Rose à Charlitte

Charlitte had been in his grave for nearly two years. He slept peacefully in the little green cemetery hard by the white church where a slender, sorrowful woman came twice every...

A few minutes later, the train had again entered the forest, and Vesper, who had a passion for trees and ranked them with human beings in his affections, allowed the mystery and...

It is always amusing to be among a crowd of people on the Lewis Wharf, in Boston, when a steamer is about to leave for the neighboring province of Nova Scotia. The provincials a...

When the meal was at last prepared, and the whole family were assembled in the sitting-room, where the table had been drawn from the kitchen, they took a united view of Vesper's...

Bidiane nothing loath, broke into a vivacious narrative. "Ah, that Mr. Nimmo, I just idolize him. How much he has done for me! Just figure to yourself what a spectacle I must ha...

After lunch, the Sleeping Water party separated. The Pitres found some old friends from up the Bay. Agapit wandered away with some young men, and Vesper, lazily declining to sau...

"How reads the riddle of our life, That mortals seek immortal joy, That pleasures here so quickly cloy, And hearts are e'en with yearnings rife? That love's bright morn no midda...

The girl followed her to the pantry, where she heard, murmured over a pan of milk, "They go to-night, as soon as it is dark,--Mirabelle Marie, Suretta, and Mosée-Délice."

"I wept over it at my first reading,--I gnashed my teeth; but come,--will you not go to the picnic with us? All the Bay is going, as the two former days of it were dull."

"Below me winds the river to the sea, On whose brown slope stood wailing, homeless maids; Stood exiled sons; unsheltered hoary heads; And sires and mothers dumb in agony. The aw...

There seemed to be more people about the house then there usually were, and Bidiane, who stood at the side door, was handing a long paper parcel to a man. "Take it away," Agapit...

Five years have passed away,--five long years. Five times the Acadien farmers have sown their seeds. Five times they have gathered their crops. Five times summer suns have smile...

Bidiane flashed around upon her companions. Rose--pale, trembling, almost unearthly in a beauty from which everything earthly and material seemed to have been purged away--stood...

Agapit, who was nearly always in high spirits, and always very much absorbed in himself, came bustling in,--sobered down for one minute to cross himself, and reverently repeat a...

"Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate, And see their offspring thus degenerate, How we contend for birth and names unknown; And build on their past acts, and not our own;...

"Calm with the truth of life, deep with the love of loving, New, yet never unknown, my heart takes up the tune. Singing that needs no words, joy that needs no proving, Sinking i...

"The music of our life is keyed To moods that sweep athwart the soul; The strain will oft in gladness roll, Or die in sobs and tears at need; But sad or gay, 'tis ever true That...

Mrs. Nimmo was a very unhappy woman. She had never before had a trouble equal to this trouble, and, as she sat at the long window in the bedroom of her absent son, she drearily...

"You're only a mite of a thing yet," shrieked Mrs. Watercrow, "though you've growed up; but _sakerjé_! how fine, how fine,--and what a shiny cloth in your coat! How much did tha...

"I had found out a sweet green spot, Where a lily was blooming fair; The din of the city disturbed it not; But the spirit that shades the quiet cot With its wings of love was th...

Bidiane, being of a practical turn of mind, and having a tremendous fund of energy to bestow upon the world in some way or other, was doing her best to follow the hint given her...

"You need not tell me anything," she said, with a searching glance at him. "It is all arranged between you and the Acadien woman. I know,--you cannot stave off these things. I w...

"Long have I lingered where the marshlands are, Oft hearing in the murmur of the tide The past, alive again and at my side, With unrelenting power and hateful war."

Mr. Greening had been spirited away. His unwise and untrue remark about the inhabitants of the township Clare had so persistently followed him, and his anger with the three wome...

"Because she has no heart. They have taken from her her race, her religion. Her mother, who had some Indian blood, was also wild. She would not sweep her kitchen floor. She went...

"Here is our dearest theme where skies are blue and brightest, To sing a single song in places that love it best; Freighting the happy breeze when snowy clouds are lightest; Mak...

"He laid a finger under her chin, His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown; Now, what will happen, and who will win, With me in the fight and my lady-love?

A few days later, Bidiane happened to be caught in a predicament, when none of her new friends were near, and she was forced to avail herself of Agapit's assistance.

"Dull days had hung like curtained mysteries, And nights were weary with the starless skies. At once came life, and fire, and joys untold, And promises for violets to unfold; An...

"Evil deeds do not die," and the handsome young man stretched out in an easy chair by the fire raised his curly black head and gazed into the farthest corner of the comfortably...

"From dawn to gloaming, and from dark to dawn, Dreams the unvoiced, declining Michaelmas. O'er all the orchards where a summer was The noon is full of peace, and loiters on. The...

"The glossing words of reason and of song, To tell of hate and virtue to defend, May never set the bitter deed aright, Nor satisfy the ages with the wrong."

Three days later, Vesper had only two friends in Sleeping Water,--that is, only two open friends. He knew he had a secret one in Mrs. Rose à Charlitte, who waited on him with th...

"Il est de ces longs jours d'indicible malaise Où l'on voudrait dormir du lourd sommeil des morts, De ces heures d'angoisse où l'existence pèse Sur l'âme et sur le corps."

"Pools and shadows merge Beneath the branches, where the rushes lean And stumble prone; and sad along the verge The marsh-hen totters. Strange the branches play Above the snake-...

"Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God. Sorrow, fear, and anxiety are properly not parts but adjuncts of repentance, yet...

At twelve o'clock Mrs. Rose à Charlitte was standing in her cold pantry deftly putting a cap of icing on a rich rounded loaf of cake, when she heard a question asked, in Vesper'...