Various

“ What matters a few more moments of existence to one like him, when the eternal welfare of a human being hangs trembling in the balance? Deprived of the means of living, Edith will have no choice—she must marry you, or debase her pride of soul before the iron sway of poverty. Her mother is old—infirm; and for her sake, the daughter will listen to your proffers of love. Take your destiny into your own hands. ”

“ Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go away and leave me to be persecuted to death!" exclaimed the lady Dewbell, with an uncontrollable burst of tears, as she threw herself, her toilet half finished, and her hair all strewn over her face and shoulders, upon her little praying cushion. "What will become of poor Bell!"
"What ails my daughter?" said the sweet, soft voice of the queen mother, as she knelt tenderly over her child, and pressed her head to her bosom. "Tell your sorrows to your mother."
"Oh, mother, I am the most wretched fairy that ever existed. ”

“ Is it not time that we heard from Robert Barclay? Surely he will not be relentless, when he hears that your health is failing. After all, Edith, you need not be so averse to receiving assistance from him; the property he holds is rightfully ours."
"Mother," replied Edith, a faint flush mounting to her cheek, "for your sake I have submitted to humiliate myself before our ruthless kinsman, but I fear it will be in vain. Only as his wife will my claims on his humanity and justice be acknowledged. Would you not shrink, dearest mother, from condemning your child to such a doom? ”

“ If God sees fit to tear me from you before I can legally provide for you and my beloved mother, I shall be enabled to forget the bitter truth in listening to your sweet voice. You promise me this, Edith?"
"I do—Heaven will sustain me even then, my darling brother, and give me power to forget my own anguish in soothing your last moments."
Edith Euston pressed his hand to her lips, and raising from the floor a guitar which lay beside her, she poured forth a strain of melody which seemed to soothe the senses of the invalid to rest. ”

“ He lost no time in seeking Edith; Mrs. Euston was yet buried in the leaden slumber produced by a powerful narcotic. The unhappy girl received him alone, and he remarked that his words of impassioned love brought no color to her marble cheek—no emotion to her soul; she seemed to have steeled herself for the interview, and it was not until he pressed the kiss of betrothal upon her pallid lips, that she betrayed any sensibility—then a thrill, a shudder pervaded her whole frame, and he supported her nearly insensible form several moments before she regained power to sustain herself. ”

“ As the sun rose the forest echoed with sounds and song. The leaves moved with life, as a thousand bright-plumed birds flashed from tree to tree. The green parrot screamed after his mate, uttering his wild notes of endearment. They are seen in pairs flying high up in the heavens. The troupiale flashed through the dark foliage like a ray of yellow light. Birds seemed to vie with each other in their songs of love. Amidst these sounds of the forest, the ear of Rolfe caught the frequent crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, and the other well-known sounds of the settlement. ”

“ Unhappy lady Dewbell! She had so many hundred times been told, what she herself believed full well, that she was absolutely the most beautiful creature in existence, that the tale had lost its interest. The champagne of flattery, its creaming foam long ago melted into the brain, stood untasted before her, dull and flat as the subsided fountain poured by the last rain-shower into the tulip's cup. And so the fairy princess stood listless and apart from the joyous revel, her little form swaying lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the lily-stem against which she more perceptibly rested. ”

“ He saw that the parchment which disinherited him was placed beside Euston, and the pen stood in the inkstand, ready to do its service, so soon as the hand of the watch pointed to the hour of two; and he ground his teeth in impotent rage, as the moments flitted by, and Euston yet continued to breathe.
Terrible is the watch of love beside the flitting soul which parts in peace; but how much more awful was that vigil, in which the anguish of bereavement was doubly embittered by the fear of future want to those who had been reared amid all the refinements of luxury. ”

“ As the privateer approached the pirate they could not but admire the singular beauty of her build. She rose and fell upon the waters as gracefully as a free and wild ocean bird. The long red lines of her port-holes swept with a gentle curve from stem to stern, and her stem was so sharp that the bowsprit seemed rather to terminate than to join it. Twelve carronades occupied a double row of port-holes, and the deck seemed crowded with men, all armed with cutlases and pistols.
"A formidable looking set," said Captain Greene, as he laid aside his glass, "keep the gun lively." ”

“ The death of Edgar may leave me penniless—nearly friendless—I have been tenderly nurtured, but I would sooner embrace a life of sternest self-denial, of utter poverty, than link myself with infamy in your person. Leave me—and dare not approach the room of my brother, to imbitter his last hours by your presence."
"And your mother, my fair heroine?" said Barclay, in a tone of sarcasm bordering on contempt. "What will become of her if you persist in the rejection of the only person in the wide world on whom you have any claim? She is old, feeble, broken in health and spirit. ”

“ Will not Charlotte be yours in the world to come?"
"God grant it!" said I; "but where will be Benny and Charles? They can never be, and I shall die, and the flame of parental love will burn in me, and never can it have an object."
"Hush you!" said Margaret, "cannot God give you in the other world those spirits of fancy? Did you not enjoy them in the dream, and cannot the same power make you enjoy them in Elysium? Is it nothing that God has done for you in showing you what might have been, and what can be there? Are you still ungrateful, and do you still distrust his goodness? ”

“ The poor artist must still worship his ideal at a distance. For him there is but the world of imagination. No such bright reality as being beloved rests in his gloomy future. Farewell!" and the young man, bowing for a moment over the hand of Hortensia, withdrew.
"Brother, brother, what have you done!" passionately exclaimed the beauty, in a voice choked by sobs. "For a foolish joke you have driven away the only being who has ever interested my lonely heart. And now I can never, never be happy again."
"But, dear Hortensia, would you stoop to love a mere artist?" ”

“ In the hope that Edith would be forced to relent, Barclay had remained in New Orleans thus late in the season, and he resolved to linger yet a little longer, until want and suffering should leave her no choice. His passion for her was one of those insanities to which men of his violent character are often liable. He desired her as the one great gift, which was to purify, to exalt him in the scale of humanity. The delicate beauty of her person, the sensibility of her soul, the grace of her manner, rendered her irresistibly attractive to him ”

“ Flint."
"What about?"
"Concerning Heartall."
"Still Heartall!" exclaimed the director.
"Always," replied Sam.
"Be quiet," said the director, walking on again. "You are not content, then, with your four-and-twenty hours of solitary confinement?"
Sam followed him—"Mr. Flint, give me back my comrade."
"Impossible!"
"Sir," said Sam, in a tone which might have softened the heart of a fiend, "I entreat you, restore Heartall to me. You shall see how well I will work. To you who are free, it is no matter—you do not know what the worth of a friend is; but I have only the four walls of my prison. ”

“ I had yet to learn the lesson, bitter and agonizing, that no woman is proof against the captivating temptations of ambition, and the glare of wealth. I know but little of the sex; they are called angels, and I had thought Helen was an angel—alas! I found my mistake. I read my doom in the averted coldness of her glance; I felt it in the unwilling pressure of her hand whenever we met, and I knew it when I gazed upon the countenance of my brother, on which was a quiet glow of happiness his expressive features could not conceal, even when he knew my searching glance was upon him. ”

“ The dreaded day at length arrived, and with the calmness of exhausted emotion, Edith prepared herself for the ceremony which was to consign her to the protection of Barclay. She believed her earthly fate sealed, and resignation was all she could command.
Amid all her suffering, there was one thought which arose perpetually before her; there was one human being on earth who would have risked his life to serve or save her, and she knew that a heart worthy of her love would hear the history of her enforced marriage with bitter disappointment and anguish. ”

“ In this gorgeous saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the benevolent old King Paterflor and his modest and still lovely queen Sweetbine, all were noble and accomplished and beautiful and gay; but the charms of the Princess Dewbell, just bursting into the richness of full-grown fairyhood, were so surpassing that none had ever been found to question, even in their own hearts, her supremacy. This, perhaps, may appear strange to many of my pretty readers, but they must remember that mine is a faithful chronicle of fairies—not of women. ”

“ But a man who is not drunk, who has the perfect use of his reason, wrings my heart for four years, humbles me for four years, pierces me with a weapon every day, every hour, every minute, in some unexpected point for four years. I had a wife, for whose sake I became a thief—he tortures me through that wife; a child for whom I stole—he tortures me through that child. I have not bread enough to eat—a friend gives it me; he takes away my friend and my food. I ask for my friend back—he condemns me to solitary confinement. ”

“ Euston had long since abandoned all hope of recovery, but he sought the mild climate of Cuba, trusting that the fatal day might be deferred until he had secured independence to his family, but his physician feared that the very eagerness of his wishes would eventually defeat them. It was mournful, and deeply touching, to witness that clinging to existence in one so young, not from love of life itself, but from a desire to perform an act of justice. ”

“ Not one of those gorgeous scenes, however, had moved me as I was moved when once again I beheld my boyhood's home—the stately mansion of my fathers. Half hidden, it rose majestically amid the noble elms that surrounded it; there lay the velvet-green sloping lawn in front—down which, as a boy, I had rolled in the summer and sledded in the winter—there the wild, night-dark ravine in the rear—fit haunt for elves and gnomes—that terminated amid jagged rocks and tangled trees, in a rushing, roaring brook of no mean dimensions, almost as large as many of the so-called rivers of the mother country. ”

“ Edith is seated near the only window of their sordid apartment in the afternoon of a sultry summer day; the sun is shining without with overpowering splendor; a heated vapor rises from the paved streets and seems to shimmer in the breathless atmosphere. Edith had lost all the freshness and roundness of youth; her cheek was deadly white, and her emaciated form seemed to indicate the approach of the terrible disease of which her brother had died. ”

“ The simple white dress was so pure and chaste in its effect, displaying only her lovely throat, and her beautiful chestnut-brown hair was gathered up carelessly but neatly, while over one tiny ear fell a rich cluster of ringlets; then, with all her beauty and exquisite taste, she is so unconscious, so unstudied. That the world should call Mary Lee a beauty, I do not wonder; but that society should pronounce her a belle, is, indeed, a surprise to me—she is so unassuming, so free from art and affectation. ”

“ That night, when my nurse was undressing me for bed, I said,
"What's a belle, Katy?"
"A very rich and beautiful young lady," replied my nurse, "who has plenty of lovers, and gets married very soon."
"Will I ever be a belle?" I innocently inquired, as she gathered up my rebellious hair under my cap.
"No," she replied, in impatient tones, "your hair is too straight, and your skin too yellow; but you must do as you're told to, or else nobody will even love you; so go to sleep right away." ”

“ Is it nothing that he has kept you from temptation, and that you have so clear a conscience? Will you not be worthy of Charlotte in heaven; and have you no gratitude for all this? Have you not dear friends still; and will not Margaret be a guardian-angel to you so long as you sojourn in this valley of tears?"
"Ah!" said I, "I am blest beyond my deserts, and I will no more complain, but thank my heavenly Father for the dream-children he hath given me." ”

“ At length she turned her eyes, streaming with tears, toward the Raker, and pointing to the flag above her, as if to indicate that there was no one to lower it, she knelt upon the deck, bowing her head upon her hands. Her long hair fell over her forehead and trailed upon the blood-stained deck, as she knelt in mute despair among the dying and the dead. ”

“ Joy is as old as the universe, yet as young as a June rose: and a pic-nic has of all places been its delight, since the little quiet family fêtes champêtres of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. So it is of no especial consequence in what reign of what kingdom our clever artist has laid his scene—and sooth to say, from the diversified and pleasantly incongruous costume and accessories of the picture, it might puzzle an uninitiated to tell. ”

“ One moment only before that time should Death claim his victim the estate is mine, and you dependent on my bounty. Think you that the frail and wasted ghost of a man who struggles for breath in yonder room can live through another week? Hope—yes, hope for the best, for despair will come soon enough. ”

“ The old king and his good wife, Sweetbine, were very much grieved at the foolish trifling of their daughter, Dewbell—for they were well assured that Dewbell loved the noble knight, Sir Timothy, and that it was only a spirit of mere wantonness that led her to vex and torment him. Long into the night did the royal couple converse, striving to devise some means of bringing their wayward daughter to her senses. They at last hit upon a plan, which they fondly hoped might be the means of securing the happiness of their child, and settling her comfortably in life. ”

“ As the smoke slowly curled up from the deep it was seen that not a living man was visible upon the deck of the pirate. Several of her guns were dismounted, and her masts so cut away that she lay upon the waters a helpless and disabled wreck. Yet the red ensign of death, though rent into ribbons, still fluttered from the peak, and the young lieutenant hesitated to board, having learned caution from the treachery of the pirate.
While the crew of the Raker were thus occupied in watching their enemy, a light female form was seen to issue from the hatchway and gaze around the deck of the pirate. ”

“ Oh, then thy face was glorious, and thy hair
On the white moonbeam floating, veiled thy brow,
But in the holy sadness of thine eye
Which held my spirit, tremblingly I saw,
Through rushing tears, the sign of angel-grief
O'er the false promise of diviner years.
From the far glide of some descending strain
Of tenderest music I have heard thy voice;
And thou hast called amid the stormy rush
Of grand orchestral triumph, with a sound
Resistless in its power. I feel the light,
Which is thine atmosphere, around my soul,
When a great sorrow gulfs it from the world.
"Come back! come back! ”

“ And now you come hither to watch the last fluttering throes of existence, fearful that Death may delay his arrows until he shall have passed that hour which entitles him to dispose of his property—and disappoint your hopes, by bequeathing his wealth to those who are dearest to him."
"You are excited, Edith. You judge me too severely. Edgar's own headlong passions destroyed him. I merely urged him to do as others of his years and station, without foreseeing such fatal results. My love for you would have prompted me to save your brother." ”