Miss Grief and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

crush a true poet.”
    â€œWhat is poetry?” said Raymond, gloomily.
    At this comprehensive question, the bittern gave a hollow croak, and flew away with his long legs trailing behind him. Probably he was not of an æsthetic turn of mind, and dreaded lest I should give a ramified answer.
    Through the afternoon we fished when the fancy struck us, but most of the time we floated idly, enjoying the wild freedom of the watery waste. We watched the infinite varieties of the grasses, feathery, lance-leaved, tufted, drooping, banner-like, the deer’s tongue, the wild-celery, and the so-called wild-rice, besides many unknown beauties delicatelyfringed, as difficult to catch and hold as thistle-down. There were plants journeying to and fro on the water like nomadic tribes of the desert; there were fleets of green leaves floating down the current; and now and then we saw a wonderful flower with scarlet bells, but could never approach near enough to touch it.
    At length, the distant sound of the bugle came to us on the breeze, and I slowly wound in the clew, directing Raymond as he pushed the boat along, backing water with the oars. The sound seemed to come from every direction. There was nothing for it to echo against, but, in place of the echo, we heard a long, dying cadence, which sounded on over the Flats fainter and fainter in a sweet, slender note, until a new tone broke forth. The music floated around us, now on one side, now on the other; if it had been our only guide, we should have been completely bewildered. But I wound the cord steadily; and at last suddenly, there before us, appeared the house with Roxana on the roof, her figure outlined against the sky. Seeing us, she played a final salute, and then descended, carrying the imprisoned music with her.
    That night we had our supper at sunset. Waiting Samuel had his meals by himself in the front room. “So that in case the spirits come, I shall not be there to hinder them,” explained Roxana. “I am not holy, like Samuel; they will not speak before me.”
    â€œDo you have your meals apart in the winter, also?” asked Raymond.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat is not very sociable,” I said.
    â€œSamuel never was sociable,” replied Roxana. “Only common folks are sociable; but he is different. He has great gifts, Samuel has.”
    The meal over, we went up on the roof to smoke our cigars in the open air; when the sun had disappeared and his glory had darkened into twilight, our host joined us. He was a tall man, wasted and gaunt, with piercing dark eyes and dark hair, tinged with gray, hanging down upon his shoulders. (Why is it that long hair on the outside is almost always the sign of something wrong in the inside of a man’s head?) He wore a black robe like a priest’s cassock, and on his head a black skull-cap like the Faust of the operatic stage.
    â€œWhy were the Flats called St. Clair?” I said; for there is something fascinating to me in the unknown history of the West. “There isn’t any,” do you say? you, I mean, who are strong in the Punic wars! you, too, who are so well up in Grecian mythology. But there is history, only we don’t know it. The story of Lake Huron in the times of the Pharaohs, the story of the Mississippi during the reign of Belshazzar, would be worth hearing. But it is lost! All we can do is to gather together the details of our era,—the era when Columbus came to this New World, which was, nevertheless, as old as the world he left behind.
    â€œIt was in 1679,” began Waiting Samuel, “that La Salle sailed up the Detroit River in his little vessel of sixty tons burden, called the Griffin. He was accompanied by thirty-four men, mostly fur-traders; but there were among them two holy monks, and Father Louis Hennepin, a friar of the Franciscan order. They passed up the river and entered the little lake justsouth of us, crossing it and these Flats on the 12th