William Carleton

“ She was Brian M'Loughlin's only daughter—a creature that breathed of goodness, grace, and all those delightful qualities that make woman a ministering angel amidst the cares, and miseries, and sorrows of life. Her figure, symmetry itself, was so light, and graceful, and elegant, that a new charm was displayed by every motion, as a new beauty was discovered by every change of her expressive countenance; her hair was like the raven's wing, and her black eye, instead of being sharp and piercing, was more in accordance with the benignity of her character, soft, sweet, and mellow. ”

“ We love the place, sir, for its own sake;—it is the place of our fathers, and our hearts are in it. I often think I see the smooth river that runs through it, and the meadows that I played in when I was a child;—the glen behind our house, the mountains that rose before us when we left the door, the thorn-bush at the garden, the hazels in the glen, the little beach-green beside the river—Oh, sir, don't blame me for crying, for they are all before my eyes, in my ears, and in my heart! ”

“ Never was pardon to the malefactor, nor the firm tread of land to the shipwrecked mariner, so welcome as the dawn of returning life in Felix was to his brother. The moment he saw the poor youth's eyes fixed upon him, and heard his voice, he threw himself on his knees at the bedside, clasped him in his arms, and with an impetuous tide of sensations, in which were blended joy, grief, burning affection, and remorse, he kissed his lips, strained him to his bosom, and wept with such agony, that poor Felix was compelled to console him. ”

“ Yes, mamma, both are painted on that serene brow; for no art of the limner could conceal their mournful traces, nor remove the veil of sorrow which an unhappy destiny threw over your beauty. There, in that clear and gentle eye, is still the image of your love and sympathy—there is that smile so full of sweetness and suffering. Alas, alas! how closely do we resemble each other in all things. Sweet and blessed saint, if it be permitted, descend and let your spirit be with me—to guide, to soothe, and to support me; your task will not be a long one, beloved parent. ”

“ O, the destroyer, the villain! the devil! what has he wrought upon us! But, thank God, he is punished—the father's love punished him. They are liars! you are no murderer. The mother's heart within me tells me that you did what was right—you acted like a man, my husband. God bless you, and make your soul happy for its love to Nannie. I'll kiss you, Harry—I'll kiss you, my heart's treasure, for your noble deed—but O Harry, you don't know the lips of sorrow that kiss! ”

“ Agnes looked at her with sad but earnest admiration, and exclaimed in a quivering-voice as she pressed her to her bosom,
“Oh Jane, Jane, how my heart loves you!—the day is coming, my sister—our sweetest, our youngest, our dearest—the day is coming when we will see you no more—when your sorrows and your joys, whether real or imaginary—when all the unsettled evidences of goodness, which nothing could destroy, will be gone; and you with all you’ve suffered—with all your hopes and fears, will be no longer present for our hearts to gather about. Oh my sister, my sister! how will the old man live! ”

“ THE LIANHAN SHEE.
One summer evening Mary Sullivan was sitting at her own well-swept hearthstone, knitting feet to a pair of sheep's gray stockings for Bartley, her husband. It was one of those serene evenings in the month of June, when the decline of day assumes a calmness and repose, resembling what we might suppose to have irradiated Eden, when our first parents sat in it before their fall. The beams of the sun shone through the windows in clear shafts of amber light, exhibiting millions of those atoms which float to the naked eye within its mild radiance. ”

“ There stood Skinadre, like the very Genius of Famine, surrounded by distress, raggedness, feeble hunger, and tottering disease, in all the various aspects of pitiable suffering, hopeless desolation, and that agony of the heart which impresses wildness upon the pale cheek, makes the eye at once dull and eager, parches the mouth and gives to the voice of misery tones that are hoarse and hollow. There he stood, striving to blend consolation with deceit, and in the name of religion and charity subjecting the helpless wretches to fraud and extortion. ”

“ How little do its proud nobility know of the fair and still beauty which marks the unbroken silence of its most delightful retreats, or of the unassuming records of love or sorrow, which pass down through a single generation, and are soon lost in the rapid stream of life. We do not love to remember sorrow, but its traces, notwithstanding, are always the most uneffaceable, and, what is strange as true, its mournful imprint remains ever the longest upon the heart that is most mirthful. We talk not now of the hollow echo, like mirth, which comes from thousands only because the soul is wanting. ”

“ I was unhappy; unhappy, not only in my present wife, but in the recollection of the gentle and affectionate Maria. I now felt the full enormity of my crime against that patient and angelic being. Her memory began to haunt me—her virtues were ever in my thoughts; her quiet, uncomplaining submission, her love, devotion, tenderness, all rose up in fearful array against me, until I felt that the abiding principle of my existence was a deep remorse, that ate its way into my happiness day by day, and has never left me through my whole subsequent life. ”

“ On surveying the pallid face of his father, and the worn, thread—like veins that ran along his temples, and calling to mind the love of the old man for himself, which even avarice, in its deadliest power, failed to utterly overcome, he felt all the springs of his affection loosened, and his soul vibrated with a tenderness towards him, such as no situation in their past lives had ever before created. ”

“ Her heart bounded, her pulse beat high, and a sudden sensation of hysterical delight rushed to her throat with a transport that would have been painful, did she not pass out of a state of such panting ecstacy and become dissolved in tears. She wept, but how far did she believe the cause of her emotion to be removed from sorrow? She wept, yet alas! alas! never did tears of such delight flow from a source that drew a young heart onward to greater darkness and desolation. Weep on, fair girl, in thy happiness; for the day will come when thou will not be able to find one tear in thy misery! ”

“ Mother, didn't my father love me once better than his own life? I think he did. O, yes, and I returned it by murdering him—by sending him—that father there that loved me so well—by—by sending him to the hangman—to a death of disgrace and shame. That's what his own Nannie, as he used to call me, did for him. But no shame—-no guilt to you, father; the shame and the guilt are your own Nannie's, and that's the only comfort I have; for you're happy, what I will never be, either in this world or the next. You are now in heaven; but you will never see your own Nannie there. ”

“ The evening, which was now far advanced, had impressed on it a character of such dark and hopeless desolation as weighed down the heart with a feeling of cold and chilling gloom that was communicated by the dreary aspect of every thing around. The sky was obscured by a heavy canopy of low, dull clouds that had about them none of the grandeur of storm, but lay overhead charged with those wintry deluges which we feel to be so unnatural and alarming in autumn, whose bounty and beauty they equally disfigure and destroy. ”