Kings of Capital and Knights of Labor (Volume 10)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. FADKD BEAUTY. kHAT sadder than a faded rose! Bloom gone, fragrance vanished, its little day of beauty passed forever! One thing is sadder. A faded heart! Especially a heart faded in its youth. The color taken prematurely from the cheek and the light from the soul! Burdens, intolerable for age, weighing on young years! Hope dead! Joy fled! A sigh on the lip and in the look hollow despair! Pressing on the conscience a leaden weight, and piercing it a poison-sting! Each glance on friends, yet unconscious of the coming blot, a keen anguish. Tears on the pillow! Sleepless nights and torturing days, and the dull dread of worse miseries! Clouds over the whole horizon of the spirit, and all this agony succeeding a brilliant dream of pleasure, where every pulse was joy, every breath an exhilaration, every sensation a thrill of delight, and every vision bright with the morning hues of hope and health. What a change in Belle Standfast! Care on her brow, her face thin, her cheek pale, her limbs relaxed, and out of her voice that tone which fell on the ear with pleasure, and brought a smile to the lip, and light into the eye, and shed a magnetic joy over every circle in which she moved. Her family wonder, and her friends fear, and her enemies shake their heads with a malignancy of suspicion. Belle had an engagement with Walter Sparker for one more gay night at the opera, in New York. But there was no bright anticipation of pleasure. She rushed in the splendid car, rather as a garlanded victim was taken to the ancient altar. Suddenly, the paint had disappeared from the faces of the performers, who stalked like the phantoms of a troubled dream. The most exquisite music had a mocking sound, and the very lights burned with a hideous and blinding glare: Walter ...