The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales | Page 7

the air, when it was crossed by the bright Toledo blade of the young cavalier, and flew from his grasp, clanging against the prison wall.
"Unhand her, dog!" cried Julio, "or die the death!"
Sullenly the executioner released his hold, and sullenly listened to the royal pardon.
Magdalena was soon beneath her father's roof,--soon in the arms of her cousin Juanita. Long did she resist the importunities of Julio; for though innocent in fact, judicially she stood convicted of a capital offence. But as time rolled on,--as her innocence became the popular belief,--she finally relented, accepted his hand, and beneath the beautiful sky of Italy, forgot, or remembered only as a dream, the perils and sorrows of her early life.

PHILETUS POTTS.
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
Philetus Potts is dead. Like Grimes, he was a "good old man!" A true gentleman of the old school, he clung to many of the fashions of a by-gone period with a pertinacity, which, to the eyes of the thoughtless, savored somewhat of the ludicrous. It was only of late years that he relinquished his three-cornered hat; to breeches, buckles, and hair powder he adhered to the last. He was also partial to pigtails, though his earliest was shorn from his head by a dangerous rival, who cut him out of the good graces of Miss Polly Martine, a powdered beauty of the past century, by amputating his cue; while his latest one was sacrificed on the altar of humanity--but thereby hangs a tale.
If Mr. Potts was behind his age in dress, he was in advance of it in sentiment. In his breast the milk of human kindness never curdled, and his intelligent mind was ever actively employed in devising ways and means to alleviate the sufferings of humanity, and to change the hearts of evil doers. His comprehensive kindness included the brute creation as well as mankind, in the circle of his active sympathy.
We remember an instance of his sympathy for animals. We had been making an excursion into the country. It was high noon of a sultry summer day; eggs were cooking in the sun, and the mercury in the thermometer stood at the top of the tube. Passing out of a small village, we passed a young lady pleasantly and coolly attired in white, and carrying a sunshade whose grateful shadow melted into the cool, clear olive of her fine complexion.
Mr. Potts sighed, for she reminded him of Miss Polly Martine at the same age; and Polly Martine reminded him of parasols by some recondite association. Mr. Potts remembered the first umbrella that was brought into Boston. He always carried one that might have been the first, it was so venerable, yet whole and decent, like an old gentleman in good preservation. It was a green silk one, with a plain, mahogany handle, and a ring instead of a ferrule, and very large. Discoursing of umbrellas, we came upon a cow. Mr. Potts was fond of cows--grateful to them--always spoke of them with respect. This particular cow inhabited a small paddock by the roadside, which was enclosed by a Virginia fence, and contained very little grass, and no provision for shade and shelter. So the cow stood in the sunshine, with her head resting on the fence, and her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and her large, intelligent eyes fixed on the far distance, where a herd of kine were feasting knee-deep in a field of clover, beside a running brook, overshadowed by magnificent walnut trees.
"Poor thing!" said Mr. Potts; and he stopped short and looked at the cow.
The cow looked at Mr. Potts. One had evidently magnetically influenced the other.
"She is a female, like the lady we encountered," said Mr. Potts, "but," added he, with a burst of feeling, "she has no parasol!"
The assertion was indisputable. It was a truism, cows are never provided with parasols,--but then great men are famous for uttering truisms, and we venerated Mr. Potts for following the example.
"It is now twelve o'clock!" said Mr. Potts, consulting his repeater. "At half past four, the shadow of the buttonwood will fall into this poor animal's pasture. Four hours and a half of torture, rendered more painful by the contemplation of the luxuries of her remote companions! It is insufferable!"
Then Mr. Potts, with a genial smile on his Pickwickian countenance, expanded his green silk umbrella, mounted the fence, on which he sat astride, and patiently held the umbrella over the cow's head for the space of four and a half mortal hours. The action was sublime. I regret to add that the animal proved ungrateful, and, when Mr. Potts closed his umbrella on the shadow of the buttonwood relieving guard, facilitated his descent from the Virginia fence by an ungraceful application of her horns to the amplitude of his venerable person.
It was in the