Night after night the jealous man had hidden himself at the head of the
bed, and had stolen away unperceived in the morning without having heard
anything to help his wicked plans. He was beginning to think he must try
something else when one evening the girl suddenly said to her husband
that she was tired of being a shadow, and was going to show herself in
the body that she used to have, and meant to keep it always. The husband
was glad in his soul at her words, and then proposed that they should
get up and play a game as usual; and, while they were playing, the man
behind the curtains peeped through. As he did so, a noise as of a
rattling of bones rang through the house, and when the people came
running, they found the husband dead and the shadow gone, for the ghosts
of both had sped back to Ghostland.
_Tlingit Myths._
_YOUNG AMAZON SNELL_
When George I. was king, there lived in Worcester a man named Snell, who
carried on business as a hosier and dyer. He worked hard, as indeed he
had much need to do--having three sons and six daughters to provide for.
The boys were sent to some kind of school, but in those days tradesmen
did not trouble themselves about educating their girls, and Snell
thought it quite enough for them to be able to read and to count upon
their fingers. If they wanted more learning they must pick it up for
themselves.
Now although Snell himself was a peaceable, stay-at-home man, his father
had been a soldier, and had earned fame and a commission as
captain-lieutenant, by shooting the Governor of Dunkirk in the reign of
King William. Many tales did the Snell children hear in the winter
evenings of their grandfather's brave deeds when he fought at Blenheim
with the Welsh Fusiliers, and a thrill of excitement never failed to run
through them as they listened to the story of the battle of Malplaquet,
where the hero received the wound that killed him.
'Twenty-two battles!' they whispered proudly yet with awe-struck voices;
'did ever any man before fight in so many as that?' and, though the
eldest boy said less than any, one morning his bed was empty, and by and
bye his mother got a message to tell her that Sam had enlisted, and was
to sail for Flanders with the army commanded by the Duke of Cumberland.
Poor Sam's career was not a long one. He was shot through the lungs at
the battle of Fontenoy, and died in a few hours.
The old grandfather's love of a fight was in all these young Snells,
and one by one the boys followed Sam's example, and the girls married
soldiers or sailors. Hannah, the youngest, brought up from her babyhood
on talk of wars and rumours of wars, thought of nothing else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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