FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   >>  
hat floated from the wood by day were sometimes thought to be the spirit of the chief. He had a daughter, Lillinonah, whose story is related to Lover's Leap, on the riverward side of the mountain. She had led to the camp a white man, who had been wandering beside the Housatonic, ill and weak, vainly seeking a way out of the wilderness, and, in spite of the dark looks that were cast at him and her, she succeeded in making him, for that summer, a member of the tribe. As the man grew strong with her care he grew happy and he fell in love. In the autumn he said to her, "I wish to see my people, and when I have done so I will come back to you and we shall be man and wife." They parted regretfully and the winter passed for the girl on leaden feet. With spring came hope. The trails were open, and daily she watched for her white lover. The summer came and went, and the autumn was there again. She had grown pale and sad, and old Waramaug said to young Eagle Feather, who had looked softly on her for many years, "The girl sickens in loneliness. You shall wed her." This is repeated to her, and that evening she slips away to the river, enters a canoe, casts away the paddle, and drifts down the stream. Slowly, at first, but faster and faster, as the rapids begin to draw it, skims the boat, but above the hoarse brawling of the waters she hears a song in a voice that she knows--the merry troll of a light heart. The branches part at Lover's Leap and her lover looks down upon her. The joyous glance of recognition changes to a look of horror, for the boat is caught. The girl rises and holds her arms toward him in agonized appeal. Life, at any cost! He, with a cry, leaps into the flood as the canoe is passing. It lurches against a rock and Lillinonah is thrown out. He reaches her. The falls bellow in their ears. They take a last embrace, and two lives go out in the growing darkness. GOD ON THE MOUNTAINS From the oldest time men have associated the mountains with visitations of God. Their height, their vastness, their majesty made them seem worthy to be stairs by which the Deity might descend to earth, and they stand in religious and poetic literature to this day as symbols of the largest mental conceptions. Scriptural history is intimately associated with them, and the giving of the law on Sinai, amid thunder and darkness, is one of the most tremendous pictures that imagination can paint. Ararat, Hermon, Horeb, Pisgah, Calvary, Ad
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   >>  



Top keywords:
autumn
 

darkness

 

summer

 

faster

 
Lillinonah
 

lurches

 
passing
 

bellow

 
Pisgah
 
embrace

Calvary

 

reaches

 

thrown

 

horror

 

caught

 
branches
 
joyous
 

glance

 

recognition

 
appeal

agonized

 

literature

 

poetic

 

imagination

 

symbols

 

religious

 

Hermon

 

Ararat

 
largest
 
mental

thunder

 
tremendous
 

pictures

 

Scriptural

 

conceptions

 

history

 

intimately

 
giving
 

descend

 
oldest

mountains

 

MOUNTAINS

 

growing

 
visitations
 
stairs
 

worthy

 

height

 

vastness

 

majesty

 

waters