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Other Spellers 201
wholefome flipper. And inftead of the downy bed, and the foft long of the Whippoorwill and Nightingale to lull them to repofe, naught, but a bed of leaves drenched with rain, the wild wind which whiftled terror thro' the trees, and the hoarfe note of the Owl, to frighten their ears !
Meanwhile, the father and all the neighbors had been searching for the children, and the search continued unsuccessfully through the stormy night. "At last, when the day had dawned, the father happening to caft his eyes on a clufter of leaves — who fhould he difcover but his fweet babes ! He fprang to fold their cold bodies to his bofom : And while he wiped the rain from their tender limbs, the parental tear ran down his cheeks."
The mother and a daughter some years older than the lost children were with the father. Of this older daughter the book says: " How could that humane, delicate bosom, which always turned from the cruel fcene where the lamb is led to the flaugh-ter; whofe foft hands could never indulge them-felves in the barbarous fport of depriving the robin of her eggs, much lefs of her young neftlings ; I fay, how could this amiable sifter endure the thought that her little brother and fifter fhould thus perifh."
But she was spared the pain; for while the rescuers picked up the children and "were alternately preffing their clay-cold lips to their own, a fmall breath was difcovered to proceed from their mouths, and their little hearts faintly vibrated with life," and shortly they recovered and the adventure ended happily. |
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