Life — December 28, 1893 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

lightning to the bottom and were shot head foremost intoa snow-bank ? Oh, yes; she remembers it well, and nods her head! There is a tear upon his cheek as he thinks of the checker-berries he laid upon a young girl's grave and the cornelian ring he wore until it fell apart. Another radiant creature fills an empty ¢ returns his welcome. She tosses him a rose, this girl of the | boat and the island, of the moon and the music, and shakes her fan at him, the very fan that is locked up in his bureau drawer ! They are all here now except one—and even she is here !—the original of the minia- | ture, the girl with the old-fashioned pinks. ‘The same smile, the same eyes, and they tell him to-night, as they have done many times before, of a heart that knows no wavering. He draws a hand across his brow as if the pain and pleasure were too keen for nerves and tissues of seventy years. Slowing rising to his feet, he lifts the litle glass of Madeira from the table, then looks around with a loving glance that meets from every face a loving answer. He tries to When Clem entered the next morning—" speak and his lips refuse to say the toast he would utter. But they all understand. They respond with a graceful gesture, each with her own little glass, as he puts the wine to his lips, At that moment the old time-piece in the corner, with its chimes and bells, begins to sound the hour of twelve, and as he smiles upon the radiant forms about him the wine rushes hotly through his veins and surges to his brain with a tumultuous beating, keeping time with the ringing clock, Then the sound grows fainter and fainter as if dying away, and seems, with a drowsy rhythm, to take him gently with it. When Clem entered the next morning, two narrow bars of sunshine had crept between the curtains, faintly lighting the silent room. The candles had burnt out in their sockets, and his master, his chin upon his breast, had sunk back into his final sleep. The little wine glasses were partially emptied and the bunches of - flowers were gone. » J. A. Mitchell. comicbooks.com