"What becomes of the moral?" you will say.
I have told you a true story. Had I created these beings from
imagination, I should also have judged them--punished the bad and
rewarded the good. But these people actually lived, moved, and had
their being in the real world, and have now gone to render in their
account to their Divine Creator and Judge. The case of Good _versus_
Evil, comes on in another world, at another tribunal, and, no doubt,
will be equitably adjudged.
* * * * *
As I fear my readers may be dying to know what farther became of
our cheery set of travelers, I may, on some future occasion, gratify
their laudable desire after knowledge; only informing them at present
that we did reach our destination at ten o'clock that night, in
safety, although it was very dark when we passed down the dreaded
Gibbet Hill and forded the dismal Bloody Run Swamp. That Aunt Peggy's
cap was not mashed by Uncle Clive's hat, and that Miss Christine did
not put her feet into Cousin Kitty's bandbox, to the demolition of her
bonnet; but that both bonnet and cap survived to grace the heads of
their respective proprietors. The only mishap that occurred, dear
reader, befell your obsequious servitor, who went to bed with a sick
headache, caused really by her acute sympathy with the misfortunes of
the hero and heroine of our aunt's story, but which Miss Christine
grossly attributed to a hearty supper of oysters and soft crabs, eaten
at twelve o'clock at night, which, of course, you and I know, had
nothing at all to do with it.
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