| "Have I not had my brain sear'd, heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, life's life lied away?" |
but still, blindfold and unconscious, he would find himself worse than ever entangled and ensnared. A ringlet tastefully displayed, a soft melting eye, it might be a keen piercing one, it mattered not to him, a dimpled cheek, a laughter making mouth, were to him more attractive, than a diamond to a miser, a ship with her canvass swelling to the breeze to the jolly tar, or a well fed steed to a Dutchman's fancy. The very hopes he once cherished, now nipped and blighted; his former fondness for society which he now shunned and despised, served by the contrast to make him doubly gloomy and alone,
| "Lone—as the corse within its shroud, Lone—as a solitary cloud, A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere, That hath no business to appear When skies are blue, and earth is gay." |
Feeling so doubly lone, Tim would again seek a partner to sympathize in his sorrows, and to whom could he go? to man—cold calculating man? What is man worth in sorrow? Has he the tender sensibility, the warm hearted sympathy that is ever alive in a female's bosom? If you tell him your love sick tale, he will laugh you to scorn, he will frown you down for a puling blockhead; but woman will listen to your griefs, will alleviate your pain, assuage your sorrow, and if she but smiles, Tim would exclaim,
"How she smiled, and I could not but love."
With feelings such as these, Tim accidentally became acquainted with "the lass with the auburn curls." These accidents occur sometimes, so happily and apropos, that we are tempted to believe them not merely the result of casualty; my own opinion is, that they are all devised, planned and executed by that wily urchin cupid, to bring those together, upon whom to sport his strange fantastic freaks.
One autumn's eve, when the sun was low, Catherine and her Cousin Tony issued forth, to ramble along the winding banks of the James River Canal. They were admiring the beauty of the scenery, and occasionally turning to view the dazzling brilliancy of many of the windows in the city, caused by the reflection of the setting sun, producing the effect of an illumination shifting from house to house as they changed their position.
They had progressed along the canal as far as the first water-fall, the situation of which, many of my readers will no doubt remember; not as it is at present, but as it existed a few years ago, before the polishing hand of art had shorn it of half its beauties. There is an arch turned there, spanning the ravine, over which the canal passes at its usual level, and is thus raised, some thirty feet perhaps, above the base of the ravine. Under this arch a pellucid rivulet gently ripples, till reaching the brink of the acclivity below, it leaps and bounds towards the river. Above the sides of this arch, the waste water from the canal rushed headlong, mingling with the clear waters of the rivulet, and dashing foamingly along, or eddying and bubbling among a rugged bed of granite. On the east side of this fall, there was once a rock, raised high above the rest, by the side of which a little cedar grew, over and around whose boughs the wild grape and sweet brier intertwined their branches until they hung a verdant canopy above. This place, adorned as it was with its native drapery, had obtained the name of "Cupid's Cavern,"—for here, many a loving couple, after an evening's walk, would rest, feasting upon the beauties of the surrounding scenery. And here, many a tale of love had been told, which the roar of the water-fall deafened to all, but the ears into which they had been whispered. On the rock just mentioned, by the side of the cavern, Tony and Kate at length seated themselves, and will you believe it, Tony was actually endeavoring to persuade his cousin to permit him, to call her, by a more endearing title.
Tim too, had been attracted by the delicious softness of the evening, to gaze upon the same beauties; he was a little behind them during the walk, but had been so absorbed with his own reflections, that he had scarcely noticed that any one was before him. Here, he had often walked with his once sweet Molly in the days of his happiness, and although he now boasted that his heart was free as air, association necessarily brought to his mind, her whom he wished to banish, and spite of himself, he more than once repeated,
| "Alas! where with her I have stray'd, I could wander with pleasure alone." |