The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, No. 05, May 1891: An Illustrated MonthlyVarious
General
The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, No. 05, May 1891: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
Niggers are numerous. A diminutive, but courageous inhabitant of
darkest Africa has converted an ostrich into a species of feathered
postman (Fig. 15). The youthful darkey appears to be bidding his
steed to "go on"--or words to that effect. The obedient ostrich, with
straining neck, is hurrying along to "Hy. Jones, Esquire."
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
(_To be continued._)
_Jenny._
FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.
[Illustration: JENNY'S CABIN.]
I.
It was night. The cabin, poor, but warm and cosy, was full of a half
twilight, through which the objects of the interior were but dimly
visible by the glimmer of the embers which flickered on the hearth
and reddened the dark rafters overhead. The fisherman's nets were
hanging on the wall. Some homely pots and pans twinkled on a rough
shelf in the corner. Beside a great bed with long, falling curtains, a
mattress was extended on a couple of old benches, on which five little
children were asleep like cherubs in a nest. By the bedside, with her
forehead pressed against the counterpane, knelt the children's mother.
She was alone. Outside the cabin the black ocean, dashed with stormy
foam-flakes, moaned and murmured, and her husband was at sea.
From his boyhood he had been a fisherman. His life, as one may say, had
been a daily fight with the great waters; for every day the children
must be fed, and every day, rain, wind, or tempest, out went his boat
to fish. And while, in his four-sailed boat, he plied his solitary
task at sea, his wife at home patched the old sails, mended the nets,
looked to the hooks, or watched the little fire where the fish-soup
was boiling. As soon as the five children were asleep, she fell upon
her knees and prayed to Heaven for her husband in his struggle with
the waves and darkness. And truly such a life as his was hard. The
likeliest place for fish was a mere speck among the breakers, not more
than twice as large as his own cabin--a spot obscure, capricious,
changing on the moving desert, and yet which had to be discovered in
the fog and tempest of a winter night, by sheer skill and knowledge of
the tides and winds. And there--while the gliding waves ran past like
emerald serpents, and the gulf of darkness rolled and tossed, and the
straining rigging groaned as if in terror--there, amidst the icy seas,
he thought of his own Jenny; and Jenny, in her cottage, thought of him
with tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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