The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
But the dream that takes possession of young hearts came to Chloe also;
though in her case it proved merely the shadow of a dream, or a dream of
a shadow. On board of one of the sloops that carried fish to Baltimore
was a free colored man, named Jim Saunders. The first time she saw him,
she thought his large brown eyes were marvellously handsome, and that he
had a very pleasant way of speaking to her. She always watched for the
ship in which he came, and was very particular to have on a clean apron
when she was likely to meet him. She looked at her own eyes in a bit of
broken looking-glass, and wondered whether they seemed as handsome to
him as his eyes did to her. In her own opinion she had rather pretty
eyes, and she was not mistaken; for the Scriptural description, "black,
but comely," was applicable to her. Jim never told her so, but she had
somehow received an impression that perhaps he thought so. Sometimes he
helped her turn the fish on the Flake, and afterward walked with her
along the beach, as she wended her way homeward. On such occasions there
was a happy sound in the song of the sea, and her heart seemed to dance
up in sparkles, like the waves kissed by the sunshine. It was the first
free, strong emotion she had ever experienced, and it sent a glow
through the cold dulness of her lonely life.
Jim went away on a long voyage. He said perhaps he should be gone two
years. The evening before he sailed, he walked with Chloe on the beach;
and when he bade her good by, he gave her a pretty little pink shell,
with a look that she never forgot. She gazed long after him, and felt
flustered when he turned and saw her watching him. As he passed round a
rock that would conceal him from her sight, he waved his cap toward her,
and she turned homeward, murmuring to herself, "He didn't say nothin';
but he looked just as ef he _wanted_ to say suthin'." On that look the
poor hungry heart fed itself. It was the one thing in the world that was
her own, that nobody could take from her,--the memory of a look.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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