Part 24 (2/2)
”_Come back!_” said the girls, ”we will not! go tell it to all the town, We'll lose our lives, G.o.d willing, before that man shall drown!”
”Give one more knot to the shawls, Bess! give one strong clutch of your hand!
Just follow me, brave, to the s.h.i.+ngle, and we'll bring him safe to land!
Wait for the next wave, darling! only a minute more, And I'll have him safe in my arms, dear, and we'll drag him to the sh.o.r.e.”
Up to the arms in the water, fighting it breast to breast, They caught and saved a brother alive. G.o.d bless them! you know the rest-- Well, many a heart beat stronger, and many a tear was shed, And many a hearty cheer was raised for ”The Women of Mumbles Head!”
A REASONABLE REQUEST.
MR. DARNELLE ASKS HIS FIANCEE A FAVOR, AFTER THEIR ENGAGEMENT.
”It is so sudden, Mr. Darnelle.”
”I know it is,” responded the young man gently.
He stood before her with his weight resting easily on one foot, his left elbow on the mantel-piece, his right arm behind him, and his whole att.i.tude one of careless, unstudied ease and grace, acquired only by long and patient practice.
”I know it is,” he repeated. ”Measured by ordinary standards and by the cold conventionalities of society, it is indeed sudden. We have known each other only twenty-four hours. Until 8.25 o'clock last night neither of us had ever heard of the other. Yet with the heart one day is as one hundred years. Could we have known one another better, darling,” he went on, with a tremor in his cultivated B flat baritone voice, ”if we had attended the theatre, the concert, the church and the oyster parlor together for a dozen seasons? Does not your heart beat responsive to mine?”
”I will not pretend to deny, Mr. Darnelle,” replied the young lady, with a rich blush mantling her cheek and brow, ”that your avowal moves me strangely.”
”I know it--I feel it,” he responded eagerly. ”Love is not the slow, vegetable-like growth of years. It does not move in its course with the measured, leisurely step of a man working by the day. It springs up like a mushr--like an electric flash. It takes instant possession. It does not need to be jerked in, as it were. It needs not the agonized coaxing of--of a young man's first chin whiskers, my darling. It is here! You will forgive my presumption, will you not, and speak the words that tremble on your lips--the words that will fill my cup of joy to overflowing?”
The evening had pa.s.sed like a beautiful dream. Mr. Darnelle, admonished by the clock that it was time to go, had risen reluctantly to his feet, and stood holding the hand of his beautiful betrothed.
”My love,” he said, in eager pa.s.sionate accents, ”now that you have blessed my life with a measureless, ineffable joy, and made all my future radiant with golden hope, you will not think I am asking too much if I plead for just one favor?”
”What is it?” shyly responded the lovely maiden.
”Will you please tell me your first name?”
RESIGNATION.
BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside howso'er defended, But has one vacant chair!
The air is full of farewells to the dying; And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying.
Will not be comforted!
Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions a.s.sume this dark disguise.
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps.
There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death.
She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule.
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