The
bleak mountain-peaks, the wide-extended plain and its wild denizens,
and the excitement these give, stirs his bosom, and the wish struggles
up to return to them. But the gentler chords of his heart are in tune.
The once-loved home, and she, the once-loved and yet-remembered maiden,
is there, and it may be she pines for his return. He gazed on the
beautiful apparition but a moment gone, and thought of another; and
thought begat thought until the loved one he had left rose up to
memory's call. He was alone, looking upon the great river through whose
turbid waters he was borne away, and he felt he was lengthening a chain
linked to his heart which pulled him back--to what, and to whom? It was
a vision--a dream with his eyes open: indistinct, unembodied, a very
shadow; still it floated about in his imagination, and he was sad. He
was in the city--the great Sodom of the West. He was an object of
wonder to every curious eye. His wild appearance and gentle manner
comported illy, and the thoughtless crowd followed him. Attired now as
a civilized being, and feeling that the vagrant life of a savage must
lead to grief, he called to mind the tear which stole from the rheumy
eyes of the old trapper as he narrated his adventures in the
wilderness, and cursed the hour he ever wandered from his home.
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