The Atlantic Monthly, page 109 by Various Authors
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eason, I never had a serious, definite purpose in life. I fell in love then with the most charming of country-girls."
"I know," interrupted Easelmann, in a denser cloud than usual,--"a village Lucy,--'a violet 'neath a mossy stone, fair as a star when only one,'--you know the rest of it. She was fair because there was only one."
"Silence, Mephistopheles! it is my turn; let me finish my story. I never told her my love"----
"'But let concealment'"----
"Attend to your pipe; it is going out. I did look, however. The language of the eyes needs no translation. I often walked, sketched, talked with the girl, and I felt that there was the completest sympathy between us. I knew her feelings towards me, as well, I am persuaded, as she knew mine. I gave her no pledge, no keepsake; I only managed, by an artifice, to get her daguerreotype at a travelling saloon."
Easelmann laughed. "Let me see it, most modest of lovers!"
"You sha'n't. Your evil eye shall not fall upon it After I came to Boston, I took a room and began working up my sketches"----
"Where I found you brushing away for dear life."
"I meant to earn enough to go abroad, if it were only for one look at the great pictures of which I have so often dreamed. Then I meant to come back"----
"To find your Lucy married to a schoolmaster, and with five sickly children."
"No,--she is but seventeen; she will not marry till I see her."
"I admire your confidence, Greenleaf; it is an amiable weakness."
"After I had been here a month or two, I was filled with an unutterable sense of uneasiness. Something was wrong, I felt assured. I daily kissed the sweet lips"----
"Of a twenty-five-cent daguerreotype."
Greenleaf did not notice the interruption. "I thought the eyes looked troubled; they even seemed to reproach me; yet the soul that beamed in them was as tender as ever."
"Diablerie! I believe you are a spiritualist."
"At last I could bear it no