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Updated: April 30, 2025
Only one halt in our journey, and that to dine. Just above this point we pass the swiftest rapids on the route, where the river widens, and each side of the bank is beautiful in its wooded picturesqueness, while the waters rush, in foaming, surging, tumbling confusion, over the rugged rocks, or dart between them like a merry band of water-sprites chasing each other in gleesome frolic.
That the grand banquet, celebrating some great man's birth, or the success of some noble public enterprise, with its assemblages of the great and the good from every part of the country; the Fourth of July festival, in honor of our nation's independence, with its speeches, its drums, its toasts, and its cannon; the 'table d'hôte, or in plain English, the hotel dinner-table, so remarkable for the multitude of its dishes and the meagreness of their contents; the harvest-feast, the exact opposite of the last-named, even to the mellow thirds and fifths that come floating over the valleys from the old-fashioned dinner-horn, calling in the tired laborers; its musical invitation in such striking contrast with the unimagined horrors of the gong that bellows its expectant victims to their meals; the family repast, where one so often feels gratified with the delicate compliment of a mother, a sister, or a wife, in placing some favorite dish or flower near his plate; the annual gatherings of jolly alumni; the delightful concourse of relatives and friends; the gleesome picnic lunch, with its grassy carpet and log seats; the luxurious oyster-supper, with its temptations 'to carry the thing too far; the festival at the donation-party, which, in common parlance, would be called a dish of 'all sorts; the self-boarding student's desolate corn-cake, baked in a pan of multifarious use: all these are so many modifications under their respective species.
Is it not thus with very many families of England? Are not marriage and death twined hand in hand, to render that home desolate which once resounded with the laugh of many gleesome hearts, with the glad tones of youthful revelling and joy?
"We were sure you wouldn't know him, auntie!" he cried, as little Miss Nellie joined him in a gleesome dance of triumph round the blushing, new-fledged Dick, and Rover gambolled behind the pair, barking loudly, in sympathetic accord. "We were sure you wouldn't know him!"
And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes and a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his voice in the same gleesome abundance. I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy was a good boy. He was probably one of the most mischievous boys that was ever in an organ-loft.
By his side a noble figure, but still a counterfeit, appeared an Indian hunter, with feathery crest and wampum belt. Many of this strange company wore foolscaps, and had little bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound, responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits.
Her gleesome voice and merry laugh were the sweetest music of their home. She was its very light and life. The brightest flowers in the garden were reared by her; the caged birds sang when they heard her voice, and pined when they missed its sweetness. Alice, dear Alice; what living thing within the sphere of her gentle witchery, could fail to love her!
This event was the more probable, as his brother had died of a lingering complaint, which, in the latter years of his life, had affected at once his frame and his spirits; so that heralds and genealogists were already looking back into their records to discover the heir of this ill-fated family, and lawyers were talking with gleesome anticipation, of the probability of a "great Glenallan cause."
But our harp will be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it tones down the harshness of bitter, unavailing sorrow, and woos the heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love pent up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for and filled with dark thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning beams it will, ere-long, show like "the tender grass, clear-shining after rain" more glistening and beautiful for the invigorating dews of the cloud which had overhung it, and beneath whose gloom its beauty faded away for very trouble!
In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.
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