The Fiends Delight | Page 7

whisper, the miner, with a jerk of his thumb Pandoraward, continued: "Stranger, d'ye hap'n t'know 'er?" "Certainly; that is Bridget Pandora, a Greek maiden, in the pay of the Board of Supervisors."
He straightened himself up with a jerk that threatened the integrity of his neck and made his teeth snap, lurched heavily to the other side, oscillated critically for a few moments, and muttered: "Brdgtpnd--." It was too much for him; he went down into his pocket, fumbled feebly round, and finally drawing out a paper of purely hypothetical tobacco, conveyed it to his mouth and bit off about two-thirds of it, which he masticated with much apparent benefit to his understanding, offering what was left to me. He then resumed the conversation with the easy familiarity of one who has established a claim to respectful attention:
"Pardner, couldn't ye interdooce a fel'r's wants tknow'er?" "Impossible; I have not the honour of her acquaintance." A look of distrust crept into his face, and finally settled into a savage scowl about his eyes. "Sed ye knew 'er!" he faltered, menacingly. "So I do, but I am not upon speaking terms with her, and-in fact she declines to recognise me." The soul of the honest miner flamed out; he laid his hand threateningly upon his pistol, jerked himself stiff, glared a moment at me with the look of a tiger, and hurled this question at my head as if it had been an iron interrogation point: "W'at a' yer ben adoin' to that gurl?"
I fled, and the last I saw of the chivalrous gold-hunter, he had his arm about Pandora's stony waist and was endeavouring to soothe her supposed agitation by stroking her granite head. The Head of the Family.
Our story begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with it to the house.
"There!" ejaculated the young man, bowling the gory pate across the threshold at his mother's feet, "look at that, will you?"
The old lady adjusted her spectacles, lifted the dripping head into her lap, wiped the face of it with her apron, and gazed into its fishy eyes with tender curiosity. "John," said she, thoughtfully, "is this yours?"
"No, ma, it ain't none o' mine."
"John," continued she, with a cold, unimpassioned earnestness, "where did you get this thing?"
"Why, ma," returned the hopeful, "that's Pap's."
"John"--and there was just a touch of severity in her voice--"when your mother asks you a question you should answer that particular question. Where did you get this?"
"Out in the medder, then, if you're so derned pertikeller," retorted the youngster, somewhat piqued; "the mowin' machine lopped it off."
The old lady rose and restored the head into the hands of the young man. Then, straightening with some difficulty her aged back, and assuming a matronly dignity of bearing and feature, she emitted the rebuke following:
"My son, the gentleman whom you hold in your hand-any more pointed allusion to whom would be painful to both of us-has punished you a hundred times for meddling with things lying about the farm. Take that head back and put it down where you found it, or you will make your mother very angry." Deathbed Repentance.
An old man of seventy-five years lay dying. For a lifetime he had turned a deaf ear to religion, and steeped his soul in every current crime. He had robbed the orphan and plundered the widow; he had wrested from the hard hands of honest toil the rewards of labour; had lost at the gaming-table the wealth with which he should have endowed churches and Sunday schools; had wasted in riotous living the substance of his patrimony, and left his wife and children without bread. The intoxicating bowl had been his god-his belly had absorbed his entire attention. In carnal pleasures passed his days and nights, and to the maddening desires of his heart he had ministered without shame and without remorse. He was a bad, bad egg! And now this hardened iniquitor was to meet his Maker! Feebly and hesitatingly his breath fluttered upon his pallid lips. Weakly trembled the pulse in his flattened veins! Wife, children, mother-in-law, friends, who should have hovered lovingly about his couch, cheering his last moments and giving him medicine, he had killed with grief, or driven widely away; and he was now dying alone by the inadequate light of a tallow candle, deserted by heaven and by earth. No, not by heaven. Suddenly the door was pushed softly open, and there entered the good minister, whose pious counsel the suffering wretch had in health so often derided. Solemnly the man of God advanced, Bible in hand. Long and silently he stood uncovered in the presence of death. Then