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STANZAS.
J.
Oh! think not Time shall ever dim
The memory ot this blessed hour,
(>r prompt forgetfulness in him
Who feels so sweetly all its power;
The land and ocean he may range,
With frequent triumphs for his brow.
Still find new joy in every change,
lint none like that he treasures now !
11.
Thus, the first passion sways the rest,
And she who prompts the youthful heart.
With cold caprice, may, from the breast.
Hid every hope she warm'd depart;
Hut even while anger sways his soul,
And scorn his early faith denies—
That first-born flame, beyond control
Will still inform his memories:
111.
Will still rise up, as in the waste,
Where all beside is bleak and wild,
One fountain, or one shrub is traced,
To prove that once the desert smiled,
Their hearts, made desolate and drear,
Shrined still, each first-born passion keep.
And through each gloom succeeding year.
Still seek its flowers, if but to weep.
ORIOLE.
Cimrlettm, S. C.
‘/[ad &[£[&*
From the Knickerbocker.
TWO CHARACTERS.
CHAPTER FIRST.
“Will you leml me your light, Kate, lor
a moment V said a young man, whom we
shall call Harry Eaton, groping in the dusk
around a do my from which there streamed
through the key-hole a faint, tantalizing
beam.
The wind was sweeping with a hollow,
dreary sound through the corridors of the
‘ast, deserted building, rattling every win
dow-pane, and moaning through every
chink.
“ I am sorry to disturb you,” continued
the young man timidly.
As he spoke, the door was thrown wide
open, and Kate stepped forth into the pas
sage-way, shading her eyes with one hand,
an, l holding her light aloft.
‘’ I thought you would be charitable,” he
sa 'd, confronting her with a look of invol
untary admiration. “Do you know that
)ou should stand for a picture, in precise
ly the attitude which you have taken. —
The light from that candle sparkles on your
forehead, like the glory round the head of
a Madonna, and your eyes shine like coals
01 hre in the shadow of* your hand. You
seem just now to be something between a
kty-saint and Lucifer.”
Indeed, the girl's beauty was so fresh
a "rt brilliant that it startled one, as it burst
suddenly upon the darkness, and tilled the
empty space with a glorious presence of
Jouili and vigor and maidenhood.
The fresh air out of dotfrs,” she an
gered coldly, “has given you high spir
lls > and made you impertinent. Here is the
t-ht, sir; I will leave it on the chair for
you.”
t'he turned contemptuously away, with
however, closing the door,
bhe young man keenly watched her
‘ ,lstlc tread, and the flexible sway in her
“”tat form, as she moved towards the little
1,1 I e in the room, to resume her work.
fie leaned feebly against the door-post,
a "J seemed to be struggling for energy to
‘far himself from the spot, and break the
,o| ta °f a deadly fascination, which was
“hiding itself, thread by thread, about
‘ m - Tlie girl, who had seated herself,
’ Gained for a few moments idle, her bare
“ms stretched gracefully upon the shining’
oaken board, her head thrown scornfully
lirick - and a vacant look in her large black
e -' cs , as though utterly unconscious of the
lnl ense gaze which the young man fixed
u pon her. There was a strange contrast
between the two. He was pale and list
less, and stood humbly at the door ; all his
energies of soul and body seemed absorbed
to lend that burning look. She was in the
very flush and freshness of maidenhood,
and reposed before him like one basking
luxuriously in her warm, glad existence.
Every pulse thrilled with vigor ; her whole
form was glowing with strength and buoy
ant life. Her arms were bathed in the
ruddy fire-light, which half revealed their
exquisite swell, and marked with faint
shadows the sinews knitting strongly at the
wrist. Her black hair glanced with a pur
ple sheen to the flickering blaze, and the
color in her cheek shone vividly, or turn
ed to a dusky glow, at every change of
the uncertain flame.
“Come in, Harry, and shut the door,’’
she said, abruptly rousing herself. “ You
can fill that great German pipe of yours
over my hearth. I am very lonely to
night, and want something to make sport
of.”
Harry crept into the room with a noise
less step, and drawing a chair toward the
wood lire, now crumbling fast away to a
bed of glowing embers, began slowly to
replenish the bowl of a huge meerschaum,
grotesquely carved, which he supported be
tween his knees. The exhilaration pro
duced by the frosty air had passed away,
and left him care-worn and almost de
jected.
“Are you angry with me. Kate?” he
asked, at length, in a low voice.
“\ r es, 1 am,” retorted the girl. “I can
| not bear to be flattered : and you talk to
; me sometimes of my own face and figure
as if 1 had no more feeling or sense than
the little images in your painting room. I
was not made to be a plaything for gen
tlemen.”
“ I do not pretend to be a gentleman—in
your sense of the word,” said Harry. “1
work day and night, wearily enough, to
earn a living. I say day and night; for
when I have been engraving or designing
all day, I lie awake half the night, imagin
ing some new combination, and building
castles in the air, which must be substan
tial enough to be turned to account. It is
a business which withers away body and
soul. Even my imagination begins to
have a sickly hue; but there is a battle
before me, in which I must win or die.—
The world gives no quarter to a man once
down, who is fighting with it for life.”
“Still you are a gentleman,” persisted
the girl, rising and advancing towards the
fire. “Your hand is softer than my own.
It is only fit to carry a pencil or a brush.
I am a girl; yet there is more strength in
my arm than yours.”
She took his hand as she spoke, and
placed it where he might feel that her slen
der arm would scarcely dimple to the
touch, hut seemed, in its marble firmness,
like the flesh of the statue in the old story,
when it was just softening into life at the
sculptor's prayer. There was a contempt
uous familiarity about this action : she uid
not seem to look upon him as a man.
“You are so quiet,” she continued im
patiently, tossing his hand aside; “you
walk about as if you were afraid of crush
ing a flower at every step. You never
i speak above your breath. You seem al
, ways to have something which you keep
to yourself. There is no life about you.
I do not understand it, and it provokes
me.”
Harry made no answer, for he had long
I despaired of being comprehended. The
twilight deepened in the room, and shad
owy phantoms, exulting over the dying
fire, stole up the wall, and darted in stealthy
frolic across the ceiling. The clock tick
ed loudly from its corner, as though it
! parted reluctantly with the midnight mo
\ ments. and meant to lay an emphasis on
j every one.
“Do you ever dream in the day-time,
j Kate?” said Harry; “I mean, when you
| are wide awake ?”
“Not often; I am too busy living.—
I Sometimes, on a long summer day, when
j the air comes through the window on my
j cheek, I sit and forget my sewing for a
j long while, thinking of nothing, but just
, feeling happy. All manner of pleasant
images pass through my mind then, like
the sparkling things in the sunbeam.”
“But you are forced to gain a subsist
ence, and toil for it, like myself,” said
Harry. “Now, have you never made a
picture of yourself in some different situa
’ tion ; as a lady, for instance, who was rich
and had servants to wait upon her, lived
in a fine house, and so on ?”
“Never!” she answered emphatically ;
1 “ I would not be a lady if I had the choice.
| They are poor, weak, sickly things. A
draught of cold air kills them, like a gera
nium. They are helpless creatures, and
must have someone to lean upon always;
someone to look after their health, and
take care of their characters. Now 1 have
neither father nor mother, nor friends, in
the world : yet T would not quit this little
room, and give up the feeling that I need
thank no one for help or protection—no,
not for a fortune!”
“ 1 am an orphan and friendless, like
you, Kate,” said the young man, speaking
more to himself than to her, “and I am
glad of it. There is a grim pleasure in
plodding on doggedly, with starvation at
your back and fame a great way before
you in the distance. lam getting a name,
you must know, as an artist. They come
to me now to design the illustrations for
the novels of the day. It is absolute
drudgery, however, to extract the charac
ters from some of these books, and harder
still to fit a face and body to them.”
He sighed, but there was an intense
gleam of pride deep in his eye.
“Could I help you in any way?” said
the girl, earnestly and kindly. •
“ The best help you could give,” he re
plied, startled by her change of manner,
“ would be merely to sitstill now and then,
and let me draw from your face and copy
your figure. You are the most perfect
model of girlhood that could be found, and
your complexion is the clear brunette, with
which a painter seldom meets.”
Kate's eye flashed, and she seemed dis
posed to quarrel again with his language.
“1 should paint you as Esmeralda, the
dancing girl, in Victor Hugo’s novel,” con
tinued he, musing aloud, “ and I should be
the student, who loved so madly.”
“ You mean in 1 Our Lady of Paris,’ ” an
swered Kate, quickly; “I have read that
book. It kept me up all night, and came
to a miserable end at last. But I am not
Esmeralda. She was only a prettv fool,
and the student was almost an idiot. He
should have joined the army and put on
uniform, to take her fancy, instead of talk
ing Greek to her, and making love with a
dictionary. I hope that I am not like Es
meralda.”
Harry was astonished; for he had no
idea that she ever read any thing ; and he
was always under the impression that even
his ordinary language was often unintelli
gible to her. Her engrossing beauty, her
animal vigor, had been to him all the soul
in her form ; he did not care to look for a
deeper intelligence. It was her physical
excellenc which domineered over his fee
ble nature with a wild fascination.
“You are the student in the novel,” said
Kale, thoughtfully.
“ But not exactly, for you move around
quietlly and mope in corners, looking mis
erable, like the cat there ; but all the while
you have set your mind upon something,
just as she has, and will pass through fire
for it when you think it time to make the
spring. I see into you a little way. But
that student had nothing in him. Love
made him crazy, to be sure, but he wasal
was weaker than a child. He seems to me
like a man delirious with fever, who needs
to be held down in his bed but could not
walk one step alone.”
“ I will sit to you, Harry, if it will be
any assistance. You must not of course
make a portrait.”
“ I will try to avoid it,” said the bewil
dered young man. “It will he difficult,
since even now in your absence, all my
designs of the female face turn to your
likeness.”
“Nonsense, Harry!” exclaimed Kate,
haughtily ; instantly resuming her ineffa
ble air of disgust and indifference. Then
she began to torment him with a girlish
wantonness of cruelty which is the very
instinct of the sex. She revelled before
him in her beautiful being, with a mocking,
luxurious triumph which maddened him.”
“This would make a picture, Harry,”
she said, loosing the fastening of her hair
which poured down at once in black shi
ning waves over her neck and shoulders
even to her feet. Then assuming in an in
stant the frank, half sisterly manner which
was hardest of all to bear, she compelled
thetniserable slave with throbbing pulse, to
assist her in restoring the thick tresses to
their place. Again she was all sympathy ;
and thus she racked his soul, binding it
down to the torture by her wonderful beau
ty, while every word and gesture made more
bitter the despair already cankering m his
heart. He could bear it no longer. He
rose from the chair like one uplifting a
great weight, and strode hastily toward the
door. He was arrested by the girl’s hand
laid gently on his shoulder.
“ Will you not bid me good night, Har
ry, and confess that I am not like Esmer
alda ?”
He bowed in silence, and shuddering un
der her touch, passed out.
CHAPTER SECOND.
In the solitude of his own room, Harry
threw’ himself upon the bed, with a deli-
cious feeling of coming rest. He had now
about him a world of his own, whose scene
ry and inhabitants were all at his command.
The feverish misery, the continual humil
iation of his strange passion failed from his
remembrance as, disposing the coverings
around him so as to defy the frosty night,
he sal. still dressed, half upright on his
couch, gazing at the little pool of moon
light on the floor.
Careering about the huge building, the
fitful autumn wind roared like a distant li
on in a desert, or trailed with a ghostly,
rushing sound, along the passage-ways,
and went forth moaning and wandering far
away into the empty night. Still, as Har
ry sat listening and dreaming, one form
would return again and again, wavering
dimly in the smoke of the meerschaum.—
It would be dispersed for a little while by
the force of his strong will, and break
away into the features of ideal women, on
ly to come on him unawares, with a re
proachful look, and a presence more ex
acting than before.
“ She is a glorious specimen of physical
beauty, an embodiment of the sex in all
its attributes,” he thought to himself, re
garding Kate, in his reverie, with compar
ative coolness. “She is a finer animal
than a deer or a leopard. Would that I
might, for an instant, feel the blood bound
through my veins as it must bound through
hers; that I might know the ecstacy of
mere existence, in which she seems so to
delight; that f might look through her
eyes at the sky and earth ; and that my
soul might live, and sleep, and dream,
wrapped up in so beautiful a body.”
He pondered long upon this odd conceit.
“ I suppose,” he thought on, more
dreamily, “that this is the lesson taught
by the old allegory of Cupid and Psyche,
where the winged soul is imploring an em
brace from the laughing boy, who is a
veritable child of earth. I have learned
to-night that Kate has. unusual intelli
gence; but the discovery gives me no
pleasure. It seems to mar the idea of her
upon which I dwell most fondly. My
soul seems yearning, like Psyche, not for
communion with another soul, ethereal as
itself, but for intimacy with a material
thing, in whose fresh and healthful atmos
phere it may revive and rest. That is the
metaphysics of this affair.”
And now, despite of his philosophy’,
feeling an approaching fit of wretchedness,
and exerting his peculiar dogged strength
of will—for his timidity was only physi
cal—he drove away the subject, and turn
ed to his art.
But undefined, dilating images began to
fill the moonlit chamber; the wind whis
pered mysteriously and ceased altogether;
he lapsed into a dream groused up and
sank again; then determined to remain
awake, and in the peaceful consciousness
of a good resolution, fell fast asleep.
It was the sudden, deep oblivion which
comes upon youth when melancholy and
overtasked. A wreath of smoke was curl
ing upward from the great meerschaum at
the moment. As the stem dropped from
his parting lips, and the grasp of his hand
relaxed, the capacious bowl turned over in
the bed and the silver lid flew open, sliding
over its heated brim came a shower of grey
ashes, followed by a sodden, glowing coal,
which began to sink into the sleeper's
couch, gnawing through one covering af
ter another, and sending up a thin vapor
as it burned its way.
Harry stirred uneasily from time to
time, and the coverings, which had been
wrapped around him, slipped by degrees
away, and lay. presently, a smouldering
heap upon the floor. There was no out
let for the increasing smoke, and the air
soon began to grow thick and stifling, un
til the moonbeams streamed through a
ghastly haze, which became each moment
more palpable. Still he slept on ; but his
sleep was like that of a man struggling
with some hideous night-mare. As time
passed, his breathing began to labor pain
fully, and his features were sharpened with
a look of helplessness and great misery.—
It was curious to watch the slow progress
of the fire, which, without breaking into
flame, was beginning to extend its glim
mering rings, as if it were searching for a
wider foothold. The deadly vapor rising
from it, gently approaches the sleeper, hov
ering over him with stupifying wings like
a vampyre, and draining imperceptibly the
energies of life, so that at last in his weak
ness and the confusion of awaking, one
suffocating pang might perhaps disable him
altogether. It is strange that a man should
permit himself to be strangled by inches in
his sleep ; but it is certain that men some
times do permit it.
There was a stir in the silent house, and
a hurrying footfall. In the twinkling of
an eye the door of the room was dashed
open from without, the night wind rushed
in, eddying amid ihe gloom, and Kate stood
at the threshold, with dishevelled hair and
a look of unspeakable honor in her face.
It was but an instant ere she sprang fear
lessly into the dusky chamber calling Har
ry by name in a tone so clear and piercing,
that the whole building rang and reechoed.
He murmured something inarticulately, but
the sound served to guide her in the haze,
and she was by his side at a single bound.
He was lying completely dressed as he had
fallen asleep. She first touched his hand;
it was cold and clammy. She drew back
shuddering, then calling to her help the
great vigor concealed in her slight form and
rounded limbs, she threw her arms about
him and dragged him at one effort uncere
moniously from the bed. He had the ill
grace to groan, as if uneasy at the fall, but
the resolute girl gave him no time to remon
strate. Exerting all her strength, she drew
him, now feebly struggling, forth into the
passage-way, and without pausing in her
activity, threw open the window, and dash
ed water in his face, which was distorted
by that poisonous sleep. With pain and
bewilderment his senses gradually collect
ed, but his throat was parched by an in
tolerable thirst, and he was benumbed and
giddy. Kate strained him to her bosom in
one impetuous embrace, and hurried to ex
tinguish the fire. She returned, flushed
and anxious. She crouched down beside
Harry, who had gained a sitting posture,
but was still very weak, and drewhishead
upon her shoulder, with her warm young
arms around his neck.
“ What has happened, Kate?” he whis
pered huskily; “I feel as if I had passed
through a long illness.”
“ Do not speak to me. Harry, just yet !”
He felt her bosom heave with a passion
ate sob, and a tear-drop fell upon his fore
head. The blood shot tingling through his
frame.
“Oh, Harry!” she answered, “in a lit
tle while you would have been strangled in
the smoke. If I had not been awake, the
room itself would soon have taken fire, and,
by that time you would have lost all strength
to help yourself. It is all the fault of that
wretched German pipe of yours. What a
pain in the heart you have caused me;”
and she sobbed like a child.
At these words a wild panorama swept
before Harry’s mind.
“ Was I in actual danger of death ?” he
asked, with a strange tone and manner.
“ 1 think that you must soon have per
ished in that smoke : the room is reeking
yet with it,” she answered, drawing him
more closely to her. All the bright color
had left her cheek ; she was pale and hag
gard now.
“ ‘ Then why did you wake me V said
the young man, bitterly. It would have
been such an easy way out of a miserable
world.”
“Do you mean that you really wish to
die!” she replied, in a low, horror-stricken
voice; “to leave the fresh air, the blue
sky, the sunshine; to be stretched out stiff
and cold ; to be closed up in the earth, and
moulder away among the darkness forev
er ? What a horrible thought! Is there
nothing which you care for in the world ?”
“ Nothing,” said the young man, gently
loosing himself from her embrace.
“ Not even for me ?”
“For you — you !” he exclaimed. “It
is to escape from you, and he at rest any
where ; it is to rid myself of your pres
ence, and blot out your very recollection,
that I would go even into the grave, though
a feverish dream of you would, I believe,
haunt me there, and strew that narrow bed
itself with ashes!”
The girl bowed her head upon her hands,
but seemed not to listen to this frank out
burst of romance and bitterness.
“ You have caused me such a pain at
the heart,” she repeated ; “it has not pass
ed away since it fell upon me, like ice,
when I looked into that room, and thought
that you might be suffocating there. Even
now fam faint with it. If any ill had be
fallen you, what would have become of
me ?”
She fell into deep thought; he wonder
ed silently. The increasing oppression of
the stillness, falling more swiftly than
snow-flakes, weighed heavily upon them
both, shutting out the world, ami closing
them in alone with each other. The moon
was shining placidly on their motionless
forms, pouring a silver flood over the girl’s
long hair, and giving an unearthly look of
apathy to Harry’s pale, stern face.
“Do not heed the reckless words of a
desperate man,” he whispered, feeling his
senses slowly reviving to the charm of
Kate’s near neighborhood. “That speech
of mine was silly enough in itself, and
was ill-timed, when you had just been do
ing me so great a service. But you have
hunted me fairly down. You brought me,
for an instant, to bay, like a stag; yet I
feel myself the same coward at heart as
ever.”
Kale's cheek began to flush, until the
crimson glow dyed the full throat, and
faintly tinged her bosom.
“Do not draw away from me, Harry,”
she answered softly, burying her face
more deeply in her hands; “'come closer
to my side ; closer than before. I believe
that you love me better than life; hut not
better than I love you.” The words were
distinct; the breath which uttered them
was warm upon his cheek. “But for to
night, 1 should never have known this,”
she went on, in broken sentences, gasping
for breath. “ How shamefully I have
treated you. It is right that I should hum
ble myself to tell you this. You may cast
me off in scorn now, but not in anger.—
How could I know that, when the thought
of you would come into my mind all day,
tormenting and vexing me from morning
until night ; and when I was always trying
to understand your quiet ways, and always
angry because I could not do so; when all
this was going on, how could I know that
it was love?”
Her cheeks burned, and her eyes swam
in a liquid light, as she looked up into his
face imploringly, half offering her lips, as
if to buy with them a pardon.
CHAPTER THIRD.
Harry’s life seemed in that hour to begin
j afresh. The pale moon, which waned
from the sky dqring their vigil, before the
golden dawn of Indian summer, was a type
of the sickly light that was at the same
time leaving the artist's soul forever. The
influence of Kate, with her buoyant spirits
and practical energies, came over his jaded
mind as vigorous and healthful as the
breath of morning after a feverish dream.
His genius began to tread greener paths in
i search of the ideal, hand in hand with a
creature so thordughly beautiful and thor
oughly real. He faced the world now
j doggedly as ever, but with a happier au
dacity ; while Kate grew gentler and more
! shrinking every day, and seemed to have
changed characters with him ; putting on,
in some respects, his former self. The im
petuous maiden was true to her sex, and
only avowed her passionate attachment by
laboring, franklj enough, but after a wo
manly fashion, for his good.
One day they were together, in the paint
ing-room. Kate was leaning on Harry’s
shoulder—her bright, clear eyes fixed ear
nestly upon a picture at which he had been
a long while occupied, ft represented a
nun-like figure, whose folded hands and
upward look seemed to indicate that she
was engaged in religious contemplation, or
in some act of penitence or prayer. Kate
| turned her eyes away, and began to play
with Harry's hair—sending thrill after
thrill along his nerves at every touch of
her light hand, in its unusual familiarity.
At last, she said, hesitating, and glancing
at the picture—
“ Why have you made her so pale,
Harry ?”
“Because,” he answered, “1 do not
mean to represent her, exactly, as belong
ing to the earth. She is a kind of Allego
ry of the Spirit of Devotion.”
“ But,” said Kate, smiling, “she seems
to he in a decline. There is no merit in
piety, when earthly things are about to he
taken by force away from us. Her cheeks
do not look warm and full, like real flesh
j and blood.”
“ Why, von must know,” replied Harry,
“1 did not intend to clothe her, or rather,
to clothe the idea, in real flesh and blood;
that would make the subject too material.
I wished to ethereali/.e her face and form,
and to approach, as far as possible, toward
i what we call the ideal.”
“ Well, but, after all, call it what you
j like, it is a woman, and quite a pretty wo
■ man, too.”
“ She is not altogether a woman, Kate,”
returned the artist, much perplexed; “I
tell you she is an embodiment of the Spirit
j of Piety.”
“ Yet, if you are going to embody the
! Spirit of Piety,” she persisted, “must you
j not put it in a real body ? The picture,
’ dearest, seems to me like yourself ; almost
too dreamy, too unearthly.” She placed
I her arm about his neck, as if to soothe him
! and confine his attention. “ For my part,”
she continued, “ I would rather look upon
a mere, downright woman, honestly pray
ing with all her heart, than puzzle myself
over any Allegory of Devotion that can be
contrived. 1 think that these allegories
i are only painted riddles. When you have
pul the clasped hands, the eyes turned up
; ward, the nun’s dress, and all, together in
your mind, you guess that it means Devo
tion, and once guessed, there is an end of
the picture ; for it is not a woman, and it
certainly is not a spirit. You ought to paint
more that you see, dear Harry, and less
(hat you think. Is this very foolish talk
of mine?”
Kate’s position would of itself have
quelled Harry's pride of art; but he had
studied moreover in a rough school, and his
artistic feelings were not easily hurt. He
had good sense, too. and was assured that,
right or wrong, she was absolutely in his
interest. So he pondered calmly on her
words.
“ You see, Harry,” she resumed, timidly,
“people do not care to look at ideal wo
men, as you call them, who are only half
flesh and blood, and the rest spirit. I know
that such pictures do not generally please,
because they do not give me pleasure; and
lam one of the people I believe that we
all prefer to meet, in such a painting, with
the face of a real woman, and to be sure
from her expression that she is very inno
cent and very much in earnest in her pray
er. We can enter into the picture and feel
solemn before it, because she belongs to
the same world, and has the same wants
and troubles as ourselves.”
“You mean. I suppose, that the art of
painting cannot reach, or has nothing to
do with, a general abstract idea,” said
Harry, thoughtfully.
“I do not quite understand those words,”
she answered, “ hut 1 will show you what
l mean. lam going to represent the Spir
it of Love; and you are not worth loving,
if you do not think me prettier than an al
legory.”
Laughing merrily at the thought, she
proceeded to place a cushion near the cen
tre of the room ; then, turning toward him,
she knelt down, and letting her hands fall
into her lap, gazed up steadfastly into his
face. The noonday sun poured through
the window over head in a shower of gold
en motes around her. It gleamed warmly
down her shoulders and flashed irom her
black hair like a diamond crown. Her
form was indistinct amid the shining haze.
I cannot describe her look, half mirthful
and half earnest: for the refining influence
of love had given her features an expres
sion of nobility, and had wonderfully soft
ened her dazzling beauty. As she sat,
blushing in her conscious loveliness. Har
ry leaned toward her, as if drawn by an ir
resistible influence; she waved him back
with something of her old imperious man
ner :
“Goon with your painting,” she said.
“You cannot afford to be idle. Put my
face instead of the nun’s.
Harry began to make a sketch of her.—
There were many interruptions, and the
subject was in intervals of leisure often re
sumed, until at last the form came out vis
ibly on canvass. It was a very human
face ; for he could not fail to catch some
traits of the bold and vivid beauty before
his eyes; and the second nun stood forth,
glowing in all the strange fascination which
haunts the old pictures of the Magdalen.
It was a creature so fiery in spirit and over
flowing with maidenhood, yet so saintly.
But when, at Kate's suggestion, he finally
removed the unnatural trappings of the con
vent and left her, merely a young girl,
thoughtful and loving, looking up toward
the sky, that ambiguous charm of the Mag
dalen disappeared. Then it was an abso
lute woman, the holy presence of whose
purity made the beholder, by sympathy,
more pure.
I suspect that Kate was partly right in
her contempt for the allegorical; but, at
all events, day after day she strove to
make her lover more fit to live on the earth
as it is, and less apt to wander into dream
land ; herself, meanwhile, like a true wo
man, reflecting his refinement. Thus she
came to his help, a glorious ally in the
battle of life; always a woman to his sor
rows, and a friend in his triumphs. And
when, in after days, he gained the van
tage-ground of the world, and she became
his wife, I can imagine that her compan
ship might illuminate even the valley of
the shadow’ of matrimony, at whose por
tals the novelist pauses and turns away
with a sigh. M. W.
Printer's Soliloquy. —Our assistant,
(says an exchange,) “Charley,” who often
indulges in private, yet rather lond “Shaks
pearian readings,” in assorting a lot of
pie, a few days ago, and while trying to
pick up a ti gave vent to his pent-up dra
matic, literary, witty eloquence, in the fol
lowing quotation from Macbeth :
“ Is this a dagger [f] which I see before me.
The handle toward my hand I Come, let me
clutch theo: —
I have thee not, and yet I sec thee still.
Art thou not, frail vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight I or art thou but
A dagger of the mind !
No! thov art but a simple dagger-o-type l”