PETERSON’S MAGAZINE.
"ICICLES."
BY ANNIE ARNOLD.
"Оh, mamma! see! see! the first icicles! They are all over the little tree I planted! I am so glad it snowed last night! Ain't they beautiful? When the sun shines see how many colors, and how they glisten, and the white, white snow makes them still prettier. May I go out and get one, just one ? I can reach them so nicely on the little tree ! " and, without waiting for an answer, the child hastily tied a scarf around her neck and ran out on the snow-covered steps. Like most earthly treasures hers were too high to grasp, and the long stick she used to knock the pretty treasures down, only served to shatter them to atoms at her feet, till a call from her mother reminded her that open doors in winter did not warm kitchens, and she came in.
"After all they would melt in here, " she said, going to her old place at the window, " and they look just as pretty from inside. "
And that one sentence was the key-note to little Bertha Schwindan's heart. She was a German child, with soft, sunny hair and deep blue eyes ; and while she could look back on baby recollections of her native land and her father's care, she could still take a bright view of the new home, the narrow means, and toilsome life which followed emigration , and her father's death. Gustavus Schwindan was one of that ill-fated class, a genius! From early boyhood music had been his goddess , to be worshiped, courted , at any cost, and all seasons In his own country he had not prospered . A situation as second violinist in a mammoth orchestra had afforded sufficient income for his bachelor life ; but when he married , he determined to cross the wide ocean and tempt fortune in a new clime . Little Bertha was six years old before this pet scheme was carried out; and before she saw her seventh birthday the sods of America lay heavy on her father's breast, and her mother, a stranger in a strange land, turned her footsteps to the West, the land of promise. Kind hearts had seen the gentle widow, and remembered the gifted musician, and a subscription was raised in the new land to aid the patient stranger. It was a narrow house, ill -furnished, in a sparsely populated spot, where Gertrude Schwindan found her home ; but the few neighbors spoke in the tongue of the Fatherland, her child's heart was light, and her voice glad on the free, open country : there was a promise of work , and she was content so to live. One room in the little cottage was tenanted by its owner, and he gave Gertrude the rest, free, for the simple repast which he shared with her and Bertha. He was a man of some forty years of age, with a hard, stern face, not a German, though the language came easily from his lips . And while Bertha, with bright eyes and glowing checks, looked lovingly and admiringly on the lovely winter's prospect, this man's eyes were fixed upon it from his window, and his heart was full of bitterness as he murmured,
"Icicles! Cold, bleak, desolate! Fair and smooth as a woman's face, cold and hard as her heart ! Glistening as her false smile, beautiful afar off, chilling if grasped ! { Oh ! where can I turn that all will not remind me of the past ? I have left home and friends, the crowded cities and the lovely country-seats where we were together, to busy myself here, among new faces in a wild spot, only to find memory more busy in loneliness, imagination more ready to find smiles in every sight and sound. My books weary me, my thoughts madden me. Where can I find rest ?"
" Mr. William ! mother says breakfast is ready."
"Ah! is it you, little Icicles?" said he, giving her a nick-name, from the occupation at which he had just seen her. "Come in!" She entered and stood demurely before him.
