A Day of Fate

"Another month's work will knock Morton into 'pi,'" was a remark that caught my ear as I fumed from the composing-room back to my private office. I had just irately blamed a pri...

Moment after moment passed, but we all sat silent and motionless. Through the open windows came a low, sweet monotone of the wind from the shadowing maples, sometimes swelling i...

As I was strenuously seeking to gain possession of my wits, so that I could avail myself of any opportunity that offered, or could be made by adroit, prompt action, the stalwart...

"Father," said my fair ideal abruptly, as if a bright idea had just struck her, "did thee notice that Friend Jones's rockaway had been painted and all fixed up? I guess he rathe...

I must have slept for an hour or more, for when I awoke I saw through the window-lattice that the sun was declining in the west. Sleep had again proved better than all philosoph...

"Am I such a sphinx?" she asked Mr. Yocomb with a smile; while to me she said, in a low tone: "You are mistaken. You have had something to say to me almost daily for a year or m...

"Richard Morton," said Mrs. Yocomb, as she sat down encouragingly near me in the low-studded parlor, "thee does not look into my eyes as if thee had a great burden on thy consci...

"Is it a task, then, to show me the right paths and proper ways?" I asked, as we strolled away, leaving Adah looking as if--in her curiosity to know more of the new species, a n...

"Thee's more self-denying than I'd a been," he resumed, With his humorous twinkle. "Don't tell mother, but I wouldn't mind taking a walk with Emily Warren myself on a June eveni...

"Even though a Bohemian editor, as you may think, I am conscious of a profound gratitude to some beneficent power, for I never could have chosen so wisely myself. I might have b...

"Mr. Yocomb," I said, as we mounted the piazza, "what is the cause of the smoke rising above yonder mountain to the east of us? I have noticed it several times this afternoon, a...

I had been so interested in Mrs. Yocomb's words, their effect on the little group around her, and the whole sacred mystery of the scene, that I had ceased to watch the smoking m...

On entering the parlor, I found Mr. Yocomb standing up and looking around in a dazed manner. He did not seem to know me, and in my deep anxiety I did not heed him. Kneeling besi...

I soon had coffee made that was as black as the night without. Instead of calling Miss Warren, I took a tray from the dining-room, and carried it with several cups upstairs.

Having lighted the lamp in my room, I looked around it with a delicious sense of proprietorship. Its quaint, homely comfort was just to my taste, and now appeared doubly attract...

The epochs of one's life are not divided according to the calendar, nor are they measured by the lapse of time. Within a few brief hours I had reached a conclusion that left no...

I ought to have had a ravenous appetite but I had none at all. I ought to have been glad and thankful from the depths of my heart, but I was so depressed that everything I said...

I seemed to waken as if from a long, troubled sleep. At first I was merely conscious that I was awake, and I wondered how long I had slept. Then I was glad I was awake, and that...

"Yes, Mrs. Yocomb, good nursing and nourishment are all that he now requires," were the reassuring words that greeted my waking later in the evening. I opened my eyes, and found...

I found my spirits attuned to the clear sunshine of the new day, and congratulated myself that convalescence promised to be so speedy. Again I had the sense that it was my body...

"It is indeed strange," she replied musingly, as if half speaking to herself; "so strange that I cannot understand it. Life is a queer tangle at best. That is, it seems so to us...

Soul and body are too nearly related for one to suffer without the other's sympathy. Mrs. Yocomb mercifully shielded me that evening, merely saying that I had seen enough compan...

Adah brought me up my dinner, and I at once noted that she was in a flutter of unusual excitement. Her mother had undoubtedly prepared her for the arrival of the expected guest,...

"If I can go downstairs to-morrow, I can go just as well to-night," I said, "and go I will. She shall not have a shadow on her first evening with her lover, and she's too good-h...

The excitement that had sustained me was passing away, and I felt myself growing miserably weak and depressed. The remainder of the meal was a desperate battle, in which I think...

"Oh, no, it's only about eleven; they're all gone to meeting. I made 'em leave you in my care. Adah would have stayed, but mother told her she was to go. Emily Warren's grandfat...

The last week that I proposed to spend at the farmhouse was passing quietly and uneventfully away. I was gaining steadily though not rapidly in physical strength, but not in my...

The next day I lured Reuben off on a fishing excursion to a mountain lake, and so congratulated myself on escaping ordeals to which I found myself wholly unequal. We did not rea...

Reuben and I, with Dapple, skimmed along the country roads, and my hope and spirits kindled, though I scarcely knew why. We were early at the meeting-house, and, to my joy, I ga...

On reaching the farmhouse I went directly to my room, and I wished that I might stay there the rest of the day; but I was soon summoned to dinner. In Miss Warren's eyes still li...

Mrs. Yocomb appeared at supper, serene and cheerful; but she was paler than usual, and she still looked like one who had but just descended from a lofty spiritual height. No ref...

I came in to breakfast with Reuben, feeling that Dapple had been more of a gentleman than I had, for he had treated the maiden with gentleness and courtesy, while I had thought...

I scarcely could foresee how we should get through the following day. I both longed for and dreaded it, feeling that though it might pass quietly enough, it would probably be de...

I will not weary the reader with my experiences after arriving at New York. I could not have felt worse had I been driven into the Dismal Swamp. My apartments were dusty and sti...

I heard often from the farmhouse, and learned that Mr. Hearn had gone to Europe almost immediately, but that he had returned in the latter part of September, and had spent a wee...

On the day before Thanksgiving one of my associates clapped me on the shoulder, and said, laughing: "Morton, what's the matter? You are as nervous as a girl on her wedding-day....

After dinner was over, Reuben cried, "Come, Zillah, I'm going out with Dapple, and I'll give thee a ride that'll settle thy dinner. Emily, thee hasn't petted Dapple to-day. Thee...