And Thisbe lifted her delicate mistress in her arms, and tugged her from the room; an operation that reminded one, not of a "mountain laboring to bring forth a mouse," but of a mouse laboring to bring forth a mountain.
Days and weeks past by, and Alice was not so unhappy as she feared she would be from her first experience. The "belle and beauty" returned from the city of Mobile, under escort of Mr. Gilbert, who proved to be the fair Celestina's fiancée. And Wayland Morris was a frequent visitor. He often invited Alice to walk over different portions of the city. There was an old ruinous French chateau to which they were wont to direct their steps almost every Saturday evening when the weather was pleasant; and to walk with Morris, gaze into his deep blue eyes, and listen to his eloquent voice as he recited to her old tales and legends of long ago from his well-stored, imaginative brain, was becoming more than life to Alice. Perhaps she did not quite know it then. Whoever knows the value of a blessing till it is withdrawn? Ah! and when we wake some morning to find our hearts left desolate, how earnestly and tearfully do we beg its return, with fervent promises never to drive it from our bosoms, or scorn and slight it again! But does it ever come? Alas, no!
CHAPTER IV.
"O, know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in her clime,
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melts into sorrow, now maddens to crime;
O, know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine?"
Bright, balmy, beautiful southern land! Alas, that amid all your luxuriance of beauty, where the flowering earth smiles up to the far sparkling azure, and all nature seems chanting delicious harmonies, that man should here, as elsewhere, make the one discordant note! Frail, grovelling, passion-blinded man! The noblest imperfection of God! When will he be elevated to the standard for which the Maker designed him?