San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-12-16
A NYMPH OF FIRE.

Many years ago, before the Turk-may
the earth swallow him and oblivion his
memory-came into our fair country, when
all our people worshiped the blessed Christ,
there stood upon the slopes of Ararat, apart
from all other habithtions, a little cottage
nesting in flowers and EMPOWERED by the
trees of the forest.
Its inhabitants were an old man of. Per-
sian face and priestly dress and young
girl of whose appearance little was known,
for although most unmaidenly she roamed
the wooded slopes of the mountains, she
nevertheless fled from the presence of our
young Armenian hunters more swiftly
than the deer which they there pursued.
The women of our country, however, if
they do differ in reserve from their western
kinswomen, still have their full share of
curiosity. and are as artful as any in salts
flying it. Thus they soon reported, with
unconscious malice, that the girl stunned
comparison with our dark eyed country
maidens, with their ripened color and
raven hair, because her face possessed no
beauty, but was pale as marble, and that
the wave of gold which the hunters de-
scribed as following her fight was a mass
Of unbound hair of the reddest sortI
Soon whispers spread the rumor that
This old man and his daughter were heather
"Gragabashd"-as in our tongue we call
those whom you more pleasingly denomi.
nate Guebers or fire worshipers.
Why he had chosen Ararat for his home
remained mystery, yet therein the shadow
OF that holy mount he lived and practiced
his dark rites. Surely no man but stony
hearted Gueber could dwell in such ia
yored spot and remain infdeL Above him,
far in the blue deep of heaven, pointing
with its snowy finger higher and still
higher, until it would seem that the strong
sst eye must fail to follow its glittering in.
dex, and that the stiffest neck must bow
in awe of the Creator, rose the grand old
peak of Ararat Down through the green
OF the tree tops its white splendor cleaned
upon the cottage of the Persian. Yet he
looked not up, save to salute the sun in his
meridian glory.
Here, in the very center of the world,
perchance on the very spot where the
smoke of the first sacrifice of purified
world arose to Noah's God, lie made his
unholy alterations to the same false deity
whom the wicked worshiped before the
avenging deluge swept them away. Even
when his god of day was passing away
in the evening and the shadows of the
sacred mountain, immutable, eternal, fell
upon his home-even then unholy prayers
and chantings were heard by the chance
passer by, who crossed himself and hur-
ried on in terror None dared put them
selves in reach of his COMPUTATIONS and all
shunned the neighborhood.
Then the war with our Persian oppres-
sors came on, and the righteously indig-
nant Armenians would have risen and put
him and his daughter to death, and sacri-
feed his cottage to his god of fire, had they
not been restrained by the only friend the
old Persian could count in all the valley,
young Vahan, the bravest youth of the
realm, the son of our leader, Vartan.
said that Prince Vahan was friend of
the Persian; he was more truthfully the
lover of his daughter. One day before the
outbreak of the war he had been hunting
on the slopes of Ararat. His thoughts had
wandered from the chase, and plunged in
reyerie he had allowed his horse to drop
into a slow and noiseless walk over the
thick carpet of fallen leaves, the work of
all the centuries since the food. Sudden
ly he heard voice, What shall suffer to
rid my father Of his terrible curse?" Turn
ing toward the place whence came the
voice he behed standing underneath pine
on a brooks side, with hands uplifted to a
ray of sunlight which streamed down
through the green roof above, a being who
seemed to Vahan's deluded eyes the ideal
OF all beauty, purity and truth.
"Oh, spirit of the earth, or air, or light
or water, for thou seemest to be the soul OF
ALL" he cried; ooh, dryad of the pine, OF
naiad of the brook, or sylph of the sun.
beam, what can Vahan do to reverence, OF
IF thou perchance be mortal, to aid thee?"
Perhaps it was his noble face and earnest
mien as well as poetic language-for he
had been reared in Athens-that assured
her that he was not of the rough peasan,
lads from whom she had often fed, or per
chance the beautiful witch had already be
gun to practice her evil entertainments: bt
this as it may. she listened to his words
and told her name and condition
Thenceforth- Vahan spent his days in
hunting and his nights in dreaming of the
maiden whom he daily met by the brool
under the great pine on the mountain side
His dreams were of maiden fair and hol,
featured as the Virgin, and rich in a floot
of hair, fine as though spun of sunbeam
and soft as Magdalen's locks that wipet
the feet OF our Lord
Oh, the craft OF wicked womanl How
she seemed to love himl Then the Persian
war began. How her tenderness increased
The youth of Armenia FASTENED with an
dor 70 the frontier, but Vahan still waste,
his days in the chase of love- His parent
npbraided him, his companions entreated
the old men reminded him of his forme
deeds aud the present need of his valor t
Lead the Armenians to victory; but still h
would not 20 Often he said, 81 will <
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