Beadle's Dime Novels No. 14 — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

83 THE EMEHALD NECKIACK Suddenly as light breaks through a rain cloud and pours in glory over the world, a new hope had flooded his being with radiance and revealed to him the paradise he had unknowing- ly yearned for. He had cried “ Eureka!” to his rejoicing spirit—and now how dull, and selfish, and commonplace the world had grown again ! ‘In a desponding, if not in a bitter frame of mind, he wan- dered listlessly from place to place. He went to Lake George, and sketched and painted for a while; but his genius seemed to have forsaken him, except as far as painting female faces went. His attempts at other things seemed. all to turn, as if by fairy wand, into beautiful heads with spiritual gray eyes, loving and pure, long masses of rich brown hair, lips that seemed, even upon canvas, tremulous with feeling and melody, and foreheads not more delicately fair than expressive of thought and ideality. He met friends at Lake George who did not fail to rally him upon his altered demeanor, aud to detect a family likeness in his pictures, but as to who the heroine of his canvas aud meditations might be they were totally in the dark, and Pen- non took no pains to enlighten them either aa to the beauty of the Tiber Creek Valley or the cottage that nestled therein: ~ neither how, like Jacob, he had met a Rachel at the well, anit had afterward kissed her, and lifted up his voice and wept, not because of having kissed her once but because he was never to have that joy again. These things he kept scryupu- lously to ‘himself, and teasing only made them retreat closer into his spirit. Eyes profame might never look into the holy of holies reserved to them. ; As we have hinted before, Pennon was a great fuvoriic. He had a peculiar power of “winning golden opinions from all sorts of people”’—perhaps ‘because his own nature was so truthful and affectionate. Even at Mrs. Butterby’s it had been guessed by his fellow-boarders that they owed an extra allowance of ounces of white sugar and fresh batter to his presence at table. Their landlady was a woman in the scales of whose soul, prudence and the love of pence outweighed jus- tice and the love of her kind; but Pennon had jumped boldly into the lighter balance and brought it level with the other, which may be set down as one of his most surprising trinmphs. conicloooks.com