"Alice May, and Bruising Bill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingraham Joseph Holt)

Alice May, and Bruising Bill
J. H. Ingraham


ALICE MAY
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.

BRUISING BILL.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CONCLUSION.



ALIC MAY
CHAPTER I.
One cheerful autumnal morning, six years ago, a group of lovely girls was
assembled in a window of a fashionable boarding school in one of the handsomest
streets crossing Mount Vernon. One or two of them were seated with embroidery in
their hands, but the rest were standing and talking, and amusing themselves by
watching the passers by; for there was yet an idle quarter of an hour to
recitations.
`Do see that poor old man! how white his hair is, and how he bends beneath his
years, while that empty bag he carries seems a load for him,' said a pretty
blue-eyed girl in a tone of deep sympathy, with which the expression of her face
sweetly harmonized. `Open the window Ann, and let me throw to him a quarter of a
dollar. I never see an old silver-haired man, but what I think of my dear
grandfather, and for his sake love and pity him.'
`I can never see any thing romantic in an old ragged beggar,' said a tall,
grey-eyed girl with a very high forehead, and a look like one of Miss
Radcliffe's heroines: `if he was an aged minstrel, with a robe and staff, and
flowing locks of silver, and had a harp in his hand, and sandals on his feet,
how delightful it would be! I wish I had lived in days of chivalry, these modern
times are too common place.'
`I am content to live when and where my life will be most a blessing to those
around me,' said the first speaker with animation. `Do open the window, Aunt, as
you are near the spring, and let me throw him the money. See, he has stopped and
lifts up his aged eyes. Did you ever behold such a look of eloquent pleading?'
`How much enthusiasm for a mere every day pauper!' said Miss Letitia, the
romantic girl, with a toss of her head.
The window was thrown up; and the example set by the benevolent girl being
followed by the others, the old man received into his torn hat a shower of
silver pieces. How lovely is charity in the young and beautiful!
The aged beggar lifted up his venerable countenance with a grateful look, bowed
his bared and hoary head low to the pavement, and saying in a trembling voice,