She afterwards married a young man not half so honorable as the young mountaineer, whom she jilted so cruelly. He deserted her ten years ago, leaving her a family of helpless children and a broken heart. “As you sow, so shall you reap.” There is no more dangerous game to play than to play hypocrite. No one means to become hardened in the game, but it grows on a person and poisons all the nobler impulses of the soul, and as age advances, the face hardens and every line in the countenance tells the secret thoughts that have always haunted the mind. The hypocrite cannot hide her sins from the trained eye of the observer, and the world is unforgiving toward the deceptive soul.
THE GIANT PINE
Standing on a gentle slope
With outstretched arms,
With an air of vanished hope
But still retaining charms
Of glories past and gone;
Of beauty most divine,
Standing there alone—
The giant pine.