“Leon then was cruelly separated from Linda, whose hard-hearted parents had her locked up in her chamber, where she remained seven months writing her grief in verses of such rare sentiment and purity of style that I doubt if Byron has anything to excel them.  But finding that her love for Leon was incurable, and that the confinement was producing insanity of mind, her father thought to affect a remedy by offering Leon ten thousand dollars to quit the country.  This he spurned, bidding the father give his money to him who measured the soul of man by its value.

“Linda’s only companion during the confinement, was a pet canary, which she had trained to convey messages across the street, and into the window of a chamber occupied by one Minnie Rush, a companion and schoolmate, and one to whom she could intrust the secrets of her heart with explicit confidence.  Through this medium then she discovered the place of her confinement to Leon, for whom I arranged a plan of scaling her prison and carrying her away.  And this plan we undertook to execute of a dark night in November, when a pelting storm drenched the earth with rain, and the wind howled, and all the adverse elements seemed to have combined to complete the fury of the tempest.  Linda was prepared, and paced her room with curious hopes and anticipations swelling her heart, and even filling her eyes with tears.  When the clock struck twelve, we had, by dint of great exertion, got the ladder to Linda’s window in the third story.  And as Leon commenced ascending, Linda slowly opened the window.  Fiercer and fiercer their throbbing hearts began beating; each second seemed an hour; and although the storm howled piteously, anxiety had so sharpened their senses that they distinctly heard the slightest movement.  Quickening his pace as he advanced, and thinking only of the prize he would rescue from its prison, he was well nigh the top of the ladder.  Another minute and the two lovers would have been clasped in each other’s arms.  Not a thought would have been wasted on the hard-hearted father; Leon would have borne the darling of his heart away in triumph!  But lo! a crash was heard; the ladder yielded to the gale, and Leon, who was a man of much weight and circumference, fell to the ground with a broken leg.  ’A pretty pickle you’r in now, Orlando Tickler,’ says I to myself.  But to make the matter worse, the ladder fell also, and so great was the noise that the father of Linda and two friends rushed out of the house in their night clothes, and with pistols in their hands.  Seeing the cause of the disturbance, they at once gave chase after me; and though I would have stood by Leon until death separated us, it came into my mind that getting away as fast as possible would be the best service I could render him, seeing that it would afford him an opportunity to creep away into some hiding-place.