"'Oh, the little birds sing east, and the little birds sing west,
Toll slowly.
And I smile to think God's greatness flows around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness His rest.'
"Somebody loves us for ourselves' sake. Thank God for that!
"And the pale, silver shield of the moon hangs out in the radiant blue, and myriad gods look down, through starry eyes, upon this little world, as it floats, a tiny bubble, on Space's vast ocean; and they speak through their eyes, and bid us all love the Supreme, by loving one another; and they say, 'Love much! Such is the whole duty of man.' The moon, God's night-eye, takes note of all ye do, and is sometimes forced to withdraw behind cloud-veils, that ye may not behold her sweet features while she weeps at the sad spectacle of thy wrong doing! Luna, gentle Luna, does not like to peer down into human souls, and there behold the slimy badness, which will ere long breed deeds of horror to make her lovely face more pale—things which disfigure the gardens of man's spirit, and transform them into tangled brakes, where only weeds and unsightly things do grow. And Luna has a recording angel sitting on her shield, whose duty is to flash all intelligence up to His deific brain, in whose service she hath ever been. He is just, inexorably just, ever rewarding as man sinneth or obeys. And so it is poor policy to sin by night. It is equally so to sin by day; for then the Sun—God's Right Eye—fails not to behold you, for he is always shining, and his rays pierce the clouds and light up the world, even though thick fogs and dense vapors conceal his radiant countenance from some. He sees man, though man beholds him not; and he photographs all human thoughts and deeds upon the very substance of the soul, and that, too, so well and deeply, that nothing will destroy the picture; no sophistical 'All Right' lavements can wash it away, no philosophic bath destroy it. They are indelible, these sun-pictures on the spirit, and they are, some of them, very unsightly things to hang in the grand Memory-Galleries of the imperishable human soul; for, in the coming epochs of existence, as man moves down the corridors of Time, these pictures will still hang upon the walls, and if evil, will peer down sadly and reproachfully, and fright many a joy away, when man would fain be rid, but cannot, of pain-provoking recollections, when his body shall be stranded on the shores of the grave, and his spirit is being wafted over strange and mystic seas on the farther brink of Time!
"Night had come down, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. retired to bed, each with thoughts of murder rankling in their hearts. Not a word was spoken, but they lay with throbbing pulses, gazing out upon the night, through a little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down—gazing out upon the starry lamps that skirt the highways of the sky, beacons of safety placed there to recall and guide all stray and wandering souls back on their way to Heaven! and they silently looked at the stars as they twinkled and shimmered in the azure.
"The stars shone; and strange, horrible, ghastly thoughts agitated the woman and the man. 'Tom might get sick, and he might die! Isn't it possible to feed him with a little arsenic, or some other sort of poison, and not get caught at it? I think it is. He, once dead, I shall be free—free as the air, and happy as the birds!' Happy! Think of it!
"'Is it not possible to push Betsey over the cliff, accidentally, of course, and thus rid myself of her and misery together, and forever!' Forever! Picture it! And thus they lay as the night wore on, two precious immortal souls, with rank Murder for a bed-fellow.
"At the end of an hour's cogitation, both had reached the desperate resolution to carry their wishes into execution, and attempt the fearful crime.
"'Come down in thy profoundest gloom—
Without one radiant firefly's light,
Beneath thine ebon arch entomb
Earth from the gaze of Heaven, O Night.
A deed of darkness must be done,
Put out the moon, roll back the sun.'
"Betsey was to 'season' Tom's coffee; he was very fond of coffee. Tom was to treat Betsey to a ride in a one-horse shay, and topple the shay, horse, and Mrs. Thomas W.—all except his mother's only son—over a most convenient and inviting little precipice, a trifle over four hundred feet deep, with boulders at the bottom rather thicker than autumn leaves in Vallambrossa, and a good deal harder. All this was to be the result of 'accident,' and 'inscrutible Providence,' as a matter of course. Afterwards he was to buy a 'slashing suit' of mourning, bury what was left of her in grand style, erect a fine headstone of marble, announcing that—
"'The Lord gave, and the Lord took away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord!'