Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, November, 1880Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, November, 1880
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
As for Miss Deane, she is no older now than then. The volatile drops in
her blood effervesce as of old, and her flirtation is as desperate with
that invisible adorer as if she were twenty instead of--more.
But it is true that sometimes, at long intervals, she takes a bit of
yellow paper from a secret place, and her spectacles grow dim (she
wears them only in private) as she reads, in a feminine hand that seems
to skip and chipper all over the page, "Truly, mamma dear, he has
never said a word of love to me, and yet, strange as it may seem, I
am as sure that he loves me as--" Then she usually giggles, in queer,
mirthless fashion, as she chirrups, "What a ridiculous little goosie
I was!" before she folds the paper away for another long repose,
readjusts her coquettish but scanty frizzes, and goes down stairs again
to her invisible adorer and her perpetual flirtation.
And nobody hears the wail in her foolish old-young heart as she goes:
"Ah, why might it not have been?"
Alas! why not?
For then she might have been less lively, and he less dead, both grown
side by side into richer, fuller, sweeter ripeness for the great
harvester whom we call Death.
MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN.
The traveller who, leaving Paris by express at 10 A.M., reaches the
Orleans dépôt at Limoges at six in the evening, will see spacious
boulevards, imposing buildings and a general air of stateliness and
pretension, recalling the metropolis he left behind him in the morning.
His omnibus will whisk him through streets crowded with promenaders, a
picturesque panorama of well-dressed people, with a generous sprinkling
of the light-blue jackets of the chasseurs, the gleaming helmets of the
dragoons, the red kepis of the infantry, the broad-brimmed hats and
sable mantles of the priesthood and the red-and-orange head-kerchiefs
of the working-women. If it be late in the season and the days are
short, he will see at every turn cafés ablaze with light, and the wide
sidewalks before them lined with tables at which, cool as it may be,
crowds of loungers are seated sipping bier, absinthe or eau sucrée.
But, looking up the dingy side-streets, here and there he may detect,
by the lines of flickering, straggling gas-lights, glimpses of another
Limoges--glimpses of steep streets ending in stairways; of narrow and
darkened passages where the opposite buildings nod to each other from
across the street until they all but touch; of courts where curious
little enshrined images of the Madonna and the saints look down from
niches in the corners, and where heads are peeping out from every
window to catch a whiff of evening air; and of sombre alleys, each
lighted by a single lamp suspended midway, under the uncertain rays
of which swarms of children and dogs are vying to awaken the loudest
echoes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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