Weighed and Wanting

The hot dreamy days rose and sank in Yrndale. Hester would wake in the morning oppressed with the feeling that there was something she ought to have begun long ago, and must pos...

On the Sunday evening, the last before she was to leave for Yrndale, Hester had gone to see a poor woman in a house she had not been in before, and was walking up the dismal sta...

"The people of an aquarium must surely be fishes, eh, Saffy?" said the father to the bright child, walking hand in hand with him. It was Josephine. Her eyes were so blue that bu...

Hester had not been near them for two or three days. It was getting dusk, but she would just run across the square and down the street, and look in upon them for a moment. She h...

The major had indeed taken a strong fancy to Hester, and during the whole of his visit kept as near her as he could, much to the annoyance of Vavasor. Doubtless it was in part t...

The visits of Vavasor, in reality to Hester, continued. For a time they were more frequent, and he stayed longer. Hester's more immediate friends, namely her mother and Miss Das...

When Mark's little cloak was put in the earth, for a while the house felt cold--as if the bit of Paradise had gone out. Mark's room was like a temple forsaken of its divinity. B...

Cornelius, leaving his mother, took refuge with his anger in his own room. Although he had occupied it but a fortnight the top of its chest of drawers was covered with yellow no...

Hester had been to church, and had then visited some of her people, carrying them words of comfort and hope. They received them in a way at her hand, but none of them, had they...

About three weeks after lord Gartley's call, during which he had left a good many cards in Addison square, Hester received the following letter from Miss Vavasor: "My dear Miss...

Hearing only the sounds of a peaceful talk, Sarah had ventured near enough to the door to hear something of what was said, and set at rest by finding that the cause of her terro...

That same morning, Mr. Raymount had found it, or chosen to imagine it necessary--from the instinct, I believe to oppose inner with outer storm, to start pretty early for the cou...

When Franks, the acrobat, and his family left Mrs. Baldwin's garret to go to another yet poorer lodging, it was with heavy hearts: they crept silent away, to go down yet a step...

The Raymounts lived in no fashionable or pseudo-fashionable part of London, but in a somewhat peculiar house, though by no means such outwardly, in an old square in the dingy, s...

Light and shade, sunshine and shadow pursue each other over the moral as over the material world. Every soul has a landscape that changes with the wind that sweeps its sky, with...

It was a gray, windy noon in the beginning of autumn. The sky and the sea were almost of the same color, and that not a beautiful one. The edge of the horizon where they met was...

The night began differently with the two watchers. The major was troubled in his mind at what seemed the hard-heartedness of the mother, for he loved her with a true brotherly a...

Miss Dasomma was quite as much pleased with Amy as she had expected to be, and that was not a little. She found her very ignorant in the regions of what is commonly called educa...

Mr. Raymount went now and then to London, but never stayed long. In the autumn he had his books removed to Yrndale, saying in London he could always get what books he wanted, bu...

But the precious little Mark did not get better; and it soon became very clear to the major that, although months might elapse ere he left them, go he must before long. It was t...

The evening before the return of Cornelius to London and the durance vile of the bank, Vavasor presented himself at the hour of family-tea. Mr. Raymount's work admitting of no l...

As major Marvel, for all the rebuffs he had met with, had not yet learned to entertain the smallest doubt as to his personal acceptability, so he was on his part most catholic i...

She was one of those women--not few in number, I have good reason to think, though doubtless few comparatively, who from the first dawn of consciousness have all their lives end...

It was much too early to do anything when they arrived. Nor could Hester go to her uncle's house: it was in one of the suburbs, and she would reach it before the household was s...

"The water-rate perhaps," answered Hester, opening her own letter as she withdrew to read it. For she did not like to read Gartley's letters before her mother--not from shyness,...

A letter came from lord Gartley, begging Mrs. Raymount to excuse the liberty he took, and allow him to ask whether he might presume upon her wish, casually expressed, to welcome...

While she meditated thus, major Marvel made his appearance. He had been watching outside, saw her uncle go, and an hour after was shown to the room where she still sat, staring...

Some gentle crisis must have arrived in the history of Hester, for in these days her heart was more sensitive and more sympathetic than ever before. The circumvolant troubles of...

In the meantime things had been going very gloomily at Yrndale. Mrs. Raymount was better in health but hardly more cheerful. How could she be? how get over the sadness that her...

About noon the next day, lord Gartley called. Whether he had got over his fright, or thought the danger now less imminent, or was vexed that he had _appeared_ to be afraid, I do...

The Frankses remained at rest until the funeral was over, and then Hester would have father and sons go out to follow their calling, while the mother and she did what could be d...

But she could not sleep. She rose, went back to the room where the dead Moxy lay, and sent Sarah to get breakfast ready. Then came upon her an urgent desire to know the people w...

The two were silent on their way, but from different causes. Lord Gartley was uneasy at finding Hester in such a position--led into it by her unreflecting sympathies, no doubt,...

From what I have written of him it may well seem as if such a cub were hardly worth writing about; but if my reader had chanced to meet him first in other company than that of h...

Hester carried poor little Amy to her own room, laid her on her own bed, and did for her all one child of God could do for another. With hands tender as a mother's, and weeping...

I do not care to dwell upon what followed. Christmas was a merry day to all but the major, who did not like the engagement any better than before. He found refuge and consolatio...

Towards morning he went to bed, and slept late--heavily and unreposefully; and, alas! when he woke, there was the old feeling returned! How _could_ he forgive the son that had s...

At Yrndale things went on in the same dull way, anger burrowing like a devil-mole in the bosom of the father, a dreary spiritual fog hanging over all the souls, and the mother w...

Hester did not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive an...

The cry of the human heart in all ages and in every moment is, "Where is God and how shall I find him?"--No, friend, I will not accept your testimony to the contrary--not though...

One afternoon when Vavasor was in his room, writing a letter to his aunt, in which he described in not too glowing terms, for he knew exaggeration would only give her a handle,...

His lordship was scarcely gone when the major came. So closely did the appearance of the one follow on the disappearance of the other, that there was ground for suspecting the m...

The major was in no haste to leave, but he spent most of his time with Mark, and was in nobody's way. Mark was very happy with the major. The nature of the man was so childlike...

There was no news of Cornelius. In vain the detective to whom the major had made liberal promises continued his inquiries. There was a rumour of a young woman in whose company h...

There is another person in my narrative whom the tide of her destiny seemed now to have caught and to be bearing more swiftly somewhither. Unable, as she concluded, any longer t...

Miss Dasomma was one of God's angels; for if he makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flaming fire, much more are those live fountains which carry his gifts to their thirs...

In the meantime Cornelius kept his bed. The moment her husband was gone, his mother rose and hastened to her son! Here again was a discord! for the first time since their marria...

Down the hill and down!--to the shores of the salt sea, where the flowing life is dammed into a stagnant lake, a dead sea, growing more and more bitter with separation and lack...

For the tail of the music-kite--the car of the music-balloon rather, having thus descended near enough to the earth to be a temptation to some of the walkers afoot, they must ca...

It was a lovely morning when they left London. The trains did not then travel so fast as now, and it was late in the afternoon when they reached the station at which they must l...

Gerald Raymount was a man of an unusual combination of qualities. There were such contradictions in his character as to give ground for the suspicion, in which he certainly hims...

The house in which they lived, and which was their own, was a somewhat remarkable one--I do not mean because it retained almost all the old-fashionedness of a hundred and fifty...

Second causes are God's as much as first, and Christ made use of them as his father's way. It were a sad world indeed if God's presence were only interference, that is, miracle....

When she woke it was to a blaze of sunlight, but caught in the net of her closed curtains. The night had passed and carried the tears of the day with it. Ah, how much is done in...

One lovely evening in the beginning of June, when her turn had come to get away a little earlier, Amy Amber thought with herself she would at last make an effort to find Miss Ra...

In the meantime yet worse trouble had come upon the poor Frankses. About a week after they had taken possession of the cellar, little Moxy, the Serpent of the Prairies, who had...

Vavasor had not heard of the gathering. In part from doubt of his sympathy, in part from dislike of talking about doing, Hester had not mentioned it. When she lifted her eyes at...

Vavasor at length found he must not continue to visit Hester so often, while not ready to go further; and that, much as he was in love--proportionately, that is, to his faculty...

Scarcely had she reached it, however, when the voices of the children came shouting along some corridor, on their way to find their breakfast: she must go and minister, postponi...

The day came. It was fine in London. The invalid was carefully wrapt up for the journey. Hester, the major and Miss Dasomma followed the young couple to the station. There the l...

riffraff. Every manufacture has its waste, and he's human waste. There's misery enough in the world without looking out for it, and taking other people's upon our shoulders. You...