THE ISLAND-HUT. 



23 



flowed in, the tumult and fury of the great billows was 

 like a seething chaos. 



In this wild solitude, remote from all civilization, and 

 having no contact with the rest of American society, rose 

 a small rude hut; and in this hut, in 1846, abode a 

 young woman of , 

 twenty-two, a mascu- 

 line creature, of an 

 aspect severe and yet 

 gentle, and possess- 

 ing a peculiar sympa- 

 thetic voice, which re- 

 minded me of the 

 babbling of the Ame- 

 rican thrush when 

 watching over her 

 brood. 



Jessie for such 

 was the name of the 

 lonely inhabitant of 

 this sea-side hut had 

 lost her mother; while 

 her father, an aged 

 invalid, dragged out 

 the last sands of life, 

 crouching before the 

 fire, smoking his pipe, and wrapped in a dismal silence. 

 Grief had unsettled his mind ; the strings of the brain 

 were loosened ; he was almost imbecile. Jessie had 

 bravely taken charge of her four brothers ; and thanks 

 to the abundance of fish, to the sea-birds' nests, and 

 the stags which she caught in snares, good and plentiful 



"OP AN ASPECT SEVERE, YET GENTLE." 



