"Still she kept, as age came on,
Her stately presence; still her eyes looked forth
From under their calm brows as brightly clear
As the transparent wells by which she sat
So oft in childhood. Still she kept her fair
Unwrinkled features, though her locks were white.
A hundred times had summer, since her birth,
Opened the water-lily on the lakes,
So old traditions tell, before she died.
A hundred cities mourned her.——By the brook
That rippling ran beside the cottage door
Where she was born, they reared her monument.
Ere long the current parted and flowed round
The marble base, forming a little isle,
And there the flowers that love the running stream,
Iris and orchid, and the cardinal flower,
Crowded and hung caressingly around
The stone engraved with Sella's honored name."
—Mabel Dodge Holmes.
[THE GHOST OF TERRIBLE TERRY]
Here is a real boy story in real boy talk.
It is a first-class story to outline. Read it through—you will be so much interested that you can't help reading fast—then close the book and make an outline.
I am the ghost of Terrible Terry! I have murdered ten men in cold blood and buried their bones, in the dark of the moon, on the crest of Death-Rattle Hill! You will meet me there at dark on the evening of October 30! If you fail me BEWARE. (Following which was a crudely drawn skull and cross bones.)
"Gosh!"
That was all George Taylor could say as he read the letter which his father had just brought home in the evening mail. The mere thought of Death-Rattle Hill after dark was enough to make a fellow's heart jump into his throat, for Death-Rattle Hill had received its name from a popular superstition that grew out of the murder there, in pioneer days, of an old trapper.
This trapper, "Dad" Smith, as he was known on the frontier, was returning to his cabin in the wilderness, after selling his winter catch of furs, when he was attacked at dusk by "Terrible Terry", a notorious desperado of the early days. He was found the next day with more than a score of knife-wounds in his body.