Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/699

1866.] married. A few years after, a rough-looking man fell in with a sleighing party at a tavern, and inquired if they knew anything of Mrs. Vincent. She was pointed out to him. He gave her news of her husband, and, joining the sleighing party, began to grow familiar with Mrs. Vincent, and wished to take her upon his lap. She resisted,—but behold! the rough-looking stranger was her long-lost husband. There are good points in this story. (Ibid.)

Among the survivors of a wreck are two bitter enemies. The parties, having remained many days without food, cast lots to see who shall be killed as food for the rest. The lot falls on one of the enemies. The other may literally eat his heart!

October 13.—During this moon, I have two or three evenings sat for some time in our dining-room without light except from the coal fire and the moon. Moonlight produces a very beautiful effect in the room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing its figures so distinctly, and making all the room so visible, and yet so different from a morning or noontide visibility. There are all the familiar things, every chair, the tables, the couch, the bookcase, all that we are accustomed to see in the daytime; but now it seems as if we were remembering them through a lapse of years, rather than seeing them with the immediate eye. A child's shoe, the doll, sitting in her little wicker-carriage, all objects that have been used or played with during the day, though still as familiar as ever, are invested with something like strangeness and remoteness. I cannot in any measure express it. Then the somewhat dim coal fire throws its unobtrusive tinge through the room,—a faint ruddiness upon the wall,—which has a not unpleasant effect in taking from the colder spirituality of the moonbeams. Between both these lights such a medium is created that the room seems just fit for the ghosts of persons very dear, who have lived in the room with us, to glide noiselessly in and sit quietly down, without affrighting us. It would be like a matter of course to look round and find some familiar form in one of the chairs. If one of the white curtains happen to be drawn before the windows, the moonlight makes a delicate tracery with the branches of the trees, the leaves somewhat thinned by the progress of autumn, but still pretty abundant. It is strange how utterly I have failed to give anything of the effect of moonlight in a room.

The firelight diffuses a mild, heart-warm influence through the parlor, but is scarcely visible, unless you particularly look for it; and then you become conscious of a faint tinge upon the ceiling, of a reflected gleam from the mahogany furniture, and, if your eyes happen to fall on the looking-glass, deep within it you perceive the glow of the burning anthracite. I hate to leave such a scene; and when retiring to bed, after closing the door, I reopen it again and again, to peep back at the warm, cheerful, solemn repose, the white light, the faint ruddiness, the dimness,—all like a vision, and which makes me feel as if I were in a conscious dream.

The first manufacture of the kind of candy called Gibraltar rock, for a child's story; to be told in a romantic, mystic, marvellous style.

An angel comes from heaven, commissioned to gather up, put into a basket, and carry away everything good that is not improved by mankind, for whose benefit it was intended. The angel distributes these good things where they will be appreciated.

Annals of a kitchen.

A benevolent person going about the world and endeavoring to do good to everybody; in pursuance of which object, for instance, he gives, a pair of spectacles to a blind man, and does all such ill-suited things.