With a pitcher of milk, from the fair of When she saw me she stumbled: the pitcher it tumbled, And all the sweet buttermilk watered the plain. "Oh, what shall I do now? 'Twas looking at you now! Sure, sure, such a pitcher I'll ne'er meet again! 'Twas the pride of my dairy. Oh, Barney M'Cleary, You're sent as a plague to the girls of Coleraine." You have heard of the Danish boy's whis- | The maiden laughed out in her innocent glee: tle of wood? I wish that that Danish boy's whistle were mine." "And what would you do with it? Tell me," she said, While an arch smile played over her beautiful face. "I would blow it," he answered; “and then my fair maid 66 What a fool of yourself with your whis- For only consider how silly 'twould be W ROBERT STORY. WE PARTED IN SILENCE. E parted in silence, we parted by night, Would fly to my side, and would here take Where the fragrant limes their boughs unite, her place." "Is that all you wish it for? That may be yours Without any magic," the fair maiden cried : "A favor so slight one's good-nature secures ;" And she playfully seated herself by his side. "I would blow it again," said the youth, 'and the charm Would work so that not even Modesty's check Would be able to keep from my neck your fine arm." She smiled, and she laid her fine arm round his neck. We met and we parted for ever! Told many a touching story Of friends long passed to the kingdom of love, Where the soul wears its mantle of glory. We parted in silence. Our cheeks were wet With the tears that were past controlling; We vowed we would never-no, never-forget, And those vows at the time were con- But those lips that echoed the sounds of mine And now on the midnight sky I look, 'Yet once more would I blow, and the Each star is to me a sealed book Would bring me the third time an exquisite bliss: Some tale of that loved one keeping. We parted in silence, we parted in tears, On the banks of that lonely river; You would lay your fair cheek to this brown But the odor and bloom of those bygone one of mine, And your lips, stealing past it, would give me a kiss." years Shall hang o'er its waters for ever. MRS. CRAWFORD. VISION OF MARRATON. RIDAY, May 4, 1711. The Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only men and women, but brutes, vegetables-nay, even the most inanimate things, as stocks and stones. They believe the same of all the works of art, as of knives, boats, looking-glasses, and that as any of these things perish their souls go into another world, which is inhabited by the ghosts of men and women. For this reason they always place by the corpse of their dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may make use of the souls of them in the other world, as he did of their wooden bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato's followers in particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain us with substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who in his dissertation upon the loadstone, observing that fire will destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and that he perceived a certain blue vapor to arise from it, which he believed might be the substantial form-that is, in our West Indian phrase, the soul-of the loadstone. There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their countrymen descended in a vision to the great repository of souls, or, as we call it here, to the other world, and that upon his return he gave his friends a distinct account of everything he saw among those regions of the dead. A friend of mine, whom I have formerly mentioned, prevailed upon one of the interpreters of the Indian kings to inquire of them, if possible, what tradition they have among them of this matter, which, as well as he could learn by many questions which he asked them at several times, was in substance as follows: The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled for a long space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on the confines of this world of spirits, but could not enter it by reason of a thick forest made up of bushes, brambles and pointed thorns so perplexed and interwoven with one another that it was impossible to find a passage through it. Whilst he was looking about for some track or pathway that might be worn in any part of it, he saw a huge lion crouched under the side of it, who kept his eye upon him in the same posture as when he watches for his prey. The Indian immediately started back, whilst the lion rose with a spring and leaped toward him. Being wholly destitute of all other weapons, he stooped down to take up a huge stone in his hand; but, to his infinite surprise, grasped nothing, and found the supposed stone to be only the apparition of one. If he was disappointed on this side, he was as much pleased on the other, when he found the lion, which had seized on his left shoulder, had no power to hurt him, and was only the ghost of that ravenous creature which it appeared to be. away | white steed, with a young man on the back of it, advancing upon full stretch after the souls of about a hundred beagles, that were hunting down the ghost of a hare, which ran before them with an unspeakable swiftness. As the man on the milk-white steed came by him he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young Prince Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and by reason of his great virtues was at that time lamented over all the Western parts of America. He no sooner got rid of this impotent enemy but he marched up to the wood, and after having surveyed it for some time endeavored to press into one part of it that was a little thinner than the rest, when, again to his great surprise, he found the bushes made no resistance, but that he walked through briers and brambles with the same He had no sooner got out of the wood but ease as through the open air, and, in short, he was entertained with such a landscape that the whole wood was nothing else but a of flowery plains, green meadows, running wood of shades. He immediately concluded streams, sunny hills and shady vales as were that this huge thicket of thorns and brakes not to be represented by his own expressions was designed as a kind of fence or quickset nor, as he said, by the conceptions of others. hedge to the ghosts it enclosed, and that This happy region was peopled with innumerprobably their soft substances might be torn able swarms of spirits, who applied themby these subtle points and prickles, which selves to exercises and diversions according were too weak to make any impressions in as their fancies led them. Some of them flesh and blood. With this thought he re- were tossing the figure of a quoit; others were solved to travel through this intricate wood, pitching the shadow of a bar; others were when by degrees he felt a gale of perfumes breaking the apparition of a horse; and mulbreathing upon him, that grew stronger and titudes employing themselves upon ingenious sweeter in proportion as he advanced. He handicrafts with the souls of departed utensils, had not proceeded much farther when he ob- for that is the name which in the Indian lanserved the thorns and briers to end, and gave guage they give their tools when they are place to a thousand beautiful green trees cov- burnt or broken. burnt or broken. As he travelled through ered with blossoms of the finest scents and this delightful scene he was very often tempted colors, that formed a wilderness of sweets to pluck the flowers that rose everywhere and were a kind of lining to those ragged about him in the greatest variety and profuscenes which he had before passed through. sion, having never seen several of them in As he was coming out of this delightful part his own country; but he quickly found that, of the wood and entering upon the plains it though they were objects of his sight, they enclosed, he saw several horsemen rushing were not liable to his touch. He at length by him, and a little while after he heard the came to the side of a great river, and, being cry of a pack of dogs. He had not listened a good fisherman himself, stood upon the long before he saw the apparition of a milk-banks of it some time to look upon an angler that had taken a great many shapes of fishes which lay flouncing up and down by him. I should have told my reader that this Indian had been formerly married to one of the greatest beauties of his country, by whom he had several children. This couple were so famous for their love and constancy to one another that the Indians to this day, when they give a married man joy of his wife, wish they may live together like Marraton and Yaratilda. Marraton had not stood long by the fisherman when he saw the shadow of his beloved Yaratilda, who had for some time fixed her eyes upon him before he discovered her. Her arms were stretched out toward him; floods of tears ran down her eyes. Her looks, her hands, her voice, called him over to her, and at the same time seemed to tell him that the river was impassable. Who can describe the passion made up of joy, sorrow, love, desire, astonishment, that rose in the Indian upon the sight of his dear Yaratilda? He could express it by nothing but his tears, which ran like a river down his cheeks as he looked upon her. He had not stood in this posture long before he plunged into the stream that lay before him, and, finding it to be nothing but the phantom of a river, walked on the bottom of it till he arose on the other side. At his approach Yaratilda flew into his arms, while Marraton the unspeakable beauty of her habitation, and ravished with the fragrancy that came from every part of it, Yaratilda told him that she was preparing this bower for his reception, as well knowing that his piety to his God and his faithful dealing toward men would certainly bring him to that happy place whenever his life should be at an end. She then brought two of her children to him, who died some years before, and resided with her in the same delightful bower, advising him to breed up those others which were still with him in such a manner that they might hereafter all of them meet together in this happy place. The tradition tells us, further, that he had afterward a sight of those dismal habitations which are the portion of ill men after death, and mentions several molten seas of gold, in which were plunged the souls of barbarous Europeans who put to the sword so many thousands of poor Indians for the sake of that precious metal. But, having already touched upon the chief points of this tradition and exceeded the measure of my paper, I shall not give any further account of it. JOSEPH ADDISON. JENNY KISSED ME. wished himself disencumbered of that body JENNY kissed me when we met. Jumping from the chair she sat in: nation, and was every day adding something Say that health and wealth have missed me; Jenny kissed me! LEIGH HUNT. |