Elinor Wyllys; Or, The Young Folk of Longbridge: A Tale. Volume 2Cooper, Susan Fenimore
General
Elinor Wyllys; Or, The Young Folk of Longbridge: A Tale. Volume 2
Cooper, Susan Fenimore
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Clapp was not heard of for years. His wife, little Willie, and
two younger children, became inmates of the old grey cottage,
under the care of Miss Patsey, who still continues the same
honest, whole-souled, benevolent being she was years ago. Patsey
was now quite at her ease, and enabled to provide for her sister
Kate and the three children, and it was to poor Charlie she owed
the means of doing so; by an unusual precaution in one so young,
he had left a will, giving everything he owned to his mother and
eldest sister. Shortly after his death, some of his friends,
Hazlehurst among the number, got up an exhibition of all his
pictures; they made a fine and quite numerous collection, for
Charlie had painted very rapidly. The melancholy interest
connected with the young painter's name, his high reputation in
the particular field he had chosen, the fact that all his
paintings were collected together, from the first view of
Chewattan lake taken when a mere boy, to the sketch of Nantucket
which he was retouching but a moment before his death, and the
sad recollection that his palette was now broken for ever,
attracted unusual attention. The result of that melancholy
exhibition, with the sale of some remaining pictures, proved
sufficient to place his mother and sister, with their moderate
views, in very comfortable circumstances; thus even after his
death Charlie proved a blessing to his family. In looking over
the young man's papers, Patsey found some lines which surprised
her, although they explained several circumstances which she had
never before fully understood; they betrayed a secret, undeclared
attachment, which had expressed itself simply and gracefully in
verses full of feeling and well written. It was evident from
these lines that poor Charlie's poetical imagination, even from
early boyhood, had been filled with the lovely image of his young
companion, Jane Graham: there was a beautiful sketch of her face
among his papers, which from the date, must have been taken from
memory while she was in Paris. It was clear from the tone of the
verses, that Charlie had scrupulously confined his secret within
his own bosom, for there were a few lines addressed to Jane since
her widowhood, lamenting that grief should so soon have thrown a
shadow over that lovely head, and concluding with a fear that she
would little value even this expression of sympathy from one, to
whom she had only given careless indifference, and one who had
never asked more than the friendship of early companionship.
Patsey hesitated for a moment, but then decided that the
miniature and the verses should never be shown--they should meet
no eyes but her own; Charlie had not spoken himself, his secret
should remain untold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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