THE BRADFORD REPORTER.
O€ MLUR PER ANNUM INVARIABLY IN ADVANCE.
A.:
Thursday Morning, June 7, 1860.
Stlttltb sbi.
NO NIGHT IN HEAVEN.
„ r THOMAS BAFFLES, P-P-, LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.
~ Vm i there .shall be no night there."-REV. xxi. 5.
No night shall be in heaven—no gathering gloom,
Shall o'er that glorious landscape ever come.
No tears shall fall in sadness o'er those flowers
That breathe their fragrance through celestial bowers.
No ni"ht shall be in heaven—no dreadful hour
Of mental darkness, or the tempter's power.
V tos- those skies no envious cloud shall roll,
To dhn the sunlight of the enraptured soul.
No night shall be in heaven. Forbid to sleep,
These eves no more their mournful vigils keep :
Their fountains dried— tlieir tears all wiped away ;
They gaze uuthizzkd on eternal day.
No night shall he iu heaven-no sorrow's reign-
No secret anguish—no corporal pain
No shivering limbs —no burning fever there
No soul's eclipse—no winter of despair.
No night shall he in heaven—but endless noon :
No fast declining sun or waning moon :
Hut there the Lamb shall yield perpetual light,
'Mid pastures green, and waters ever bright.
No night sbali he in heaven—no darkened room,
No bed of death or silence of the tomb ;
But breezes ever fresh with love and truth,
Shall brace the frame with an immortal youth.
No night -hull he in heaven ! But night is here—
The night of sorrow—and the night of fear,
i mouru the ills that now my steps attend,
And ,-hri.ik from others that may yet impend
So night shall be in heaven 1 Oh, had I faith
To rest in what the faithful Witness safth—
TL.it faith should make these hideous phantoms flee.
And leave no night, hencefort i, on earth to me.
§flcf tc it Calt.
[From the Atlantic Monthly.]
CI KG IT M STANCE.
She kail remained, during all that day, with
a sick neighbor,—those eastern wilds of Maine
iu that epoch frequently making neighbors
ami miles synonymous,—and so busy had she
been with care and sympathy that she dfd not
nt first observe the approaching night. But
finally the level rays, reddening the snow,
threw their gleam upon the wall, and, hastily
donning clonk and hood, she bade her friends
farewell and sallied forth on her return.—
Home lay some three miles distant, across a
copse, a meadow, and a piece of woods, —the
woods being a fringe ou the skirts of the for
ests that stretch far away into the North.—
That home was one of a dozen log-houses ly
ing a few furlongs apart from each other, with
tlieir half-cleared demesnes separating them-at
the rear from a wilderness untrodden save by
sicalthy native or deadly panther tribes.
She was in a nowise exalted frame of spirit,
—oh the contrary, rather depressed by the
/>■;//. she bad witnessed and the fatigue she had
endured ; but in certain temperaments such a
condition throws open the mental pore-, so to
?peuk, and renders one receptive of every influ
ence. Through the little copse she walked
slowly, with her cloak folded about her, ling
ering to imbibe the sense of shelter, the sunset
filtered in purple through the mi.it of woven
spray and twig, the companionship of growth
nut sufficiently dense to baud against her the
sweet home feeling of a young and tender win
try wood. It was therefore just on the edge
o! evening that she emerged from the place
and began to cross the meadow-land. At one
hand lay the forest to which her path wound ;
at the other the evening star hung over a tide
ot failing orange that slowly slipped down the
eirth's broad side to sadden other hemispheres
with sweet regret. Walking rapidly now, and
with her eyes wide-open, she distinctly saw in
the air before her what was not there a mo
ment ago, a winding-sheet,—cold, white, and
ghastly, waved by the likeness of four wan
hinds,- that ro£e with a long inflation nnd
fell iii rigid folds, with a voice, shaping itself
from the hollowness above, spectral and mel
ancholy, sighed,—" The Lord have mercy on
the people 1" Three times the sheet with its
corpse-covering outline waved beneath the pale
hands, and the voice, awful in its solemn and
mysterious depth, sighed, " The Lord have
mercy on the people 1" Then all was gone,
the place was clear again, the gray sky was
obstructed by no deathly blot ; she looked '
about her, shook her shoulders decidedly, and
pulling.on her hood, went forward once more.
She might have been a little frightened by
such au apparition, if she had led a life of
ess reality than frontier settlers are apt to
ead ; but dealing with hard fact does not en
gender a flimsy habit of mind,and this woman
-a as too sincere and earnest in her character,
and too happy in her situation, to be thrown
y antagonism merely upon superstitious fan
cms ami chimeras 0 f the second sight. She
did not even believe herself subject to halluci
nuii.jut smiled simply, a little vexed that
ter thought could have framed such a glam
tll !"in the day s occurrences, and not sorry
to Lit the bough of the warder of the woods
n enter and disappear in their sombre path, i
k J? 6 , i , ' ma ginative, she would have
iln" 1 ' . 1 Qt rst ste P '"l° a region whose
th-'it s ',? 1 Al i' " " ot v ' s ' on ary ; but I Suppose
won't l ' e a cb " d a t home
bah !' !?"! lUcr . lbat propensity in the most
she went i ' <o ' b r ' l ' n 8 bit of spicy birch,
a ta> i n ff* ow an( l then she came to
off A' i W | <re l l ie trees bad been partially fell
'MAor<! ® c foil nd that the lingering twi
3oleleXPnUe,i^ilhat P ccu!iar arul P cr "
U\?o-V-' iri r(T jT i s °tnetimes sheathes
before'-r't . C 8 or ver y many hours
ibadi \ , au T a ' , s ddealy, a swift
ttntlnrt'ii lae fabulous flying-dragon,
& wW 1 lh f air w< ™ *'■ "-i shi
It was th!t"-n U u y BClzed aild borue aloft.—
Eerncniii i beast—the most savage and
aud subtle and fearless of cur latt
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY AT TOWANDA, BRADFORD COUNTY, PA., BY E. O'MEARA GOODRICH.
tudes—known by huntirs as the Indian Devil,
and he held her in his clutches on the broad
floor of a swinging fir-bough. Ilis long sharp
claws were caught iu her clothing, he worried
them sagaciously a little, theu, finding
that ineffectual to free them, he commen
ced licking; her bare white arm with his
rasping tongue and pouring over her the wide
streams of his hot, fetid breath. So quick
had this flashing action been that the woman
had had no time for alarm ; moreover, she was
not of the screaming kiud : but now, as she
felt him endeavoring to disentangle his claws,
and the horrid seusc of her fate smote her,
and she saw instinctively the fierce plunge of
those weapons, the long strips of living flesh
torn from her bones, the agonv, the quivering
disgust, itself a worse agony,—while by her
side, and holding her in his great lithe embrace,
the monster crouched, his white tusks whetting
and gnashing, his eyes glaring through all the
darkness like balls of red fire, —a shriek, that
rang in every forest hollow, that startled every
winter-housed thing, that stirred and awoke
the least needle of the tasselled pines, tore
through her lips. A moment afterward, the
beast left the arm, once white, now crimson,
and looked up alertly.
She did not think at this instant to call up
on God. She called upon her husband. It
seemed to her that she had but one friend in
the world ; that was he ; and again the cry,
loud, clear, prolonged echoed through the
woods. It was not the shriek that disturbed
the creatnre at his relish ; he was not born in
the woods to be scared by an owl, you know ;
what theu ! It must have been the echo, most
musical, most resonant, repeated and yet re
peated, dying with long sighs of sweet sound,
vibrated from rock to river and back again,
from depth to depth of cave and cliff. Her
thought flew after it ; she knew, that, even if
her husband heard it, he yet could not reach
her in time ; she saw that while the beast
listened he would uot gnaw,—and this she flit
directly, when the rough, sharp, and multipli
ed stings of Lis tongue retouched her arm.—
' Again her lips opened by instinct, but the
! sound that issued thence came by reason.—
| She had heard that music charmed wild beasts,
—just this point between life and death inten
sified every faculty,—aud when she opened
| her lips the third time, it was uot for shriek
ing, biG for singing.
A little thread of melody stole out, a rill of
tremulous motion ; it was the cradle-song
tviih which she rocked her baby ; —how co.-.ld
she sing that? And then she remembered
the baby sleeping rosily on the long settee be
fore the fire, —the father cleaning his gun,
with one foot on the green wooden rundle, —
the merry light from the chimney dancing out
and through the room, 0:1 the rafters of the
ceiling with their tassels of onions and herbs,
on the log walls painted with lichens and fes
tooned with apples, on the king's arm slung
across the shelf with the old pirate's-cutlass,
on the snow-pile of the bed, and on the great
brass clock, —dancing, too, and lingering on
the baby, with bis fringed gentian eyes, bis
chubby fists clenched ou the pillow, and bis
tine breezy hair fanning with the motion of
his father's foot. All this struck her in one,
and made a sob of her breath, and she ceased.
Immediately the long red tongue was thrust
: forth again. Before it touched, a song sprang
; to her lips, a wild sea-song, such as sonic siilor
might be singing far out on the blue water
that night, the shrouds whistling with frost
and the sheets glued in ice,—a song with the
wind in its burden and the spray in its chorns.
The monster raisecl his head and flared the
fiery eyeballs upon her, then fretted the im
pri.soued claws a moment and was quiet : only
the breath like the vapor from some hell pit
still swathed her. Her voice, at first faint
and fearful, gradually lost its quaver, grew
under her control and subject to her modula
tion ; it rose on long swel's, it fell in subtle
cadences, now and then in tones pealed out
like bells from distant belfries on fresh sono
rous mornings. She sung the song through,
and, wondering lest his name of Indian Devil
were not his true name, aud if he would not
detect her, she repeated it. Once or twice
now, indeed, the beast stirred uneasily, turned
and made the bough sway at his movement. —
As she ended, he snapped his jaws together,
and tore away the fettered member, curling it
under him with a snarl, —when she burst into
the gayest reel that ever answered a fiddle
bow. llow many a time She had heard her
husband play it ou the homely fiddle made by
himsilf from birch and cherry-wood ! how
many a time she had seen it deuced on the
floor of their one room, to the patter of wood
en clogs and the rustle of homespun pettieoat !
how many a time she had danced it herself !
and did she not remember once, as they join
ed cln.sp.s for right-hands-round, how it had
lent its gay, bright measure to her life ? And
here she was singing it alone, in the forest, at
midnight, to a wild beast ! As she seut her
voice trilling up and down its quick oscillations
between joy and pain, the creature who grasp
ed her uncurled his paw and scratched the
bark from the bough ; she must vary the
spell ; and her voice spun leaping along the
projecting points of tune of a hornpipe. Stiil
singing, she felt herself twisted about with a
low growl and a lifting of the red lip from the
glittering teeth; she broke the hornpipe's
thread, and commenced unraveling a lighter,
livelier thing, an Irish jig. Up and down and
round about her voice flew, the beast threw
back his head so that the diabolical face front
ed Iters, and the torrent of his breath prepar
ed her for his feast as the anaconda slimes his
prey. Frantically she darted from tune to
tune ; his restless movements followed her.—
She tired herself with dancing and vivid na
tional airs, growing feverish and singing spas
modically as she felt her horrid tomb yawning
wider. Touching in this manner all the slo
gan and keen clau cries, the beast moved
again, but only to lay the disengaged paw
across her with heavy satisfaction. She did
not dare to pause ; through the clear cold air,
the frosty starlight, she fang. If there were
yet any tremor in the tone, it wa3 not fear, —
she had learned the secret of sound at last ;
MK could it be chill,— far too high a fervor
• " REGARDLESS OF DENUNCIATION FROM ANY QUARTER."
throbbed her pulses ; it was nothing but the
thought of the log-house and of what might
be passing within it, She fancied the baby
stirring in his sleep and moving his pretty lips,
—her husband rising and opening the door,
lookiug out after her, and wondering at her
absence. She fancied the light pouring through
the chink and theu shut in again with all the
safety and comfort and joy, her husband tak
ing down the fiddle e.ud playing lightly wjth
his head inclined, playing while she sang, while
she sang for her life to an Indian Devil.—
Thfin she knew he was fumbling for and find
ing some shining fragment and scoring it down
the yellowing hair, and unconsciously her voice
forsook the wild war-tunes aud drifted into
the half-gay, haif-melancholy Rosin the Bow.
Suddenly she woke pierced with a pang, and
the daggered tooth penetrating her flesh ;
dreaming of safety, she had ceased singing and
lost it. The beast had regained the use of all
his limbs, and now, standing and raising his
back, bristling and foaming, with sounds that
would have been like hisses but for their deep
and fearful sonority, he withdrew step by step
toward the trunk of the tree, still with
his flaming balls upon her. She was ail at
once free, on one of the boughs, twenty feet
from the ground. She did not measure
the distance, but? rose to drop herself down,
careless of any death, so that it were not this.
Instantly, as if he scanned her thoughts, the
creature bouuded forward with a yell and
caught her again in his dreadful hold. It
might be that he was not greatly famished ;
for, us she suddenly flung up her voice again,
he settled himself composedly on the bough,
still clasping her with invincible pressure to
his rough, ravenous breast, and listening in a
fascination to the sad. strange XJ-la-lu that
now moaned forth in loud, hollow tones
above him. He half-opened his eyes, and
sleep ly re-opened and shut them again.
What rending pains were closest hand !
Death ! and what a death ! worse than any
other that is to be named ! Water, be it cold
or warm, that whid) buoys up blue ice-fields,
or which bathes tropical coasts with currents
of balmy bliss, is yet a gentlo conqueror, kis
ses as it kills, and draws you down pentlv
thiough darkening fathoms to its heart. Death
at the sword is tiie festival of trumpet aud
bugle and banner, with glory ringing out
around you and distant hearts thrilling through
yours. No gnawing disease can bring such
hideous end as this ; for that is a fiend bred
of your own flesh, and this—is it a fiend, this
living lump of appetites ? What dread comes
with the thought of perishing in flames ! but
fire, let it leap and hiss never so hotly, is some
thing too remote, too alien, to inspire 11s with
such loathly horror as a wild beast ; if it have
a life, that life is too utterly beyond our com
prehension. Fire is not half ourselves ; as it
devours, arouses neither hatred nor disgust; is
not to be known by the strength of our lower
natures let loose ; does not drip our blood iu
to our faces from foaming chaps, nor mouth
nor snarl above us with vitality. Let us be
ended by fire, and we are ashes, for the winds
to bear, the leaves to cover ; let us be ended
by wild beasts, and the base, cursed thing howls
with 11s forever through the forest. AH this
she felt as she charmed hira, and what force
it lent to her song God knows. If her voice
should fail ! If the damp and cold should
give her any fatal hoarseness! If all the sil
ent powers of the forest did not conspire to
help her ! The dark, hollow night rose indif
ferently over her; the wide, cold air breathed
rudely past her, lifted her wet hair and blew
it down again ; the great boughs swung with
a ponderous strength, uow and then clashed
their iron lengths together and shook off a
sparkle of icy spears or some long-lain weight
of snow from their heavy shadows. The green
depths were utterly cold and silent and stern.
These bcau'iful haunts that all the summer
were hers and rejoiced to share with her their
bounty, these heavens that had yielded their
largess, these stems that had thrust their blos
soms into her hands, all these ftiends of three
moons ago forgot her now and knew her no
longer.
Feeling her desolation, wild, melancholy,
forsaken songs rose thereon from that fright
ful amie,—weeping, wailing tunes, that sob
among the people from age to age, and over
flow with otherwise unexpressed sadness, —all
rude, mournful ballads, —old tearful strains,
that Shakspeare heard the vagrants sing, aud
that rise and fall like the wind and tide, —
saili r-songs, to be heard only in lone mid
watches beneath the moon and stars, —ghast-
ly rhyming romances, such as that famous oue
of the " Lady Margaret," when
" She slipped ou her gown of green
A piece below the knee, —
And 'twas all a long, cold winter's night
And a dead corse followed she."
Still the beast lay with closed eyes, yet
never relaxing his grasp. Once a half-whine
of enjoyment escaped him, —he fawned his
fearful head upon her ; once he scored her
check with his tongue: savage caresses that
huit like wounds. llow weary she was I and
yet how terribly awake ! llow fuller and
fuller of dismay grew the knowledge that she
was only prolonging her anguish and playing
with death ! llow appaling the thought that
with her voice ceased her existence 1 Yet
she could uot sing forever ; her throat was
dry and hard ; her very breath was a pain ;
her mouth was hotter than any desert-worn
pilgrim's ; —if she conld but drop upon her
burning tougue one atom of the ice that glit
tered about her !—but both of her arms were
pinioned in the giant's vice. She remembered
the winding-sheet, and for the first time in her
life shivered with spiritual fear. Was it hers?
She asked herself, as she sang, what sins she
had committed, what life she had led, to find
her punishment so soon and in these pangs,—
and then she sought eagerly for some reason
why her husband was not up and abroad to
find her. lie failed her,-—her one sole hope
in life ; and withont being aware of it, her
voice forsook tho songs of suffering and sor
row for old Covenanting hymns,—hymns with
which her mother had lulled her, which the
class-leader pitched in the chimney-corners,—
gr&txl and sweet Methodist hymns, brimming
with melody and with all fantastics involutions
of tune to suit that ecstatic worship,—hymns
full of the beauty of holiness, steadfast, rely
ing, sauctified by the salvation they had lent
to those in worse extremity than hers, —for
they had found themselves in the grasp of hell,
while she was but in the jaws of death. Ont
of this strange music, peculiar to one charac
ter of faith, and than which there is none
more beautiful in its degree nor owning a more
potent sway of sound, her voice soared into
the glorified chants of churches. What to
her was death by cold or famine or wild beasts ?
"Though He.slay me, yet will I trnstin Him,''
she sang. High and clear through the firore
fair night, the level moonbeams splintering in
the wood, the scarce gliuts of stars in the
shadowy roof of branches, these sacred an
thems rose, — rose as a hope from despair, as
some snowy spray of flower-bells from blackest
mould. Was she not in God's hands 1 Did
not the worlO swing at His will ? If this
were in His great plan of providence, was it
not best, and should she not accept it ?
" He is the Lord our God ; His judgments
are in all the earth."
Ob, sublitne faith of oar fathers, where ut
ter self sacrifice alone was true love, the fra
grance of whose unrequired subjection was
pleasant as that of golden ceusers swung in
purple-vapored chancels 1
Never ceasing in the rhythm of her thoughts,
articulated in music as they thronged, the
memory of her first communion flashed over
her. Agaiu she was in that distant place on
that sweet spring morning. Again the con
gregation rustled out, and the few remained,
and she trembled to find herself among them.
How well she remembered the devout, qniet
faces, too accustomed to the sacred feast to
glow with their inner joy ! how well the snowy
linen at the altar, the silver vessels slowly and
silently shifting ! and as the cup approached
and passed, how the sense of delicious perfume
stole in and heightened the transport of her
prayer, and she had seemed, looking up through
the windows where the sky soared blue in con
stant freshness, to feel all heaven'sbalmsdrip
piug from the portals, and to scent the lilies
of eternal peace ! Perhaps another would
not have felt so much ecstasy as satisfaction
on that occasion ; but it is a true, if a later
disciple, who has said, " The Lord bestoweth
his blessings there, where lie fiadeth the ves
sels empty." " And does it need the walls of
a church to renew my communion ?" she ask
ed. " Does not every moment stand a temple
four-square to God ? And in that morning,
with its buoyant sunlight, was I any dearer to
the Heart of the World than now 1" My be
loved is mine, and I am his," she sang over
and over agaiu, with all varied inflection and
profuse tune. How gently a'l the winter
wrapt things bent toward her then 1 into what
relation with her had they grown 1 how this
common dependence was the spell of their in
tiraacy 1 how at one with Nature had she be
come ! how all the night and the silence and
the forest seemed to hold its breath, and to
send its soul up to God in her singing 1 It
was no longer defpondency, that siuging. It
was neither prayer nor petition. She had left
imploring, " How long wilt thou forget me, O
Lord ?" " Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the
sleep of death !" " Poh in death there is no
remembrance of thee —with countless other
such fragments of supplication. She cried
rather, " Y'ea, though I walk through the val
ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil : for thon art with me ; thy rod and thy
staff, they comfort ttte —and lingered, and
repeated, and sang again, " I shall be satis
fied, when I awake, with thy likeness."
Then she thought of the Great De'liverance,
when he drew her up. out of many waters, and
the flashing old psalm pealed forth trinmphatit
ly
" The Lord descended from above,
and bow'd the heavens hie :
And underneate his feet lie cast
the darknesse ot the .skie.
On cherubs and cherubinß
fu'ly royally he road :
And on the wings of all the winds
came flying all abroad."
She forgot how recently, and with what a
strange pity for her own shapeless form that
was to be, she had quaintly sung,—
" Oh lovely appearance of death !
What sight upon earth is so fair ?
Not ail the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare!"'
She remembered instead, —" In thy presence
is fulness of joy ; ~at thy right hand there arc
pleasures forevermore and, " God will re
deem my soul from the power of the grave :
for he shall receive mc " He will swallow
up death in victory." Not once now did she
say, " Lord, how long wilt thou look on ? res
cue my soul .from their destructions, my darl
ing from the lions,'' —for she knew that "the
young lions roar after their prey and seek their
meat from God." " O Lord, thou preservest
man and beast!" she said.
She had no comfort or consolation in this
season, such as sustained the Christian mar
tyrs in the amphitheatre. She was not dying
for her faith ; there were no palms in heaven
for her to wave ; but how many a time had
she declared, —I had rather be a doorkeeper
in the house of my God, than to dwell iu the
tents of wickeduess !" And as the broad
rays here and there broke through the dense
covert of shade and lay in rivers of lustre on
crystal sheathing and frozen fretting of trunk
and limb and on the great Spaces of refraction
they budded up visibly that house, the shining
city on the hill, and singiog, " Beautiful for
situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount
Zion, on the sides of the North, the city of
the Great King," her vision climbed to that
higher picture where the angel shows the daz
zling thing, the holy Jerusalem descending out
of heaven from God, with its splendid battle
ments aud gates of pearls, and its foundations,
the eleventh a jacinth, the twelfth an amethyst,
—with its great white throne, and the rain
bow round about it, iu sight like unto an em
erald :—" And there shall be no night there,
—for the Lord God giveth them light," she
sang.
What whisper of dawn now rustled through
the wilderness? How the night was passing!
And still the beast crouched the bough,
changing only the posture of his head, that
again he might command her with those charm
ed eyes ; —half their fire was goue ; she could
almost have released herself from hischstody;
yet, had she stirred, no oue knows what ma
levolent instinct might have dominated auew.
But of that she did not dream ; long ago
stripped of any expectation, she was experi
encing in her divine raptnre how mystically
true it is that " he that dwelletb in the secret
place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty."
Slow clarion cries now wound ffiom the dis
tance as the cocks caught the intelligence of
day and re echoed it faintly from farm to farm,
—-sleepy sentinels of night, sounding the foe's
invasion, and translating that dim intuition to
ringing notes of warning. Still she chanted
on. A remote crash of brushwood told of
some other beast on his depredations, or some
night-belated traveller groping his way through
the narrow path. Still she chanted on. The
far, faint echoes of the chanticleers died into
distance, —the crashing of the branches grew
nearer. Xo wild beast that, but a man's step,
—a man's form in the moonlight, Stalwart and
strong,—on one arm slept a little child, in the
other hand he held his gun. Still she chanted
on.
Perhaps, when her husband last looked
forth, he was half ashamed to find what a
fear he felt for her. He knew she would nev
er leave the child so long but for some direst
need, —and yet he may have laughed at him
self, as he lifted and wrapped it with awkward
care, and, loading his gun and strapping on
his horn, opened the door again and closed it
behind him, going out and plunging into the
dnrkness and dangers of the forest. He was
more singularly alarmed than he would have
been willing to acknowledge ; cs he bad sat
with his bow hovering over the strings, ho had
half believed to hear her voice mingling gay
ly with the instrument, till he pansed and list
ened if she were not about to lift the latch
and enter. As he drew nearer the heart of
the forest, that intimation of melody seemed
to grow more actual, to tuke body and breath,
to come aud go On long swells and ebbs of the
night-breeze, to increase with tune and words,
till a strange, shrill singing grew even clearer,
and, as he stepped into an open space of moon
beams, tar up in the branches, rocked by the
wind, and singing, "llow beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of hiin that bringetb
good tidings, that publisheth peace," he saw
his wife, —Tiis wife, —but, great God in heaveu!
how i Some mad exclamation escaped him,
without diverting her. The child knew the
singing voice, though never heard before in
that unearthly key, and turned toward it
through the veiling dreams. With a celerity
almost instantaneous, it lay, in the twinkling
of an eye, on the ground at the father's feet,
while his gun was raised to his shoulder and
levelled at the monster covering his wife with
shaggy form and flaming gaze,—his wife so
ghastly white, so rigid, so stained with blood,
her eyes so fixedly bent above, and her lips,
that had indurated into the chiselled pallor of
marble, parted only with that flood of solemn
song.
I do not know if it were the mother-instinct
that fdr a moment lowered her eyes,—those
eyes, so lately riveted on heaven, now sudden
ly seeing all life-long bliss possible. A thrill
of joy pierced and shivered through her like a
weapon, her voice trembled in its course, her
glance lest its steady strength, fever-flushes
chased each other over her face, yet the never
once ceased chanting. She Was quite aware,
that, if her husband shot now, the ball must
pierce her body before reaching any vital part
of the beast, —and yet better that death, by
his hand, than the other. But this her hus
band also knew, and he remained motionless,
just covering the creature with the sight. He
dared not fire lest some woutid not mortal
should break the spell exercised by her voice,
and the beast, enraged with pain, should rend
ner in atoms; moreover, the light was too un
certain for his aim. So he waited. Now aud
then he examiued his gun to see if the damp
were injuring its charge, now and then he
wiped the great drops from his forehead.—
Again the cocks crowed with the passing hour
—the last time they were heard on that night.
Cheerful home sound then, how full of safety
and all comfort and rest it seemed ! what
sweet morning incidents of sparkling fire and
sunshine, of gay household bustle, shining
dresser, and cooing baby, of streaming cattle
in the yard, and brimming milk-pails at the
door ! what pleasant voices ! what laughter !
what security ! and here -
Now, as she sang on in the slow, endless,
infinite moments, the fervent vision of God's
peace was gone. Just us the grave had lost
its sting, she was sualched back again into the
arms of earthly hope. In vain she tried to
sing, "There remaineth a rest for the people
of God," —her eyes trembled on her husband's,
and she could think only of him, and of the
child, and of happiness that yet might be, but
with what a dreadful gulf of doubt between !
She shuddered now in suspense ; all calm for
sook her ; she was tortured with dissolving
heats or froren with'icy blasts ; her face con
tracted, growing small and pinched ; her voice
was hoarse and sharp,—every tone cut like a
knife, —the notes became heavy to lift, with
held by some hostile pressure,—impossible.—
One gasp, a convulsive effort, and there was
silence, —she had lost her voice.
The beast made a sluggish movement, —
stretched and fawned like one awaking,—
then, as if he would have yet more of the en
chantment, Stirred her slightly with his mnz2le.
As he did so, a sidelong hint of the man stand
ing below with the raised gun smote him ; he
sprung round furiously, and seizing his prey,
was about to leap into some unknown airy den
of the topmost branches uow waving to the
slow dawn. The late moon had rounded
through the sky so that her gleam at last fell
full upon the bough with fairy frosting; the
wintry morning light did not yet penetrate the
gloom.* The woman, suspended in mid air an
an instant, cast only one agonized glance
beneath, —but across and through it, ere the
lids could fall, shot a withering 6heet of flame,
—a riflocrack, half beard, was lost in the ter-
vol,. XXI. —NO. 1.
rible yell of desperation that bounded after it
and filled her ears with savage echoes, and iu
the wide arc of some eternal descent she was
falling ; —but the beast fell uuder her.
I thiuk that the momeut following must have
been too sacred for n, and perhaps the three
have no Special interest again till they issue
from the shadows of the wilderness upon the
white hills that skirt their home. The father
carries the child hushed again into slumber.the
mother follows with no such feeble step as
might be anticipated,—and as they slowly
climb the stefep under the clear gray sky and
the paling morning star, she stops to gather a
spray of the red rose berries or a feathery raft
of dead grasses for the chimney-piece of the
log-house, or a handful of brown ones for tho
child's play,—and of these quiet, happy folk
you would scarcely dream how lately they had
stolen from under the bauuer and encampment
of the great King Death. The husband pro
ceeds a step or two iu advance ; the wife ling
ers over a singular foot-print in the sr.ow,stoops
and examines it, then look 3 op with a hurried
word. Her husband stands alone on the hill,
his arms folded across the babe, his gun fall
en.—stands defined against the pallid sky lika
a bronze. What is there in their home, lying
below and yellowing in the light, to fix hint
with such a stare ? She springs to his side.
There is no home there. The Tog house, the
barn?, the neighboring farms, the fences, are
all blotted out and mingled in one smoking
ru : u. Desola ion and death were indeed therei
and beneficence and life io the forest. Toma
hawk and scalping knife, descending during
that Light, had left behind them only this
work of their accomplished hatred and one
subtle foot-print in the snow.
For the rest, —the world was all before them
where to choose.
ECONOMY IN THE HOUSEHOLD. —Xo young
woman ought to feel herself qualified to be
come a wife, until she is silre she understands
how to do the most that can be done with her
husband's money. The management of house
hold is not a thing to be properly and safely
entrusted to hireling hands. A servant is a
broken reed for the head of a family to leaii
upon. There are a thousand little ways in
which mouey must be expended, in which real
shrewdness and enterprise are requisite in order
to use it to be best advantage ; and there ara
a thousand other ways of saving money, open
only to those who have studied aright the art
of economy. The Turkish proverb has it.that
" a prudent woman is a miue of jewels," and
like many other Orieutal sayings, this is beau
tiful for the truth it embodies. A wasteful
housekeeper not only actually robs those for
whom she undertakes to manage, of the com
forts it is her duty to provide for them, but
keeps a husband head over ears in debt, and
makes the domestic life of a poor man continu
al series of experiments in shinuing it from one
day to the next,; in keeping the stomach full
thotigh the purse be empty.
XATCRE'S SONG. —Heaven singeth evermore.
Before the throne of Hod, angels and redeem
ed sa'ats extol his name. Aud this world is
singing too ; sometimes With the loud noise of
the rolling thunder, of the boiling sea, of tho
dashing cataract and the lowing cattle; and
often wth that still, solemn harmony, which
floweth from the vast creation, when in its
silence it praiscth God. Such is the song which
gushes in silence from the mountain lifting its
head from the sky, covering its face sometimes
with the wings of the mist, and trt other times
unveiling its Snow-white brow before its Maker
and reflecting back his Sunshine gratefully
thanking him for the light which it has beeit
made to glisten, aud for the gladness of which
it is the solitary spectator, as in its graudcur
it looks down upOa the laughing valleys. Tho
tune to which heaven and earth are set are
the same. In hearten they sing, "The Lord
be exalted ; let his name be magnified forever.
And the earth singeth the same, "Great art
thou in thy work, O Lord ! and unto tnee be
glory.''
editor in Maine has never been
known to drink any water. He says he never
heard water was used as a general remedy, but
once—in the time of iXoah—when it killed
m re than it cured.
teaT" " 1 am certaiu wife that I am right and
that you are wrong—l'll bet my ears on it."
" Indeed, husband, yoti sbouldu't carry bet
ting to such extreme lengths."
We once heard of a rich man, who
was badly injured by being run over. "It
isn't the accidentsaid he, "that I mind:
that isn't the thing, but the idea of being rnn
over by an infernal swill-cart makes me mad."
The sentence, " Richard's himself
again," was not written by Shakspeare. It
is to be found in the " Acting Copy " of Rich
ard 111., said to have been prepared by Colly
Ciber.
It must be a good deal of trouble far
people to be always exhibiting ill-nature, and
they dont make any thing by it. Why be such
fools as to work for nothing.
JPaf" Knowledge will not be acquired with
out pains and application. It is troublesome
and deep digging far pure waters ; but when
you Once come to the springs, they rise up and
meet yon.
An exchange says lead is an animal
production, because it is found in " pigs."
By taking revenge a man is but even
with his enemy ; bat in passing it over he Is
superior.
Simplicity, reflned and chaste, has
beauty's charm to minds of taste.
figp-Iyou want truth to go around the
world you must hire an express train to pull
it; but if yon want a lie to go 'round the
world, it will fly ; it is as light as a feather.
Jta?* A merchant, having sank his shop floor
a couple of feet, announces that, "in conse
| quence of receDt improvement, goods will be
sold considerably lower than formerly "