Parker's health, he looked so thin) were too cruelly unkind to be repeated
here. Indeed, Mr. Fisbee, Parker, the luckless Mr. Schofield, and the
young Tipworthy may be not untruthfully likened to a band of devoted
mariners lost in the cold and glaring regions of a journalistic Greenland:
limitless plains of empty white paper extending about them as far as the
eye could reach, while life depended upon their making these terrible
voids productive; and they shrank appalled from the task, knowing no means
to fertilize the barrens; having no talent to bring the still snows into
harvests, and already feeling-in the chill of Mr. Martin's remarks--a
touch of the frost that might wither them.
It was Fisbee who caught the first glimpse of a relief expedition clipping
the rough seas on its lively way to rescue them, and, although his first
glimpse of the jaunty pennant of the relieving vessels was over the
shoulder of an iceberg, nothing was surer than that the craft was flying
to them with all good and joyous speed. The iceberg just mentioned
assumed--by no melting process, one may be sure--the form of a long
letter, first postmarked at Rouen, and its latter substance was as
follows:
"Henry and I have always believed you as selfish, James Fisbee, as you are
self-ingrossed and incapable. She has told us of your 'renunciation'; of
your 'forbidding' her to remain with you; how you 'commanded,' after you
had 'begged' her, to return to us, and how her conscience told her she
should stay and share your life in spite of our long care of her, but that
she yielded to your 'wishes' and our entreaty.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254