He often told his tale to sympathetic ears, and would point to the old
mill to prove that it was true.

THE WEARY WATCHER

Before the opening of the great bridge sent commerce rattling up
Washington Street in Brooklyn that thoroughfare was a shaded and
beautiful avenue, and among the houses that attested its respectability
was one, between Tillary and Concord Streets, that was long declared to
be haunted. A man and his wife dwelt there who seemed to be fondly
attached to each other, and whose love should have been the stronger
because of their three children none grew to years. A mutual sorrow is as
close a tie as a common affection. One day, while on a visit to a friend,
the wife saw her husband drive by in a carriage with a showy woman beside
him. She went home at once, and when the supposed recreant returned she
met him with bitter reproaches. He answered never a word, but took his
hat and left the house, never to be seen again in the places that had
known him.

The wife watched and waited, daily looking for his return, but days
lengthened into weeks, months, years, and still he came not. Sometimes
she lamented that she had spoken hastily and harshly, thinking that, had
she known all, she might have found him blameless. There was no family to
look after, no wholesome occupation that she sought, so the days went by
in listening and watching, until, at last, her body and mind gave way,
and the familiar sight of her face, watching from a second floor window,
was seen no longer. Her last day came. She had risen from her bed; life
and mind seemed for a moment to be restored to her; and standing where
she had stood so often, her form supported by a half-closed shutter and a
grasp on the sash, she looked into the street once more, sighed
hopelessly, and so died. It was her shade that long watched at the
windows; it was her waxen face, heavy with fatigue and pain, that was
dimly seen looking over the balusters in the evening.

THE RIVAL FIDDLERS

Before Brooklyn had spread itself beyond Greenwood Cemetery a stone could
be seen in Martense's Lane, south of that burial-ground, that bore a hoof
mark. A negro named Joost, in the service of the Van Der
Something-or-others, was plodding home on Saturday night, his fiddle
under his arm. He had been playing for a wedding in Flatbush and had been
drinking schnapps until he saw stars on the ground and fences in the sky;
in fact, the universe seemed so out of order th