boys at play, upon the green." He took a handkerchief from his pillow, and tried to wave it above his head. But the feeble arm dropped powerless down. "Shall I do it?" said the schoolmaster. "Please wave it at the window," was the faint reply. "Tie it to the lattice. Some of them may see it there. Perhaps they'll think of me, and look this way." 15. He raised his head and glanced from the *fluttering *signal to his idle bat, that lay, with slate, and book, and other boyish property, upon the table in the room. And then he laid him softly down once more; and again clasped his little arms around the old man's neck. The two old friends and companions-for such they were, though they were man and child-held each other in a long embrace, and then the little scholar turned his face to the wall and fell asleep. 16. The poor schoolmaster sat in the same place, holding the small, cold hand in his, and chafing it. It was but the hand of a dead child. He felt that; and yet he chafed it still, and could not lay it down. 1. SHE said she was alone within the world; She whisper'd something of a lad, With eyes of blue, and light hair sweetly curl'd; But the grave had the child! And yet his voice she heard, When at the +lattice, calm and mild, The mother in the twilight saw the vine-leaves stirr❜d. "I love thee; When thou dost by the side of thy lone pillow pray, 2. Where was the husband of the widowed thing, A soldier dares a soldier's fire; The murderous ball brought death upon its wing; Beneath a foreign sky He fell, in sunny Spain; The wife, in silence, saw him die, But the fond boy's blue eyes gave drops like sunny rain. "Mother!" the poor lad cried, "He's dying! We are close by thee, father, at thy bleeding side; Mother! his lips are clos'd; he's dying!" 3. It was a stormy time, where the man fell, +Consumption's worm his pulse +entwin'd; 66 Prepare his shroud!" rang out the convent bell, To soothe a parent's grief; Sad soul! she could not be +beguil'd; She saw the bud would leave the guardian leaf! Kiss me, and let me in my father's grave be laid; CLVI. THE LITTLE BROOK AND THE STAR. 1. ONCE upon a time, in the leafy *covert of a wild, woody +dingle, there lived (for it was indeed, a thing of life) a certain little brook, that might have been the happiest creature in the world, if it had but known when it was well-off, and been content with the station assigned to it by an unerring Providence. But in that knowledge and that content, consists the true secret of happiness; and the silly little brook never found out the mystery, until it was too late to profit by it. 2. I can not say, positively, from what source the little brook came; but it appeared to well out from beneath the hollow root of an old thorn; and, collecting together its *pellucid waters, so as to form a small pool within that knotty *reservoir, it swelled +imperceptibly over its irregular +margin, and slipped away, unheard,—almost unseen,-among mossy stones and entangling branches. No temerald was ever so green; never was velvet so soft, as the beautiful moss which encircled that tiny lake; and it was gemmed and embroidered, too, by all flowers that love the shade; pale primroses and nodding violets; anemones, with their fair, downcast heads; and starry clusters of forget-me-not, looking lovingly, with their pale, tender eyes, into the bosom of their native rill. 3. The hawthorn's branches were interwoven above, with those of a holly; and a woodbine, climbing up the stem of one tree, flung across to the other its flexible arms, knotting together the mingled foliage, with its rich clusters and elegant festoons, like a fair sister, growing up under the guardianship of two beloved brothers, and, by her endearing witchery, drawing together, in closer union, their already united hearts. Never was little brook so delightfully situated; for its existence, though secluded, was neither monotonous nor solitary. A thousand trifling incidents (trifling, but not uninteresting,) were perpetually varying the scene; and innumerable living creatures, the gentlest and loveliest of the *sylvan tribes, familiarly haunted its retreat. 4. Beautiful, there, was every season with its changes! In the year's fresh morning, delicious May or ripening June, if a light breeze but stirred in the hawthorn tops, down on the dimpling water came a shower of milky blossoms, loading the air with fragrance as they tell. Then, came the squirrel with his mirthful antics. Then, rustling through fern and brushwood, stole the timid hare, half startled, as she slaked her thirst at the still fountain, by the liquid reflection of her own large, lustrous eyes. There was no lack of music round about. A song-thrush had his domicil hard by; and, even at night, his mellow voice was heard, contending with a nightingale, in scarce unequal rivalry. And other vocalists, innumerable, awoke those woodland echoes. Sweetest of all, the low, tremulous call of the ring-dove floated, at intervals, through the shivering +foliage, the very soul of sound and tenderness. 5. In winter, the glossy-green and coral clusters of the holly, flung down their rich reflections on the little pool, then visited through the leafless boughs with a gleam of more perfect daylight; and a red-breast, which had built its nest, and reared its young among the twisted roots of that old tree, still hovered about his summer bower, still quenched his thirst at the little brook, still sought his food on its mossy banks; and, tuning his small pipe, when every other feathered throat, but his own, was mute, took up the eternal hymn of gratitude, which began with the birth-day of Nature, and shall only cease with her expiring breath. So, every season brought but changes of pleasantness to that happy little brook and happier still it was,-or might have been,-in one sweet and tender companionship, to which passing time and revolving seasons brought no change. 6. True it was, no unintercepted sunshine ever glittered on its shaded waters; but, just above the spot where they were gathered into that fairy fount, a small opening in the toverarching foliage admitted, by day, a glimpse of the blue sky; and, by night, the mild, pale ray of a bright fixed star, which looked down into the stilly water, with such tender +radiance as beams from the eyes we love best, when they rest upon us with an earnest gaze of serious tenderness. Forever, and forever, when night came, the beautiful star still gazed on its earth-born love, which seemed, if a wandering air but skimmed its surface, to stir, as if with life, in tresponsive intercourse with its bright visitant. 7. Some malicious whispers went abroad, indeed, that the tenamored gaze of that radiant eye was not always exclusively fixed on the little brook; that it had its oblique glances for other favorites. But I take it, those rumors were altogether +libelous, mere rural gossip, scandalous tittle-tattle, got up, between two old, gray, +mousing owls, who went prowling about and prying into their neighbors' concerns, when they ought to have been in their beds, at home. However that may be though I warrant the kind creatures were too conscientious to leave the little brook in ignorance of their candid conjectures-it did not care one fig about the matter, utterly disregarding every syllable they said. This would have been highly creditable to the little brook, if its light mode of dismissing the subject had not been partly owing to the engrossing influence of certain new-fangled notions and desires, which, in an unhappy hour, had insinuated themselves into its hitherto untroubled bosom. 8. Alas! that elementary, as well as human natures, should be liable to moral infirmity! But that they are, was strongly exemplified in the instance of our luckless little brock. You must know, that, notwithstanding the leafy recess, in which it was so snugly located, was, to all inward appearance, sequestered as in the heart of a vast forest, in point of fact, it only skirted the edge of an extensive plain, in one part of which lay a large pond, to which herds of kine and oxen came down to drink, morning and evening, and wherein they might be seen standing motionless for hours together, during the sultry summer noon; when the waveless water, glowing like a fiery mirror under the meridian blaze, reflected, with magical effect, the huge forms and varied coloring of the congregated cattle, as well as those of a flock of stately, milk-white geese, accustomed to swim upon its bosom. 9. Now, it so chanced, that from the nook of which we have spoken, encircled as it was by leafy walls, there opened, precisely in the direction of the plain and the pond, a cunning little peep-hole, which must have been perforated by the demon of mischief, and which no eye would ever have spied out, save that of a lynx or an idle person. Alas! our little brook was an idle person; she had nothing in the world to do from morning to night, and that is the root of all evil; so, though she might have found useful occupation, (every body can, if they seek it in right earnest,) she spent her whole time in peering and prying about, till, one unlucky day, what should she hit upon, but that identical peep-hole, through which, as through a +telescope, she discovered with unspeakable amazement the great pond, all glowing in the noon-day sun; the herds of cattle and the flocks of geese, so brilliantly redoubled on its broad mirror. 10. "My stars!" ejaculated the little brook, (little thought she at that moment, of the one faithful star.) My stars! what can all this be? It looks something like me, only a What can be shining so upon it? and what can those great creatures be? Not hares, surely, though they have legs and tails; but such tails! And those other thousand times as big. |