LESSON LXVIII. THE COYOTE. Fûr'tive, stolen; sly; secret. Wake, track; trail. Ål'le go ry, a description of In çensed', enraged; provoked one thing under the image of Ve loç'i pēde, a light road ment. THE to anger. Fagged, exhausted; tired. gether; condensed. HE coyote of the Plains is a long, slim, sick, and sorry-looking skeleton with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face with a slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. 2. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that, even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. 3. And he is so homely!-so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful! When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, lowers his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is out of pistol range. Then he stops and takes a deliberate look at you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again-another fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. 4. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much-especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself and has been brought up to think that he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog full of encouragement and worldly ambition. 5. And then the dog will lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely as he moves his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, leaving a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain ! 6. All this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the coyote, and to save the life of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get any closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the coyote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that calm, soft-footed trot is. 7. And next the dog notices that he is getting fagged, and that the coyote actually has to slacken speed a little, to keep from running away from him. And then that town dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain, and weep, and snarl, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the coyote with concentrated and desperate energy. 8. This spurt finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the coyote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say: 9. "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub-business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day." And forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude! MARK TWAIN. IT ist with her tears, and blotted with yours. T is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted; "It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! oh, how I wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead." 2. Dead! It is a terrible word. You repeat it, with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on. For a week, she had been failing every day; but on Saturday, we thought her very much better. I told her I felt sure she would live to see you again. 3. “I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, bursting into tears." -Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and your strength now?-with only that frail paper to annoy you, crushed in your grasp! 4. "She sent for Father, and taking his hand in hers, told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment, while her lips moved, as if she were praying. "Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: 'kiss me again for Clarence.' "A little while after she died." 5. For a long time you remain with only that letter, and your thought for company. You pace up and down your chamber: again you seat yourself and lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief, that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus: you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to anyone. How is this? Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy? The 6. It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the tall sycamores that shade your home; you shudder now lest you may meet any whom you once knew. first, keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy of companions: it lies,-with a sensitive man,-bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart. They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses can speak consolation. Years will make a change ;-as the summer grows in fierce heat, the balminess of the violet banks of spring is lost in the odors of a thousand flowers; the heart, as it gains in age, loses freshness, but wins breadth. 7. You draw your hat over your eyes as you walk toward the familiar door; the yard is silent; the night is falling gloomily; a few katydids are crying in the trees. The mother's window, where-at such a season as this, it was her custom to sit watching your play, is shut; and the blinds are closed over it. The honeysuckle which grew over the window, and which she loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly; and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its tendrils. |