Wives and Widows; or, The Broken LifeStephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
General
Wives and Widows; or, The Broken Life
Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
Fiction
After explaining all this to me, the young people walked off together,
satisfied that I was made happy as themselves; and so I ought to have
been; but my poor heart would not rest, and I went off into the woods
like a wild bird, wondering why it was that a flutter of pain still kept
stirring in my bosom.
They were married just two weeks from that day. All the principal
families of the place were invited, and the entertainment proved a grand
affair. All the grounds were illuminated for the occasion. The house was
one blaze of lights. Every tree on the hill-side or the sloping lawn
seemed blossoming with fire, or drooping with translucent fruit, so
numerous were the colored lamps and gorgeous lanterns that hung amid
their foliage.
It was like fairy-land to me. The moon was at its golden fulness, and
never before had the purple skies seemed so full of stars; but, spite of
this, I was sad and restless. Miss Olmsly insisted upon it that my
mourning should be laid aside, and I felt strange in the cloudy
whiteness of my dress, simple and plain as it was. Indeed, the whole
thing seemed to me like a dream which must pass away on the morrow.
Perhaps it was this abrupt change in my dress which made me feel so
lonely when all the world was gay and brilliant beyond anything my short
life had witnessed. Perhaps I felt sad at the thought of leaving my
native land. Be this as it may, I can look back upon few nights of my
life more dreary than that upon which the two best friends I ever had,
or ever shall have, were married.
Memory is full of pictures; events fade away, feelings die out, but so
long as the heart keeps a sentiment or the brain holds an image, groups
will start up from the past and bring back scenes which no effort of the
mind can displace. It is strange, but such pictures are burned, as it
were, upon the soul unawares, and often without any remarkable event
which can be said to have impressed them there. You may have known a
person all your life, yet remember him only as he was presented to you
at some given moment. Whole years may pass in which you scarcely seem to
have observed him; but at some one moment he comes out upon your
recollection with all his features perfect and clearly cut as a cameo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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