Love After Marriage; and Other Stories of the HeartHentz, Caroline Lee
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Love After Marriage; and Other Stories of the Heart
Hentz, Caroline Lee
Fiction; Short stories, American
She paused, and lifting her eyes to heaven, with a serene expression,
folded her hands on her bosom. The missionary saw that her soul was
about to take its flight, and kneeling over her, his feeble voice rose
in prayer and adoration. While the holy incense was ascending up to
heaven, her spirit winged its upward way, so peacefully and silently,
that Adellan still clasped her cold hand, unconscious that he was
clinging to dust and ashes.
They made her grave beneath the acacia, whose blossoms were strewed
over her dying couch. They placed a rude stone at the head, and the
hand of Adellan carved upon it this simple, but sublime inscription,
"I know that my Redeemer liveth." The name of _Ozora_, on the opposite
side, was all the memorial left in the desert, of her whose memory was
immortal in the bosom of her friends. But there was a grandeur in that
lonely grave which no marble monument could exalt. It was the grave of
a Christian:
"And angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by her relics made."
It would be a weary task to follow the travellers through every step
of their journey. Adellan still continued his unwearied offices to his
grateful and now convalescent friends, but his spirit mourned for his
lost Ozora. When, however, he set foot on Christian land, he felt
something of the rapture that swelled the breast of Columbus on the
discovery of a new world. It was, indeed, a new world to him, and
almost realized his dreams of Paradise.
The friends of Mary and her husband welcomed him, as the guardian
angel who had watched over their lives in the desert, at the hazard of
his own; and Christians pressed forward to open their hearts and their
homes to their Abyssinian brother. Mary, once more surrounded by the
loved scenes of her youth, and all the appliances of kindred love, and
all the medicinal balms the healing art can furnish, slowly recovered
her former strength. All that female gratitude and tenderness could
do, she exerted to interest and enliven the feelings of Adellan, when,
after each day of intense study, he returned to their domestic circle.
The rapidity with which he acquired the German language was
extraordinary. He found it, however, only a key, opening to him
treasures of unknown value. Mr. M---- feared the effects of his
excessive application, and endeavoured to draw him from his books and
studies. He led him abroad amongst the works of nature, and the
wonders of art, and tried to engage him in the athletic exercises the
youth of the country delighted in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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