The shipwreck, or Paul and Virginia / From the French of M. De Saint Pierre.

  • Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 1737-1814.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The shipwreck, or Paul and Virginia / From the French of M. De Saint Pierre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    When they began to speak, the first names they learnt to give each other were those of brother and sister, and childhood knows no softer appellation. Their education served to augment their early friendship, by directing it to the supply of their reciprocal wants. In a short time all that regarded the household economy, the care of preparing their rural repasts, became the task of Virginia, whose labours were always crowned with the praises and kisses of her brother. As for Paul, always in motion, he dug the garden with Do- mingo, or followed him with a little hatchet into the woods, where, if in his rambles he espied a beautiful flower, fine fruit, or a nest of birds, e- ven at the top of a tree, he climbed up and brought it home to his sister. When you met with one of those children, you might he sure the other was not distant. One day, coming down that mountain, I saw Virginia at the end of the garden, running towards the house, with her petticoat thrown over her head, in order to screen herself from a shower of rain. At a distance I thought she was alone, but as I hastened towards her in order to help her on, I perceived that she held Paul by the arm, who was almost entirely enveloped in the same canopy and both were laughing heartily at being sheltered together under an umberella of their own inven- tion. Those two charming faces, placed wichin the petticoat swelled by the.wind, recalled to my