Beadle's Dime Novels No. 126: Old Jupe — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHRISTMAS EVE. 87 giving a fretful word to his grandmother, she would no more have thought of it than of cutting off her hand. - And now it was Christmas Eve! No wonder her grief came down upon her soul with a weight too great to bear. Beside other hearths, in other homes, what, music and laughter and feasting ! How happy was her own race at prospects of a week’s holiday ! How blessed other children, who had fathers and mothers to load them with child- hood’s treasures! Poor. little fellow ! deserted by his father, his mother pining, that festival night, in a prison !—-no one to love him but old Aunt Clare! She smoothed his tumbled, glistening curls with her ugly, black hand. His cheeks were rosy with slumber, a smile hovered in the dimples of his mouth ; ke knew nothing of his wrongs; maumy’s love suf- . ficed for him. He was three years and three weeks old. On his birthday had come a little red frock, which his mother had embroidered for him by the light which came through her grated window. He wore the frock now, a mass of light, as the fire shone against it; and his plump, white legs, with the stockings all slipped down, looked whiter by the contrast. He was a very beautiful child; fit to give delight and awaken pride in parents’ hearts. ‘Clare had resolved that his Christmas should not pass un- marked. © She had performed extra toil to secure a little spend- ing money, and now, a store of candies, a toy-drawer, and a pair of pretty red shoes, lay concealed in the cupboard, await- ing the time to be slipped into or hung beside A expectant stocking. Long after her accustomed hour Clare sat, secdutas and crooning, holding the boy, quite unmindful that she should have undressed him and put him to bed hours before. ~The wind moaned about the little house; the great old cotton-wood tree outside creaked ever and anon, so as to.make a thrill run through all Clare’s bones, for she had all the superstitions of her race.- She heard the horns blowing on distant plantations, — and knew that the colored people were haying jolly times ; she heard, too, the winding of the stage-horn, and knew that the mail-coach had come and gone through New Bristol. She was dreaming the vista of her life over. Once, when a little sleety gust shook the window, she rolled her eyes toward it connicloooks.comn