How swiftly the ferry boat plows through the wave! How gleefully that little child claps its tiny hands, as the snowy foam parts on either side, then dashes away like a thing of life. Here are weary business men, going back to their quiet homes; and pleasure-loving belles, returning from the city. Pacing up and down the deck, is a worn and weary woman, bearing in her arms a child, so emaciated, so attenuated, that but for the restless glance of its dark, sunken eyes, one would think it a little corpse. The mother has left her unhealthy garret in the noisome lane of the teeming city, and paid her last penny to the ferryman, that the health-laden sea breeze may fan the sick child’s temples. Tenderly she moves it from one shoulder to another. Now, she lays its little cheek to hers; now, she kisses the little slender fingers; but still the baby moans. The boat touches the pier. All are leaving, but the mother and child; the ferryman tells her to “go too.” She says timidly, “I want to return again—I live the other side—I came on board for the baby,” (pointing to the dying child.) Poor woman, she did not know that she could not go back without another fee, and she has not a penny. Loathsome as is her distant home, she must go back to it; but how?
One passenger beside herself still lingers listening. Dainty fingers drop a coin into the gruff ferryman’s hand,—then a handful into the weary, troubled mother’s. The sickly babe looks up and smiles at the chinking coin—the mother smiles, because the baby has smiled again—and then weeps because she knows not how to thank the lovely donor.
“Homeward bound.”
Over the blue waters, the golden sunset gleams; tinting the snowy, billowy foam with a thousand iris hues; while at the boat’s prow, stands the happy mother, wooing the cool sunset breeze, which kisses soothingly the sick infant’s temples.
“This earth is very lovely. Oh my God,
I thank thee that I live!”
HOUR-GLASS THOUGHTS.
The bride stands waiting at the altar; the corpse lies waiting for burial.
Love vainly implores of Death a reprieve; Despair vainly invokes his coming.