A Day of Fate

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 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...

"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...

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...

"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...

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...

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....

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

"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...

"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 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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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.

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...

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...

"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...

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...

"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...

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...

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,...

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...

"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...

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...