JUDGE WHALEY'S DEMON.


In the little town of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an
elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow
forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an
honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry
Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they
could not be happy separated, nor congenial together. A destiny seemed
to unite them, but with it also a baleful memory. The negroes
whispered that in the boy's conception and birth was a secret of
shame; he was not this father's son, and his mother had confessed it.

That mother was gone--fled to a distant part of the world with her
betrayer--and the divorce was recorded while yet young Perry Whaley
was a babe. But the boy never knew it: his origin reposed in the
sensitive memory of his father only, and every day the father looked
at the son long and distantly, and the son at the father with a most
affectionate longing.

"Papa," he would say, "can't you try to love me? Do I disobey you? I
am sure I am always unhappy out of your sight."

The father could not do without that boy, but could only hate him. "My
son," he would reply, "you are obedient, but a demon! I could not love
you if I would!"