And would he do it? You had only to look upon his
face for an instant to be certain that he would; for he had all the
lineaments of a young man of indomitable courage and resolution--the
steady eye, the firm lip, all under the high brows of intellect, nor
unmixed with the beauty that belongs to these moral expressions which in
the playfulness of the social hour he had been reducing to materialism,
well knowing all the while that he was arguing for effect and applause
from those who only gave him the return of stultified petulance. What if
that mother and sister, who loved him, and wept day and night over the
wild follies that consumed his energies and demoralized his heart, had
seen him now!
The bill was paid by S----k, who happened to have money, and who gave it
on the implied condition of a similar one for all on another occasion.
They went, or, as the phrase is often, sallied forth. The night had now
come down with her black shadows. There was no moon. She was dispensing
her favours among savages in another hemisphere, who, savages though
they were, might have their devotions to their strange gods, resident
with her up yonder, where no robbery is, save that of light from the
pure fountain of heat and life. Yes, the darkness was auspicious to
folly, as it often is to vice; and there was quietness too--no winds
abroad to speak voices through rustling leaves, to terrify the criminal
from his wild rebellion against the peace of nature.
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