Once, Mungo Park (the once too often of telling this story can never come) sat all day,—without food, under a tree. The night threatened to be very pitiless; for the wind arose, and there was every sign of a heavy rain; and wild beasts prowled around. But about sunset, as he was preparing to pass the night in the branches of the tree, a woman, returning from the labors of the field, perceived how weary and dejected he was, and, taking up his saddle and bridle, invited him to follow her. She conducted him to her hut, where she lighted a lamp, spread a mat on the floor, and bade him welcome. Then she went out, and presently returning with a fine fish, broiled it on the embers, and set his supper before him. The rites of hospitality thus performed toward a stranger in distress, that savage angel, pointing to the mat, and assuring him that he might sleep there without fear, commanded the females of her family, who all the while had stood gazing on him in fixed astonishment, to resume their spinning. Then they sang, to a sweet and plaintive air, these words: "The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. Let us pity the white man; no mother hath he to bring him milk, no wife to grind his corn." Flowers in the desert![1]
[Footnote 1: Leigh Hunt.]
Flowers in the desert! And De Sauty shall spare them, though he botanize on his mother's grave. Borro-boolah-gah may know us by our India-rubber shirts and pictorial pocket-handkerchiefs; and King Mumbo Jumbo may reduce his rebellious locks to subjection with a Yankee currycomb; but these, our desert flowers, are All Right, De Sauty!
BEAUTY AT BILLIARDS.
There is a lady in this case.
For three days she had sat opposite me at the table of the pleasantest of White Mountain resorts, (of course I give no hint as to which that is,—tastes differ,) and I had gradually become enthralled. Her beauty was dazzling, and her name was Tarlingford. For the first of these items, I was indebted to my own intelligence; for the second to the hotel register, which also informed me that she was from New York.
I, too, had come from New York;—a coincidence too startling to be calmly overlooked.
Our acquaintance began oddly. One morning, at breakfast, I was musing over a hard-boiled egg, and wondering if I could perforate her affections with anything like the success which had followed my fork as it penetrated the shell before me, when I felt a timid touch upon my toe, thrilling me from end to end like a telegraph-wire when the insulation is perfect. I looked up, and detected a pink flush making its way browward on the lovely countenance across the table.
"I beg your pardon," said I, with much concern.
"It was my fault, Sir; excuse me," said she, permitting the pink flush to deepen, rosily.