Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
“She remembers something of all this, but she says ‘it is faint and distant, like
the vanishing vapour on the far-o mountain.’”
“Oh, tell her, Magawisca, if she will come home and live with me, I will devote
my life to her. I will watch over her in sickness and health. I will be mother—
sister—friend to her: tell her that our mother, now a saint in heaven, stoops from
her happy place to entreat her to return to our God and our father’s God.”
Mary shook her head in a manner indicative of a more determined feeling than
she had before manifested, and took from her bosom a crucix, which she fervently
pressed to her lips.
Every motive Hope oered was powerless, every mode of entreaty useless, and
she leaned her head despondently on Mary’s shoulder. The contrast between the
two faces thus brought together was most striking. Hope’s hat had slipped back,
and her rich brown tresses fell about her neck and face; her full eye was intently
xed on Mary, and her cheek glowing with impassioned feeling, she looked like an
angel touched with some mortal misery; while Mary’s face, pale and spiritless, was
only redeemed from absolute vacancy by an expression of gentle—
ness and modesty. Hope’s hand was lying on her sister’s lap, and a brilliant
diamond ring caught
Mary’s attention. Hope perceived this, and instantly drew it from her own
nger and placed it on Mary’s; “and here is another—and another—and another,”
she cried, making the same transfer of all her rings. “Tell her, Magawisca, if she
will come home with me, she shall be decked with jewels from head to foot; she
shall have feathers from the most beautiful birds that wing the air, and owers that
never fade: tell her that all I possess shall be hers.”
“Shall I tell her so ?” asked Magawisca, with a mingled expression of contempt
and concern, as if she herself despised the lure, but feared that Mary might be
caught by it; for the pleased girl was holding her hand before her, turning it,
and gazing with childlike delight on the gems, as they caught and reected the
moonbeams. “Shall I ask your sister to barter truth and love—the jewels of the soul,
that grow brighter and brighter in the land of spirits—for these poor perishing
tries? Oh, Hope Leslie, I had better thoughts of thee.”
“I cannot help it, Magawisca; I am driven to try every way to win back my
sister: tell her, I entreat you, tell her what I have said.”
Magawisca faithfully repeated all the motives Hope had urged, while Hope
herself clasped her sister’s hand, and looked in her face with a mute supplication
more earnest than words could express. Mary hesitated, and her eye turned quickly
to Oneco, to Magawisca, and then again rested on her sister. Hope felt her hand
tremble in hers; Mary, for the rst time, bent towards her, and laid her cheek to
Hope’s. Hope uttered a scream of delight: “Oh, she does not refuse; she will stay
with me,” she exclaimed. Mary understood the exclamation, and suddenly recoiled,
and hastily drew the rings from her ngers. “Keep them—keep them,” said Hope,
bursting into tears; “if we must be cruelly parted again, they will sometimes speak
to you of me.”
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