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ones senses are sharpened in deadly peril;
; r live now, I distinctly heard the bells of
Trinity chiming midnight, as { rose to the
surface the next instant, immersed in the
ston e cauldron, where I must swim for my
jife Heaven only could tell how long; 1 .
“I am a capital swimmer; and this natu
rally gave me a degree of self-possession. —
Falling as I had, I of course had pitched out
some distance from the sloning parapet. A
few strokes brought me to tneedge. I really
was not yet certain but that I could clamber
up the face of the wall anywhere. I hoped
that I could. 1 felt certain at least there was
some spot where I might get hold with my
hands, even if 1 did not ultimately ascend it.
[ tried the nearest spot. The inclination
of the wall was so vertical that it did not
even rest me to lean against it. I felt with
m y hands and with my feet. Surely, I
thought, there must be some fissure like that
in which that ill-omened weed had found a
place for its root!
“There was none. My fingers became
sore in busying themselves with the harsh
and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped
from the smooth and slimy masonry beneath
the water", and several times my dace came
in rude contact with the wall, when my foot
hold gave way on the .instant that I seemed
to have found some diminutive rocky cleft
upon which I could stay myself.
“ Sir. did you ever see a rat drowned in a
half-filled hogshead ? how he swims round,
and round, and round; and after vainly try
ing the sides again and again with his paws,
fixes his eyes upon the upper rim, as if he
would look himself out rtf his watery prison.
“ I thought of the miserable vermin
thought of him as I had often watched .thus
his dying agonies, when a cruel urchin of
eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir;
boys, women and savages. All child-like
things are cruel'; cruel from a want of thought
and from perverse ingenuity, although by in
stinct each of is so tender. You may
not have observed it, hut a savage is as ten
der to its own young as a boy is to a favorite
puppy —the same boy that will torture a kit
ten out of its existence. I thought then, I
say, of the rat drowning in a half-filled cask
of water, and lifting his gaze out of the ves
sel as he grew more and more desperate, and
1 flung myself on my back, and floating thus,
fixed my eyes on the face of the moon.
u The moon is well enough in her way,
however you may look at her; but her ap
pearance is, to say the least of it, peculiar to
a man floating on his brack in the centre of a
stone tank, with -a dead wall of some fifteen
or twenty feet rising squarely on every side
of him (the young man smiled bitterly as he
said this, and shuddered twice before he went
on, musingly)! The last time l had noted
the planet with any emotion, she was on the
wane. Mary was with me. I had brought
her out here one morning to look at the top
of the reservoir. She said little of the scene,
but as we talked of our old and childish
loves, I saw that its fresh features were in
corporating themselves with tender memories
of the past, and I was content.
“ There was a rich golden haze upon the
landscape, and as my own spirits rose amid
the voluptuous atmosphere, she pointed to
the waning planet, discernible like a faint
gash in the welkin, and wondered how long
it would be before the leaves would fall! —
Strange girl, did she mean to rebuke my joy
ous mood, as if we had no right to be happy
while nature, withering in her pomp, and the
sickly moon wasting in the blaze of noon
tide, were there to remind us of the gone-for
ever 1 •■‘They will ail renew themselves, dear
Alary, 1 said i, encouragingly; ‘and there is
one that will ever keep tryete alike with thee
and Nature through all seasons, if thou wilt
hut be true to one of us, and remain as now
a child of nature. 1
“ A tear sprang to her eye, and then search
ing her pocket for her card-case, she remem
bered an engagement to be present at Miss
Lawson’s opening of fall bonnets, at two o’-
clock!
“And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary-, I
thought of her now. You have probably
outliyed this sort of thing, Sir; but I, looking
at the moon, as I floated there upturned to
her yellow light, thought of the loved being
whose tears i knew would ilow T when she
beard of my singular fate, at once so gro
tesque, yet melancholy to awfulness.
“ And how often have we talked, too, of
that Carian shepherd who spent his damp
nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the
lustrous planet! Who will revel with her
those old superstitions'? Who, from our
°wn unlegended woods will evoke their yet
undetected, haunting spirits ? Who peer
with her, in prying scrutiny, into nature’s
biws, and challenge the whispers of poetry
f r om the voiceless throat of mailer ? Wbo
MSMHIEKI MIT ©A% IS in? ♦
laugh merily over the stupid guess-work of
pedants, that never mingled with the infini
tude of nature, through love, exhaustless and
all-embracing, as we have ? Poor girl, she
will be companionless.
•‘Alas! companionless forever —save in
the exciting stages of some brisk flirtation. —
She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts
with love's lore she has learned from me, and
then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the im
ages she has herself endowed with sem
blance of divinity, until they seem to breathe
back the mystery the soul can truly catch
from only one.
“ How anxious she will be lest the coro
ner shall have discovered any of her notes in
my pocket!
“ 1 felt chilly as this last reflection crossed
my mind ; partly at the thought of the coro
ner, partly at the idea of Mary being com
pelled to wear mourning for me in case of
such a disclosure of our engagement. It is a
provoking thing for a girl of nineteen to have
to go into mourning for a deceased lover, at
the beginning of her second winter in the
metropolis.
“The water, though, with my motionless
position, must have had something to do with
my chilliness. 1 see, sir, you think I tell mv
story with great levity; but indeed I should
grow delirious did I venture to hold steadily
to the awfulness of my feelings the greater
part of the night. I think, indeed, l must
have been most of the time hysterical with
horror, for the vibrating emotions 1 have re
capitulated did pass through my brain even
as I have detailed them.
“But as I now became calm in thought, I
summoned up again some resolution of action.
“I will begin at that corner (said I,) and
swim round the whole enclosure. I will
swim slowly and again feel the sides of the
tank with my feet. If die I must, let me
perish at least from well-directed though ex
hausting effort, not sink from mere bootless
weariness in sustaining myself till the morn
ing shall bring relief.
“ The sides of the place seemed to grow
higher as I now kept my watery course be
tween them. It was not altogether a dead
pull. I had some variety of emotion in mak
ing my circuit. When 1 swam in the shadow
it looked to me more cheerful beyond in the
moonlight. W hen I swam in the moonlight
I had the hope of making some discovery
when I should again reach the shadow. I
turned several times on my back to rest just
where those wavy lines would meet. Ihe
stars looked viciously bright to me from the
bottom of that well; there was such a com
pany of them; they were so glad in their lus
trous revelry; and had such space to move
in! I was alone, sad to despair, in a strange
element, prisoned, and a solitary gazei upon
their mocking chorus. And yet there was
nothing else with which I could hold com
munion !
“ I turned upon my breast and struck out al
most frantically, once more. The stars were
forgotten, the very world of which I as yet
formed a part, my poor Mary herself was
forgotten. I thought only of the strong man
there perishing —of me, in my lusty manhood,
in the sharp vigor of my dawning prime, with
faculties illimitable, with senses all alert,
battling there with physical obstacles which
men like myself had brought together for my
undoing, the Eiernal could never have will
ed this°lhing! I could not and I would not
perish thus. And I grew strong in the inso
lence of self-trust; and I laughed aloud as I
dashed the sluggish water from side to side.
“ Then came an emotion of pity for my
self —of wild, wild regret; of sorrow, 0, in
finite, for a fate so desolate, a doom so drea
ry, so heart-sickening. Aou may laugh at
the contradiction if you will, Sir, but I felt
that I could sacrifice my own life on the in
stant to redeem another fellow-creature from
such a place of horror, from an end so pite
ous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in
that desperate moment to be separating; while
one in parting grieved over the deplorable
fate of the other.
“ And then I prayed!
“I prayed, why or wherefore I know not.
It was not from fear. It could not have been
in hope. The days of miracles are passed,
and there was no natural law by whose prov
idential interposition I could be saved. I did
not pray; it prayed of itself, my soul, within
me.
“Was the calmness that I now felt torpid
ity ? the torpidity that precedes dissolution to
the strong swimmer, who, sinking from ex
haustion, must at last add a bubble to the
wave as he suffocates beneath the element
which now denied his mastery? If it were
so, how fortunate was it that my floating rod
at that moment attracted my attention, as it
dashed through the water by me. 1 saw on
the instant that a fish had entangled h.iiijseli
in the wire noose. The rod quivered, plung
ed, came again to the surface, anil rippled the
water as it shot in arrowy flight from side to
side of the tank. At last, driven towards the
south-east corner of the reservoir, the small
end seemed to have got foul somewhere.—
The brazen butt, which, every time the fish
sounded, was thrown up to the moon, now
sank by its own weight, showing that the
other end must be fast. But the cornered
fish, evidently anchored somewhere by that
short wire, floundered several times to the
surface before I thought of striking out to the
spot.
“The water is now low, and tolerably clear.
You may see the very ledge there, Sir, in yon
der corner, on which the small end of my rod
rested when I secured that pike with my
hands. I did not take him from the slip-noose,
however; but standing upon the ledge, han
dled the rod in a workman-like manner, as I
flung that pound pickerel over the iron rail
ing upon the top of the parapet. The rod, as
1 have told you, barely reached from the rail
ing to the water. It was a heavy, strong
bass rod, which I had borrowed in the Spirit
of the Times office, and when 1 discovered
that the fish at the end of the wire made a
strong enough knot to prevent me from draw
ing my tackle away from the railing, round
which it twined itself as I threw, why, as you
can at once see, I had but little difficulty in
making my way up the face of the wall with
such assistance. The ladder which attracted
your notice is, as you see, lashed to the iron
railing in the identical spot where 1 thus
made my escape ; and for fear of similar ac
cidents, they have placed another one in the
corresponding corner of the other compart
ment of the tank, ever since my remarkable
night's adventure in the reservoir.”
We give the above singular relation, ver
batim, as heard from the lips ot our chance
acquaintance; and, although strongly tempt
ed to “work it up” after the fantastic style
of a famous German namesake, prefer that
the reader should have it in its American
simplicity.
Selected Jjloctrg.
From the Opal for 1849.
THE THOUGHT-ANGEL:
A WAKING AND SLEEPING DREAM.
BY N*. P. WILLIS.
[Written to illustrate a beautiful picture, by Rothermel
of a Recording Angel accompanying a Thought.]
Night is the sick man’s day,
For the soul wakens as the body fails,
1 had told weary hours ; but, with the hush
Os midnight, my la.st memory of pain
Had stilled before a Thought of sudden brightness,
And, like one rising upon spirit-limbs,
Bo;e 1, and wandered with that thought away.
Oh ! the blest truants that we are, when Sense,
The Master, is 100 weak to call us in,
And, loosed, us if the sehool-time of a life
Were over, with its spirit-checking toils,
We to the lields stray—following where’er
Fancy? the vagrant, calls us !
All unshod
Went by the hours, that with such heavy heel
Came last in the slow vigils of the strong,
And the dawn broke. Called in from spirit-straying,
I knew again that 1 was weak and ill,
Beginning on another day of pain ;
Bat, with a blessing on my Thought —(whose track,
Far thro’ a wilderness untrod before,
It seemed that I might tell of with a pen
Winged with illuminated words) —I slept.
And presently I dreamed. In conscious sleep,
1 know that what I saw was bat a dream.
The curtains of my bed, I knew, the while.
Tented me round ; and on a couch beyond
Lay a loved watcher by a dimming lamp ;
And I remembered her —and where Ilay —
And that the hour was morning—yet I saw,
As if my dim room were dissolved in air,
The vision 1 shall paint you.
Lo! my Thought!
The Thought that I had followed in rapt waking,
And, of whose sweet unto me
I longed in glowing words to tell the world —
That Thought 1 saw —clad in a breathing shape,
And like a sylph upon an errand sped,
Prone for an arrowy flight, and through the air
Cleaving its way resistless. The cleft wind,
Beveaungly, to that symmetric thought
Pressed its transparent chess; and beautiful,
Oh, beautiful are tho shapes divine
Which woman’s form makes possible to dream —
Lay its impulsive outline on the air.
I kindled with the pride tliat it was mine,
The glory of is beauty—of my soul
The easy effluence, moulded with a breath,
And given—a rich gift —idly to the world l
Andc ireles dy 1 sped it on its way —
But—turned to look on it once more.
Ah, lo!
A cloud now lay aback between its'wings,
I )rawu by its motion onward —a small cloud
That from the night enveloped world below,
deemed lighted by the half-arisen moon.
1 saw it, not as one upon the earth,
But as they see from Heaven. And a-*, again,
1 watched that Thought—(irrevocably sped,
Without a fear that it might turn to ill,
Without a prayer that it might bless in fleeiDg)—
Behold, all calmly with it, on the cloud,
Bode a winged angel with an open book ;
And—of the hearts it moved—and of the dreams,
Passions and hopes it called on as it flew—
Os all it gave a voice to, that had else
Slumbered unuttered in ihe Thought-ruled world—
That angel kept a record.
“ Thou, hereafter,”
Said a voice near me, “ shnlt that record hear ;
For in thy using of that gift of power,
Speed ini’ t chat Thought thou wilt across the world,
Thou speukest with the pervading voice of God,
And, as thy sway of the world’s heart, will be
The reckoning w ith thy Maker. Human Thought,
Cfli poet! lightly may take wondrous wings.
Thy careless link hinds words to travel far.
But oh, take heed! —for see—by dream-revealing—
How Thoughts of power with angels so attended,
Outfleeing never the calm pen that writes
Their history for Heaven !
The sun shone in
Upon my wind-stirred curtains, and J woke,
Ami this had been a dream. ’Tis sometimes so:
We dream ourselves what we have striven to he,
And hoar what had been well for us to hear,
Did our dreams shadow what we are.
©limpsts of Jfcm books,
lift. JERICHO .MARRIES THE WIDOW.
The wedding was very gorgeous. Very
rarely are two people joined together with
so much expense. Nevertheless, the contri
bution of either party —had the other known
it—would have somewhat shaken Hymen;
if, indeed, it had not wholly frightened him
out of the church. Mrs. Pennibacker, when
introduced to Jericho, was so deep in debt,
that often, let folks try as they would, they
could not see her. And Jericho, doubtless
from a short supply of platina, was an object
of extreme solicitude to a large number of
dealers. When, however, it was understood
that the widow was to be married to a rich
man in the city, the lady found the very
handsomest outfit for herself and children,
made delightfully easy. And Jericho, bear
ing in mind the heavy expense of an intoxi
cating honey-moon, readily obtained the
means, when his circle—and every man has
a circle, though of the smallest—rang with
the news that he was in imminent likelihood
of marrying the widow of an Indian nabob !
And so bridegroom and bride—with a mutual
; trust even beyond mutual expectation—walk
■ ed to the altar, there to be wedded into one,
They were married at St. George’s Church—
married in the bosom of a few surrounding
friends. The bride’s children were present,
anil cast a mixed interest of pensive ness and
pleasure on the ceremony. The bride had
told her bridesmaids that “ It would cost her
a struggle, but the dear children should be
present; it was right they should. They
ought to have the sacrifice impressed upon
their minds in the most solemn way; the
sacrifice that their poor mother consented to
make for them. Nobody but herself knew’
I what a struggle it was; but, it was her duty,
1 and though her heart was with dear Penni
; hacker—yes, she would go through with it.
j Mr. Jericho had given the dear girls the most
| beautiful lace-frocks, and to Basil a lovely
gold hunting-watch; therefore, they ought
and they should witness the sacrifice.” And
Miss Pennibacker . and Miss Agatha Penni
| backer, like little fairies, clothed in muslin
! an< ! l ace from Elfin-looms, saw the sacrifice
with a vivacity of heart that almost spirted
out at the corners of their lips; and Basil’
Pennibacker, a gaunt, reedy boy of twelve
did nothing during the ceremony but take out
his new gold hunting-watch—open it—snap
it to—and return it again, as though he had
already had a glimpse ol the preparations for.
the wedding breakfast, and with his thoughts
upon all the delicacies of the season, wasim-.
patient for the sacrifice to be completed.—
And the last “Amen”-—the last blow on
met was struck, and Solomon Jericho and
Scihilla Pennibacker were man and wife.
Whereupon, in a hysteric moment, the bride,
turning to her children, took the three in one
living hunch in her arms, and sweeping them
over to Jericho, said, “ You are their father,
now. ’ A Man Made of Monet/, hi/ Douglas
Jerr old.
THE DEATH OF HAROLD.
Sir E. L. Bulwer’s new novel, “ Haroldy
the last of the Saxon Kings,” is virtually a
history, thrown into the form of a novel, ami
m that shape will be of immense value in
popularizing a knowledge of the curious and
; little-known times it treats of. The great in
cident—the battle of Hastings—is magnifi
! cently described. The death of Harold is
I managed with consummate art. The Nor
; mans, unable to penetrate the defences into
which the flower of the English had gather
j ed, resorted to the expedient of discharging
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