[7] This story is founded upon a brief narrative which met the author’s eye in an English newspaper.
Health unto thee! ’Twill come, though coy and slow: Thou canst not die, before I cease to live. Are we not one? Ay, brother, boughs that give Their verdure from one trunk, and cannot know A life-drop but from thence? The topmost bough Still withers first: whilst mine is green on high, I feel—and fear not—that thou canst not die! Would that my life’s blood, warm and healthful now, Were welling in thy veins—and I like thee! ’Twere joy to suffer for thee, could I hear Thy light laugh, as of old, ring in my ear: So thou wert happy what aught else to me? An angel-ward our mother’s prayers have set Around thee. Courage then! Thou’lt kiss her pale cheek yet! C. _Philadelphia, April 1847._
[Illustration: _Painted by Fanny Corbourn_ _Engraved by A. L. Dick_
_Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine._]
She opens her lattice, And looks on the lake; O’er its slumbering surface, No murmurs awake. Afar, o’er the mountain, The moon has long set: The morning breeze freshens,— Why tarries he yet?
A sound in the distance, A low plashing oar: See! yonder a shadow; It touches the shore. ’Tis he—safe returning— Joy leaps to her eyes: And clasped to his bosom, “My husband!” she sighs.
Ay, now I am in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place; but Travelers must be content. As You Like It.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PILOT,” “RED ROVER,” “TWO ADMIRALS,” “WING-AND-WING,” “MILES WALLINGFORD,” ETC.
[Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by J. Fenimore Cooper, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of New York.]
The night has been unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death; And prophecying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confused events, New hatched to the woful time. Macbeth.
It is seldom that man is required to make an exertion as desperate and appalling, in all its circumstances, as that on which Harry Mulford was now bent. The night was starlight, it was true, and it was possible to see objects near by with tolerable distinctness; still, it was midnight, and the gloom of that hour rested on the face of the sea, lending its solemn mystery and obscurity to the other trying features of the undertaking. Then there was the uncertainty whether it was the boat at all, of which he was in pursuit; and, if the boat, it might drift away from him as fast as he could follow it. Nevertheless, the perfect conviction that, without some early succor, the party on the wreck, including Rose Budd, must inevitably perish, stimulated him to proceed, and a passing feeling of doubt, touching the prudence of his course, that came over the young mate, when he was a few yards from the wreck, vanished under a vivid renewal of this last conviction. On he swam, therefore, riveting his eye on the “thoughtful star” that guided his course, and keeping his mind as tranquil as possible, in order that the exertions of his body might be the easier.