Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/150

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��A Dozvn East Homer.

��The strange bond between her and the child had grown stronger as time had flown. She felt that she was a thou- sand times more to her than a child to a mother. The little, tender, lov- ino; heart was the one heart that knew and understood and S3'mpathized with her grief. If she lost her she was bereft not only of her eldest born, but of the one who possessed her full confidence, her closest friend, the only one who saved her from the utter loneliness of her misery.

George kept constantly with his daughter. In an agony of self-re- proach for his past treatment, he tried in everj'way to win back her love and confidence. Florry treated him wist- fully, looking at him often with eyes that brought tears to his own, and their remembrance wrung groans from his breast at night. The past was irrevocable ; strive as he might, there was no restitution, no oblivion, pos- sible to him.

Freedom from study, change of air

��and scene, physicians' skill, were all of no use. Florry died ; and by the side of their still, eldest born, George besought his wife to forgive him for the past, to take him back, to give him the chance to win her love once more. "For Florry's sake, Ethel," he pleaded ; and Ethel promised, "For Florry's sake, I will try."

And Florry reunited them ; but the great earthly happiness they once hoped for and expected they can nev- er know. They are doubtless as happy as most people, but often when George sees the long yellow hair of their living little girl flying down the stairs or in and out of the rooms, he thinks of another little girl with long yellow hair, and shudders at the sud- den remembrance " she is dead," feel- ing a heavy load on his heart. And often when her husband is kindest, Ethel sees a little grave iu the beauti- ful Forest City cemetery, and shrinks shudderingly away from him.

��A DOWN EAST HOMER. By Isaac B. Choate.

��There are many and striking points of difference between the old Greek bard, who wandered from place to place reciting his rhapsodies wherev- er a crowd of listeners would gather, and his Down East successor, who used to peddle his verses as merchant- able wares through the country-sides of the "District of Maine." So far as the method of getting their works into circulation is concerned, the dif- ference may be accounted for by re-

��ferring to the invention of printing. Other marks of distinction between Homer of Chios, or any other of the seven cities which claims the honor of being his birth-place, and Thomas Shaw, positively of Standish, Maine, must be variously explained. The earlier poet sang of war, the later piped of peace. Homer was blind ; and no one can read the productions of Shaw, unless in a state of suspend- ed cogitation, without discovering that

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