Jan Vedder's Wife

"On so nice a pivot turns True wisdom; here an inch, or there, we swerve From the just balance; by too much we sin, And half our errors are but truths unpruned."

When Jan awoke Snorro was standing motionless beside him. He feebly stretched out his hand, and pulled him close, closer, until his face was on the pillow beside his own.

"Then like an embryo bird One day, he knew not how, but God that morn Had pricked his soul--he cracked his shelly case, and Claimed his due portion in a larger life. Into new li...

Snorro had indeed very much misjudged Margaret. During her interview with him she had been absorbed in one effort, that of preserving her self-control while he was present. As s...

During the next two years, Margaret's life appeared to be monotonously without incident. In reality it deepened and broadened in a manner but slightly indicated by the stillness...

"Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped, All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose whe...

"I deemed thy garments, O my hope, were gray, So far I viewed thee. Now the space between Is passed at length; and garmented in green Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-da...

"Man is his own star, and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man Commands all light, all influence, all fate. Nothing to him falls early, or too late."

No man set more nakedly side by side the clay and spirit of his double nature than Jan Vedder. No man wished so much and willed so little. Long before he returned from his first...

Jan now began to hang all day about Ragon Torr's, and to make friends with men as purposeless as himself. He drank more and more, and was the leader in all the dances and merry-...

A stranger suddenly dropped in these Shetland islands, especially in winter, would not unnaturally say, "how monotonously dreary life must be here! In such isolation the heart m...

As it happened that year the peerie, or Indian summer, was of unusual length and beauty. The fine weather lingered until the end of October. These weeks were full of joy to Marg...

"Thou broad-billowed sea, Never sundered from thee, May I wander the welkin below; May the plash and the roar Of the waves on the shore Beat the march to my feet as I go; Ever s...

"Eastward, afar, the coasts of men were seen Dim, shadowy, and spectral; like a still Broad land of spirits lay the vacant sea Beneath the silent heavens--here and there, Percha...

The next evening Peter and Suneva and Dr. Balloch sat around Jan's hearth, and talked of all that he had seen and done during his absence. "But where is Michael Snorro?" asked t...