Autumn Leaves | Page 9

he waits,?Full well aware that I am on the alert,?With murderous intent. Perchance he's gone,?Hawk-eye and nose of hound not serving him?To find me in the dark. With a long sigh,?I beat my pillow, close my useless eyes,?And soon again my thoughts whirl giddily,?Verging towards dreams. Starting, I shake my bed;--?Loud thumps my heart,--rises on end my hair!?A murder-screech, and yells of frantic fury,?Under my very window,--a duet?Of fiendish hatred, battle to the death,--?'T is enough to enrage a man! Missile I seize,?Not caring what, and with a savage "Scat!"?That scrapes my throat, let drive. I would it were?A millstone! Swiftly through the garden beds?And o'er the fence on either side they fly;?I to my couch return, but not to sleep.?Weary I toss, and think 't is almost dawn,?So still the streets; but now the latest train,?Whistling melodiously, comes in; the tramp?Of feet, and hum of voices, echo far?In the still night air. Now with joy I feel?My eyelids droop once more. To sleep and dream?Is bliss unspeakable;--I'm going off;--?What was I thinking last?--slowly I rise?On downy pinions; dreaming, I fly, I soar;--?Through the clouds my way I'm winging,?Angels to their harps are singing,?Strains of unearthly sweetness lull me,?And thrilling harmonies----"Yelp! Bow-wow-wow!"?"Get out!"--"The dog has got me by the leg!"?"Stave him off! Will you? See, he's rent my pants,?My newest plaid!--Kick him!"--"Yow, yow!"--"This house?I'll never serenade again!--A dog?Should know musicians from suspicious chaps,?And gentlemen from rowdies, even at night!"?"Beat him again!" "No, no! Perhaps 't is HERS!?A lady's pet! Methinks the curtain moves!?She's looking out! Let's sing once more! Just once!"?"Not I.--I'll sing no more to-night!" and steps?Limping unequally, and grumbling voice,?Pass round the corner, and are heard no more.
TO THE NEAR-SIGHTED.
Purblind and short-sighted friends! You will listen to me,--you will sympathize with me; for you know by painful experience what I mean when I say that we near-sighted people do not receive from our hawk-eyed neighbors that sympathy and consideration to which we are justly entitled. If we were blind, we should be abundantly pitied, but as we are only half-blind, such comments as these are all the consolation we get. "Oh! near-sighted, is she? Yes, it is very fashionable now-a-days for young ladies to carry eye-glasses, and call themselves near-sighted!" Or, "Pooh! It's all affectation. She can see as well as any body, if she chooses. She thinks it is pretty to half shut her eyes, and cut her acquaintances." I meet my friend A----, some morning, who returns my salutation with cold politeness, and says, "How cleverly you managed to cut me at the concert last night!" "At the concert! I did not see you." "O no! You could see well enough to bow to pretty Miss B----, and her handsome cousin; but as for seeing your old schoolmate, two seats behind her,--of course you are too near-sighted!" In vain I protest that I could not see her,--that three yards is a great distance to my eyes. She leaves me with an incredulous smile, and that most provoking phrase, "O yes! I suppose so!" and distrusts me ever afterwards. Alas! we see just enough to seal our own condemnation.
Who is free from this malady? As I look around in society, I see staring glassy ellipses on every side "in the place where eyes ought to grow,"--and perhaps most of the unfortunate owls get along very comfortably with their artificial eyes. But imagine a bashful youth, awkward and near-sighted, whose friends dissuade him from wearing glasses. Is there in the universe an individual more unlucky, more blundering, more sincerely to be pitied?
See that little boy, who, having put on his father's spectacles, is enjoying for the first time a clear and distinct view of the evening sky. "Oh! is that pretty little yellow dot a star?" exclaims the delighted child. Poor innocent! a star had always been to him a dim, cloudy spot, a little nebula, which the magic glass has now resolved; and he can hardly believe that this brilliant point is not an optical illusion. But when his mother assures him that the stars always appear so to her, and he turns to look in her face, he says, "Why, mother! how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles, all my own!" She could not resist this entreaty,--(who could?)--and little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what seems to him a new sense, a second sight.
I was summoned, the other day, to welcome a family of cousins from a distant State, whom I had not seen for a very long time. They were accompanied, I was told, by a Boston lady, a stranger to us. I entered the room with considerable empressement, but when my eye detected the