"Oh! no not dying doctor, you surely don't mean it." "Yes Jeanette,"
said the old family doctor, tenderly and sadly, "I can do nothing for
him, let me take him in my arms and rest you. Dear little darling, he
will be saved from the evils to come."
Just as his life was trembling on its frailest chords, and its delicate
machinery almost wound up, Charles Romaine returned, sober enough to
take in the situation. He strode up to the dying child, took the clammy
hands in his, and said in a tone of bitter anguish, "Charlie, don't you
know papa? Wouldn't you speak one little word to papa?" But it was too
late, the shadows that never deceive flitted over the pale beauty of the
marble brow, the waxen lid closed over the once bright and laughing eye,
and the cold grave for its rest had won the child.
Chapter XIX
[Text missing.]
Chapter XX
If riches could bring happiness, John Anderson should be a happy man;
and yet he is far from being happy. He has succeeded in making money,
but failed in every thing else. But let us enter his home. As you open
the parlor door your feet sink in the rich and beautiful carpet.
Exquisite statuary, and superbly framed pictures greet your eye and you
are ready to exclaim, "Oh! how lovely." Here are the beautiful
conceptions of painters' art and sculptors' skill. It is a home of
wealth, luxury and display, but not of love, refinement and culture.
Years since, before John Anderson came to live in the city of A.P. he
had formed an attachment for an excellent young lady who taught school
in his native village, and they were engaged to be married; but after
coming to the city and forming new associations, visions of wealth
dazzled his brain, and unsettled his mind, till the idea of love in a
cottage grew distasteful to him. He had seen men with no more ability
than himself who had come to the city almost pennyless, and who had
grown rich in a few years, and he made up his mind that if possible he
would do two things, acquire wealth and live an easy life, and he
thought the easiest way to accomplish both ends was to open up a
gorgeous palace of sin and entice into his meshes the unwary, the
inexperienced, and the misguided slaves of appetite. For awhile after he
left his native village, he wrote almost constantly to his betrothed;
but as new objects and interests engaged his attention, his letters
became colder and less frequent, until they finally ceased and the
engagement was broken. At first the blow fell heavily upon the heart of
his affianced, but she was too sensible to fade away and die the victim
of unrequited love, and in after years when she had thrown her whole
soul into the temperance cause, and consecrated her life to the work of
uplifting fallen humanity, she learned to be thankful that it was not
her lot to be united to a man who stood as a barrier across the path of
human progress and would have been a weight to her instead of wings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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