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Lear, Pray, do not mock me;

I am a very foolish, fond, old man,

Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful: for I'm mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nay, I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Pray, do not mock me!
For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

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Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes. I pray you, weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause; they have not.

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Cor. Will't please your highness walk?
Lear. You must bear with me;

Pray you now forget and forgive:
I am old and foolish.

SHAKSPEARE.

LESSON XXXIV.

THE DEFORMED CHILD.

In my school-boy days, there lived an aged widow near the church-yard. She had an only child. I have often observed, that the delicate and the weak receive more than a common share of affection from a mother. Such a feeling was shown by this widow toward her sickly and unshapely boy. There are faces and forms which, once seen, are impressed upon our brain; and they will come, again and again, upon the tablet of our memory in the quiet of night, and even flit around us in our daily walks. Many years have gone by since I first

saw this boy; and his delicate form, and quiet manner, and his gentle and virtuous conduct, are often before me.

I shall never forget,—in the sauciness of youth, and fancying it would give importance to my bluff outside, swearing in his presence. The boy was sitting in a high-backed easy chair, reading his Bible. He turned round, as if a signal for dying had sounded in his ear, and fixed upon me his clear gray eye that look! it made my little heart almost choke me. I gave some foolish excuse for getting out of the cottage; and, as I met a playmate on the road, who jeered me for my blank countenance, I rushed past him, hid myself in an adjoining cornfield, and cried bitterly. I tried to conciliate the widow's son, and show my sorrow for having so far forgotten the innocence of boyhood, as to have my Maker's name sounded in an unhallowed manner from my lips. My spring flowers he accepted; but, when my back was turned, he flung them away. The toys and books I offered to him were put aside for his Bible. His only occupations were, the feeding of a favorite hen, which would come to his chair and look up for the crums that he would let fall, with a noiseless action, from his thin fingers, watching the pendulum and hands of the wooden clock, and reading.

Although I could not, at that time, fully appreciate the beauty of a mother's love, still I venerated the widow for the unobtrusive, but intense attention she displayed to her son. I never entered her dwelling without seeing her engaged in some kind offices toward him. If the sunbeam came through the leaves of the geraniums placed in the window, with too strong a glare, she moved the high-backed chair with as much care as if she had been putting aside a crystal temple. When he slept, she festooned her silk handkerchief around his place of rest. She placed the earliest violets upon her mantel-piece for him to look at; and the roughness of her own meal, and the delicacy of the child's, sufficiently displayed her sacrifices. Easy and satisfied, the widow moved about. I never saw her but once unhappy. She was then walking thoughtfully in her garden. I beheld a tear. I did not dare to intrude upon her grief, and ask her the cause of it; but I found the reason in her cottage: her boy had been spitting blood.

I have often envied him these endearments; for I was away

from a parent who humored me, even when I was stubborn and unkind. My poor mother is in her grave. I have often regretted having been her pet, her favorite; for the coldness of the world makes me wretched; and, perhaps, if I had not drank at the very spring of a mother's affection, I might have let scorn and contumely pass by me as the idle wind. Yet 1 have afterward asked myself, what I, a thoughtless, though not a heartless boy should have come to, if I had not had such a comforter. I have asked myself this, felt satisfied and grateful, and wished that her spirit might watch around her child, who often met her kindness with passion, and received her gifta as if he expected homage from her.

Every body experiences how quickly school years pass away. My father's residence was not situated in the village where I was educated; so that when I left school, I left its scenes also. After several years had passed away, accident took me again to the well-known place. The stable, into which I led my horse, was dear to me; for I had often listened to the echo that danced within it, when the bells were ringing. The face of the landlord was strange; but I could not forget the in-kneed, red-whiskered hostler: he had given me a hearty thrashing as a return for a hearty jest.

With

I had reserved a broad piece of silver for the old widow. But I first ran toward the river, and walked upon the millbank. I was surprised at the apparent narrowness of the stream; and, although the willows still fringed the margin, and appeared to stoop in homage to the water lilies, yet they were diminutive. Every thing was but a miniature of the picture in my mind. It proved to me that my faculties had grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. something like disappointment, I left the river side and strolled toward the church. My hand was in my pocket, grasping the broad piece of silver. I imagined to myself the kind look of recognition I should receive. I determined on the way in which I should press the money into the widow's hand. But I felt my nerves slightly tremble, as I thought on the look her son had given, and again might give me.

Ah, there is the cottage! but the honey-suckle is older, and it has lost many of its branches! The door was closed. A pet lamb was fastened to a loose cord under the window, and

its melancholy bleating was the only sound that disturbed the silence. In former years I used, at once, to pull the string that lifted the wooden latch; but now I deliberately knocked. A strange female form, with a child in her arms, opened the door. I asked for my old acquaintance. "Alas! poor Alice is in her coffin: look, sir, where the shadow of the spire ends: that is her grave." I relaxed my grasp of my money. "And her deformed boy?" "He, too, is there!" I drew my hand from my pocket.

It was a hard task for me to thank the woman, but I did so. I moved to the place where the mother and the child were buried. I stood for some minutes, in silence, beside the mound of grass. I thought of the consumptive lad, and as I did so, the lamb, at the cottage window, gave its anxious bleat. And then all the affectionate attentions of my own mother arose on my soul, while my lips trembled out: "Mother! dear mother! would that I were as is the widow's son! would that I were sleeping in thy grave! I loved thee, mother' but I would not have thee living now, to view the worldly sor rows of thy ungrateful boy! My first step toward vice was the oath which the deformed child heard me utter." *

*

But you, who rest here as quietly as you lived, shall receive the homage of the unworthy. I will protect this hillock from the steps of the heedless wanderer, and from the trampling of the village herd. I will raise up a tabernacle to purity and love. I will do it in secret; and I look not to be rewarded openly.

C. EDWARDS.

THE

LESSON XXXV

VULTURE OF THE ALPS

I've been among the mighty Alps, and wandered through their vales,
And heard the honest mountaineers relate their dismal tales,
As round the cottage blazing hearth, when their daily work was o'er,
They spake of those who disappeared, and ne'er were heard of more.

And there I from a shepherd heard a narrative of fear,

A tale to rend a mortal heart, which mothers might not hear:
The tears were standing in his eyes, his voice was tremulous.
But, wiping all those tears away, he told his story thus:-

"It is among these barren cliffs the ravenous vulture dwells,
Who never fattens on the prey which from afar he smells;
But, patient, watching hour on hour upon a lofty rock,
He singles out some truant lamb, a victim, from the flock.

"One cloudless Sabbath summer morn, the sun was rising high,
When, from my children on the green, I heard a fearful cry,
As if some awful deed were done, a shriek of grief and pain,
A cry, I humbly trust in God, I ne'er may hear again.

"I hurried out to learn the cause; but, overwhelmed with fright,
The children never ceased to shriek, and from my frenzied sight
I missed the youngest of my babes, the darling of my care;
But something caught my searching eyes, slow sailing through the
air.

"Oh! what an awful spectacle to meet a father's eye!
His infant made a vulture's prey, with terror to descry!
And know, with agonizing breast, and with a maniac rave,
That earthly power could not avail, that innocent to save!

"My infant stretched his little hands imploringly to me,
And struggled with the ravenous bird, all vainly, to get free,
At intervals, I heard his cries, as loud he shrieked and screamed;
Until, upon the azure sky, a lessening spot he seemed.

"The vulture flapped his sail-like wings, though heavily he flew,
A mote upon the sun's broad face he seemed unto my view:
But once I thought I saw him stoop, as if he would alight;
'T was only a delusive thought, for all had vanished quite.

"All search was vain, and years had passed; that child was ne'el forgot,

When once a daring hunter climbed unto a lofty spot,

From whence, upon a rugged crag the chamois never reached,
He saw an infant's fleshless bones the elements had bleached!

"I clambered up that rugged cliff; I could not stay away;
I knew they were my infant's bones thus hastening to decay;
A tattered garment yet remained, though torn to many a shred,
The crimson cap he wore that morn was still upon the head."

That dreary spot is pointed out to travelers passing by,
Who often stand, and, musing, gaze, nor go without a sigh.
And as I journeyed, the next morn, along my sunny way,
The precipice was shown to me, whereon the infant lay.

ANONYMOUS.

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