e danced into the
middle of the room, her bonnet hanging on her arm, flowers in her
hair, and a bouquet in her hand, fresh from the woods in which she had
been rambling. "Father! father!" she stopped, and gazed first at her
father, and then at Mr. Hall, with a mingled expression of regret and
surprise. Her long walk that afternoon had given her a heightened
color; and the varied feelings which moved her were clearly depicted
on her face.
"Come here, Annie," said Hall, extending his hand, "come here, and say
you forgive the rudeness of this afternoon." She hesitated an
instant--the crimson deepened on her cheek, and the lip slightly
trembled; then looking up with one of her own radiant smiles, she gave
her small, white hand to the teacher.
Not long after he made another visit to the good minister's study,
not, indeed, to ask forgiveness for turning Annie out of school, but
to beg permission to transplant her one day to a home of his own.
Whatever was said, we suspect Annie might have served as "an instance
in point" for that rather broad generalization of Swift,
"No girl is pleased with what is taught
But has _the teacher_ in her thought."
"Young gentlemen," said Harvey Hall, (Judge Hall then,) when some
years afterward two or three of his law students were spending the
evening at his hospitable mansion, "young gentlemen, never regret the
necessity of exerting yourself in order to obtain your profession; for
beside the habit of _self-help_ thus formed, which is invaluable, you
may," he added, glancing archly at the face, fair as ever, of her who
sat with muslin stitchery by the centre-table, "meet with a wayside
rose as precious as Annie."
THE SUNBEAM.
(FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE.)
Come! watch with me this sunbeam, as o'er the moss bank green
It glides, and enters swiftly the foliage dark between;
Resting its golden lever, of mystic length and line,
Upon the dewy herbage, in an oblique decline:
Toward its moving column the stamen of the flowers
Whirl, as by strong attraction; and through the daylight hours
Gay insects, azure atoms, with every-colored wing,
Swim 'mid the light, still lending fresh sparkles as they spring.
See! how in cadenced measure they gravitate below,
Now linking, then unlinking, in quick, harmonious flow;
Of Plato's worlds ideal the semblance here appears,
Those worlds that danced in circles to the music of the sphe
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