Caroline Lee Hentz

“ The prospect which Mittie had hailed with exultation, Helen looked forward to with dismay. To be sent to a distant school, among a community of strangers, was to her timid, shrinking spirit, an ordeal of fire. To be separated from Alice, Arthur, and Mrs. Hazleton, seemed like the sentence of death to her loving, clinging heart.
“We must all learn self-reliance, Helen,” said Arthur, “we must all pass through the discipline of life. The time will soon come when you will assume woman’s duties, and it is well that you go forth awhile to gather strength and wisdom, to meet and fulfil them. ”

“ Adellan was astonished that no disfiguring traces appeared on the regular outline of his youthful face; his hair, too, instead of the woolly locks of the Ethiopian, was of shining length and profusion, and as Adellan's hand bathed his brow with water, he discovered beneath the jetty dye of his complexion the olive skin of the Abyssinian.
"Ozora!" exclaimed Adellan, throwing himself in agony by her side; "Ozora, you have followed me, but to die!"
"Forgive me, Adellan," cried she, faintly; "it was death to live without you; but oh! I have found everlasting life, in dying at your feet. ”

“ Then stroking back the black and shining hair from her high, bold brow, he added,
“You are mistaken, Mittie, if you do not think that we love you. I love you with a father’s tender affection; I have never given you reason to doubt it. If I show more love for Helen, it is only because she is younger, smaller, and winds herself more closely around me by her loving, affectionate ways; she seems to love me better, to love us all better. That is the secret, Mittie; it is love; cling to our hearts as Helen does, and we will never cast you off.” ”

“ Put your arms round me, my mother, and let me lie close to your bosom, I will not hurt you, I will lie so gently there. Death cannot separate us, when we cling so close together. Leave me not alone in the world, so cold, so dark, so dreary,—oh, leave me not alone!" Thus I clung to her, in the abandonment of despair, while words rushed unhidden from my lips.
"Oh, my Gabriella, my child, my poor smitten lamb!" she cried, and I felt her heart fluttering against mine like a dying bird. "Sorrow has bereft you of reason,—you know not what you say. ”

“ Helen feared that Miss Thusa would be offended, especially as Louis joined merrily in the chorus—and she looked at Alice as if her glance had power to check her. But she did not know all the windings of Miss Thusa’s heart. Any one like Alice, marked by the Almighty, by some peculiar misfortune, was an object not only of tenderness, but of reverence in her eyes. The blasted tree, the blighted flower, the smitten lamb—all touched by the finger of God, were sacred things—and so were blindness and deafness—and any personal calamity. ”

“ I despise a weak woman, I hate a masculine one, and a pedantic one I abhor. I turn with fear from the glittering belle, whose home is the crowded hall, whose incense the homage of fools, whose altar the shrine of fashion. Can she sit down contented in the privacy of domestic love who has lived on the adulation of the world, or be satisfied with the affection of one true heart, who has claimed as her due, the vows of all? ”

“ Always before, when listening to Edith's angelic voice, I had wished for the same enchanting power. I had felt that thus I could sing, I could play, had art developed the gifts of nature, only with deeper passion and sensibility; but now I listened without conscious desire,—passive, happy, willing to receive, without desiring to impart. I felt like the pilgrim who, after a sultry day of weariness, pauses by a cool spring, and, laying himself down beneath its gushing, suffers the stream to flow over him,—till, penetrated by their freshness, his soul seems a fountain of living waters. ”

“ To be locked up alone in the darkness! Helen felt as if she had heard her death-warrant, and pale even to blueness, she leaned against her mother, incapable of articulating the prayer that trembled on her ashy lips.
“Give her to me,” said Miss Thusa, “I will take her up stairs and stay with her till you come.”
“Oh, no, there is no fire in the room, and you will be cold. Mr. Gleason, the child is sick and faint. She has scarcely any pulse—and look, what a blue shade round her mouth. Helen, my darling, do tell me what is the matter with you.” ”

“ There was a rushing to and fro in the chamber of Ellen Loring, a tread of hurrying feet, a mingled hum of voices, an opening and shutting of doors, as if some event of overwhelming importance agitated the feelings, and moved the frames of every individual in the house. A stranger, in the apartment below, might have imagined an individual was dying, and that all were gathering round to offer the appliances of love and sympathy. But Ellen Loring, the object of all this commotion, was in all the bloom and beauty of health. ”

“ That cold, gray mist; it penetrated the depths of my spirit; it drenched, drowned it, filled it with vague, ghost-like images of dread and horror. I cast one glance behind, and saw a gleam of heaven's sunny blue, one bright dazzling gleam flashing between the rugged rock and the rushing waters. It was as if the veil of the temple of nature were rent, and the glory of God shone through the fissure.
"Let us return," said I to Ernest. "I feel as if I had passed through the valley of the shadow of death. Is it not sacrilegious to penetrate so deeply into the mysteries of nature?"
"O Gabriella!" ”