g relief.... The whole portrait
started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of
a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and awe-stricken
spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea
of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed
to the bitter hatred, and laughter, and withering scorn of a vast,
surrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down
and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the
soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture,
while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time
acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it
gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour.
Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward
Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought its influence
upon his nature.

* * * * *

=_297._= DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD SAILOR.

Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive
to the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of
seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel--a lean, old
man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth,
shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if
every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere
on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the
Flying Dutchman.... One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with
gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it
upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the
French, and battles with his own ship-mates, when he and an antagonist
used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down, by a
spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out.

* * * * *

From the "Blithedale Romance."

=_298._= A PICTURE OF GIRLHOOD.

Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding
and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner
became sensible of than you thought it worth all she had previously
possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to
us, it seemed as if we could see Nature s