The Delaware register, or, Farmers', manufacturers' & mechanics' advocate. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1828-1829, 1829-01-24


sist the tolls of her family. The first warm days of
spring were to Henry days of rejoicing. As soon as
he felt their breath, he used to hasten into the house
crying with glad voice, /" Summer is coming and
Mary will get well y 70 him the first note Of the rob-
in told not of the verdre and the blossoms which were
soon to the face of nature with beauty but it
announced that she whom he loved would be freed
from her pain, and out with him into the pure
air. and 90 into the fields and woods, gathering fra
grant wild flowers listening to the music of the Winds
waters and birds, and talking to him cheerfully and
usefully. Mary was entering upon her seventeenth
springs and before the April SHOWS had melted from
the fields, she already well that she sat up
she accustomed in her little window plying her
needle with busy and skful hand. There came
heavy storm of rain with warm south Winds and in
night the mantle of the earth had vanished
and the fields lay bare and brown the next day be-
meath clear sky and warm sun 1t was bnauti-
ill morning, and unseen influences busy in the
trees, that%streched their arms silently to the gentle
breeze, and in the very sods that baskcd in the sun
shine The leaf preparing to put forth, the Green
blade to sprout and the pulses Of beat lightly and
happily under the spell of the season, Henry felt
the soft west wind his cheek, and heard the first
notes of the spring birds. AS the rode
high in the heavens, he went to summon Mary from
her tolls, to walk with him as far as the Great Oak,
spot which she loved, because it commanded wide
and beautiful prospect, and which was dear TO him,
because she loved it, and because always the
end of their first walk in spring. Mary hesitated for
she feared the dampness of the ground but Henry
had gone with younger brother all the way up TO the
Great Oak purpose and assured her the path was
dry. She stood at the door, and she looked up az
the clear and beautiful sky, around the landscape,
and again the pleading face of her blind brother,
she could not find in her heart to say Mo- ihey
went out together, and Mary was glad she had gone.
Her own heart seemed to expand with quiet happi-
ness as she walked. What invalid is not happy in
breathing the open air for the first me after tedious
months of confinement, and feels not as if the sim
pes act of existence were in itself luxury? Henry
went eapng by her side with short and Joyous bounds
pouring forth the exuberance of his spirits in the
songs she had taught him. asking thousand questions,
and sometimes stopping TO listen when the sound of
sheep bell, the note of bird, the murmur Of dis
tant voice struck on his quick When the way
was rough, he walked closer to her side, holding her
hand tightly, and seemed as if made happier by the
pensve smiles on that pale face he could not
lie asked her sometimes if the walk was making her
cheeks red, for then he knew that his father would
say that she was well and sometimes he furnished
her with food for reflections and she wondered what
ideas conveyed to his mind by the terms he had
learned use in speaking of visible objects. At last
they to the Great Oak and as they sat resting
together on a rock under its leaiess branches, the
gaety of the blind boy subsidized, and he caught some
thing of the same sedate happiness which pervaded
the spirit of Mary. They talked together for long
| time and at last sunk into silence. Henry sat musng,
and Mary involuntarily gazed upon the varying eX-
pressions that passed over his sighess but eloquent