morrow had but its dawn for David White, the condemned felon. Ten
long, weary months had come and passed away with their pomp and
mutation, finding and leaving him within a prison's walls; and now,
the lapse of a few short, rapid hours would behold a tenement in
ruins, and a soul set free. Another day-break, and he would know the
untried and unimaginable realities of a shoreless eternity, from whose
everlasting portals men have so often shrunk back appalled. Oh, what a
bewildering rush of thoughts crowded upon his mind. He stood by the
prison-window, through whose iron bars came trooping the silent
moonbeams, lighting up his countenance, ghastly and contracted with
anguish, then flashing along the darkness, rested upon the floor in
mellow radiance. At the farthermost verge of the western horizon, just
where the gray outlines of the mountains stood forth like shadows
against the deep blue of the sky, huge masses of clouds piled
themselves up into strange and fantastic forms, indistinct and dark,
from whose bright centre, ever and anon, leaped the fierce lightning,
like the tongues of a thousand adders forked in flame, and boomed the
loud thunder as the din of a far-off battle. While he gazed, old
memories thronged from the past; the fount of tears sent up its
gushing libations, and he buried his face in his hands, and strove to
pray. Oh, how sorrow, and suffering, and solitude, and the certainty
of a near death bow the strong spirit! It may have become darkened by
fierce and unruly passions; grown callous and crime-stained amidst the
roll of years, and almost destitute of a single virtuous impulse, yet,
for a time, under such circumstances, a softness will gather about the
heart; a thousand little harps, untuned before, quiver with a rich
gush of melody, and the angel in our nature spring up and assert its
influence. But no one, in whom the mind has not been crushed or
debilitated by the decay of the body, has stood upon time's furthest
brink in perfect consciousness, as David White did at that moment,
without thinking with an aching intenseness on the dread hour when
life must end; and as he leaned his head against the iron bars of the
narrow lattice, the balmy breeze laying its cool hands upon his
feverish brow, and the soft moonlight playing upon his wan features
like the kiss of a tender bride, his soul was wrought with a stern
agony, and his frame with a shudder--for dark thoughts and sad images
of death and eternit