with happiness, and that the pale pleasures of memory
were all which remained to her. It was not so much the mere fact that her youth was past, saddening
though that might be, which had so embittered her life, but the
peculiarly cruel manner in which it had been taken from her. The Ludingtons were one of the old families of Hilton, a little farming
village among the hills of Massachusetts. They were not rich, but were
well to do, lived in the largest house in the place, and were regarded
somewhat as local magnates. Miss Ludington's childhood had been an
exceptionally happy one, and as a girl she had been the belle of the
village. Her beauty, together, with her social position and amiability of
disposition, made her the idol of the young men, recognised leader of the
girls, and the animating and central figure in the social life of the
place. She was about twenty years old, at the height of her beauty and in the
full tide of youthful enjoyment, when she fell ill of a dreadful disease,
and for a long time lay between life and death. Or, to state the case
more accurately, the girl did die it was a sad and faded woman who rose
from that bed of sickness. The ravages of disease had not left a vestige of her beauty it was
hopelessly gone. The luxuriant, shining hair had fallen out and been
replaced by a scanty growth of washed out hue; the lips, but yesterday so
full, and red, and tempting, were thin, and drawn, and colourless, and
the rose leaf complexion had given place to an aspect so cruelly pitted,
seamed, and scarred that even friends did not recognize her. The fading of youth is always a melancholy experience with women; but in
most cases the process is so gradual as to temper the poignancy of
regret, and perhaps often to prevent its being experienced at all except
as a vague sentiment. But in Miss Ludington's case the transition had been piteously sharp and
abrupt. With others, ere youth is fully past its charms are well nigh forgotten
in the engrossments of later years; but with her there had been nothing
to temper the bitterness of her loss. During the long period of invalidism which followed her sickness her only
solace was a miniature of herself, at the age of seventeen, painted on
ivory, the daguerrotype process not having come into use at this time,
which was toward the close of the third decade of the present century. Over this picture she brooded hours together when no one was near,
studying the bonny, gladsome face through blinding tears, and sometimes
murmuring incoherent words of tenderness. Her young friends occasionally came to sit with her, by way of enlivening
the weary hours of an invalid's day. At such times she would listen with
patient indifference while they sought to interest her with current local
gossip, and as soon as possible would turn the conversation back to the
old happy days before her sickness... Continue reading book >>
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