Perhaps old age must pay the debt
Young sin contracted long ago--
I only know, I only know,
That phantoms haunt me everywhere
By busy day, in peopled gloam--
They rise between me and my prayer,
They mar the holiness of home!
My wife is proud, my boy is cold,
I dare not speak of what I fret:
'Tis my fond youth with thee I fold,
Little Grisette!
MARRIED ABROAD.
AN AMERICAN ROMANCE OF THE QUARTIER LATIN.
PART I.
TEMPTATION.
To say that Ralph Flare was "lonesome" would convey a feeble idea of his
condition. Four months in England had gone by wearily enough; but in
this great city of Paris, where he might as well have had no tongue at
all, for the uses he could put it to, he pined and chafed--and finally
swore.
An oath, if not relief in itself, conduces to that effect, and it
happened in this case that a stranger heard it.
"You are English," said the stranger, turning shortly upon Ralph Flare.
"I am not," replied that youth, "I am an American."
"Then we are countrymen," cried the other. "Have you dwelt long in the
Hotel du Hibou?"
Ralph Flare stated that he hadn't and that he had, and that he was bored
and sick of it, and had resolved to go back to the Republic, and fling
away his life in its armies.
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