GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
1847.
Engraved by W.E. Tucker, Esq.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXX. January, 1847. No. 1.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry and Fashion

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S

AMERICAN MONTHLY

MAGAZINE

Of Literature and Art,

EMBELLISHED WITH

MEZZOTINT AND STEEL ENGRAVINGS, MUSIC, ETC.

WILLIAM C. BRYANT, J. FENIMORE COOPER, RICHARD H. DANA, JAMES K. PAULDING,

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, CHARLES F. HOFFMAN, JOSEPH C. NEAL, J. R. LOWELL.

MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, MISS C. M. SEDGWICK, MRS. FRANCES S. OSGOOD,

MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY, MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS, MRS. AMELIA B. WELBY,

MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN, ETC.

PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTORS.

GEORGE R. GRAHAM, EDITOR.

VOLUME XXX.

PHILADELPHIA:

GEORGE R. GRAHAM & CO. 129 CHESTNUT STREET.

. . . . . .

1847.

CONTENTS

OF THE

THIRTIETH VOLUME.

JANUARY, 1847, TO JUNE, 1847.

POETRY.

REVIEWS.

MUSIC.

ENGRAVINGS.

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

PAINTED BY HORACE VERNET. ENGRAVED BY JOHN SARTAIN.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXX. PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY, 1847. No. 1.

THE OATH OF MARION.

A STORY OF THE REVOLUTION.

———

BY CHARLES J. PETERSON.

———

[PRIZE STORY—for which the Premium of $200 was awarded by the Committee.]

CHAPTER I.

Every man knows best how to buckle his own belt.

Falstaff.

“Did you get the pass, Macdonald?” said a young man, looking up, as his servant entered the room of a lodging-house in Charleston, in the latter part of the year 1780.

“Yes, sir, and the baggage and horses are ready,” was the reply of a stalwart youth, whose dress betokened a condition removed from that of an ordinary menial, and partaking rather of that of a familiar, though humble companion. “I think we can give them the slip, sir—Lord! how I wish for a crack at these fellows! and once with Marion, we’ll not long want an opportunity.”

“Be in waiting for me at midnight, then,” said the first speaker; and, as Macdonald retired, he threw himself back again in his chair, and fixing his eyes on the floor, resigned himself to the abstraction out of which he had been roused.

Howard Preston, the hero of our story, had just returned from Europe, where he had been fulfilling the injunctions of his father’s will, by a course of study and travel until his twenty-fourth year. The first great sorrow of his life had been his parting, at sixteen, with the only child of his guardian, Kate Mowbray, then a lovely little girl, who for years had been his pet and playmate. Many were the tears she also shed at the separation, and faithfully did she promise not to forget her boy lover. Such childish preferences usually end with youth; but it was not so in the present instance. With every letter from abroad came a gift for Kate, which she requited with some trifle worked by her own hands. But as years elapsed, and Kate approached womanhood, these presents were no longer returned, and Preston, piqued at what he thought neglect, gradually came to confine himself, in his letters home, to a cold inquiry after her health, instead of devoting, as heretofore, two-thirds of the epistle to her. Yet he never thought of America without also thinking of Kate; and when he landed at Charleston, a month before our tale begins, he was wondering into what kind of a woman she had grown up.

Still his old feeling of pique was uppermost when shown into her father’s magnificent parlor; and this, combined with his astonishment at seeing a graceful and high bred woman announced as his old playmate, lent an air of coldness and embarrassment to his greetings. Whether it was this or some other cause, Kate, who was advancing eagerly, suddenly checked herself, colored, and put on all her dignity. The interview, so inauspiciously begun, was short and formal, and to Preston, at least, unsatisfactory. He had expected, in spite of their tacit misunderstanding, that Kate would meet him as rapturously as of old, forgetting that the child had now become a woman. He overlooked, also, the effect his own restraint might have produced. Thus he returned to his lodgings, dissatisfied and angry, half disposed to dislike, yet half compelled to admire, the beautiful and dazzling creature from whom he had just parted. The truth was, Preston, though hitherto ignorant of it, had loved his old playmate from boyhood. This had made him feel her neglect so acutely, and this had led him secretly to hope that her welcome on his return would heal the past. No wonder he went home angry, yet quite as much in love as ever!

Preston and Kate often met after this, but they seemed destined to misunderstand each other. Kate was really ignorant of the mischief she had done. She had come down to meet him with a heart full of the memories of other days, and, if truth must be told, a little nervous and anxious how he, of whom she had so often thought in secret, would receive her. His proud demeanor had chilled her. Nor on subsequent occasions were their interviews more satisfactory. Indeed Kate was puzzled and vexed at Preston’s manner. No one could, at times, be more interesting; yet no one was so often haughty and disagreeable. Kate sighed to think how changed he had become; then she was angry at herself for sighing.

Kate was accordingly as wayward as Preston—and who, indeed, had greater excuse? Rich and well born, beautiful and high-spirited, she was positively the reigning belle in Charleston during the whole of that gay winter. To a complexion delicately fair, and a person of the most exquisite proportions, she united those graces of mind and manner, which, in that courtly day, were considered the unerring accompaniments of high breeding. Report awarded to her numbers of unsuccessful suitors; but all had tacitly resigned their claims in favor of Major Lindsay, an English officer of noble blood, between whom and an earldom there was only a single life. Gay and splendid in person and equipage, the Major no sooner laid siege to the heart of the heiress, than her less favored suitors gave over in despair; and what between lounging most of his mornings away in her parlor, and attending her abroad on all occasions, he speedily came to have the field nearly altogether to himself.

The arrival of the major anticipated that of Preston about a month, and when our hero returned, he found his rival almost domesticated at Mr. Mowbray’s house. Jealousy soon revealed to Preston the secret of his own long hidden love; but it made him heartily hate the major. The two gentlemen seemed perfectly to understand each other. But the Englishman knew better than his rival how to suppress his feelings, and accordingly possessed every advantage over him in superior ease and self-command. Had Kate wished otherwise, she could not but have given the larger share of her attention to the graceful, brilliant and composed man of fashion, rather than to his more irritable and wayward rival, whom a fancied slight, in word or look, was sufficient to make dumb for a whole evening. Depend on it, the worst possible use to which a lover can put himself is to be sulky.

Perhaps it was the enmity he nourished against his more successful rival; perhaps it was the natural indignation of a frank and noble heart against oppression; perhaps, which is more natural, it was both combined, but Preston had not been long at home before he formed the resolution to take part with his countrymen in the war then going on; and the sudden appearance of General Marion on the Santee, where he began a partisan conflict with the invaders, opened to him a favorable way for carrying out his design, which he only postponed until he could part from Kate on better terms. He flattered himself that she herself was secretly on the side of the colonists, for her father had once held a commission under the provisional government, although since the fall of Charleston and the apparent conquest of the colony, he, like many others, had been induced to take a royal protection, and ground his arms as a neutral.

One morning Preston found Kate alone in her little parlor. It was rare that she was without visiters, for Major Lindsay, at least, was usually at her side. Kate wore a pretty morning-dress, and was sewing, her little tiny foot, that rested on a cushioned stool, peeping provokingly out beneath the snowy muslin. A woman one admires never looks lovelier than when occupied in this truly feminine employment; and as Kate made room for Preston beside her, with her sweetest smile, he thought she had never seemed half so charming. Lovers can imagine how happy Preston soon was. He and Kate talked of old times, she busily plying her needle, but every now and then looking up with animation into his face. His heart beat quicker, and he longed to tell her how he loved her; it would, I fear, have set your head or mine, reader, topsy-turvy at once. A dozen long forgotten incidents were called to mind: how Preston had once rescued Kate from the river, how they both wept when her old nurse died, and a score of other things. The color of both heightened, and Preston felt every instant as if he could snatch the dear girl to his arms. In the eagerness of conversation, all at once Kate placed her hand familiarly on his.

“And do you remember,” she said, gazing up with sparkling eyes into his face, “do you remember when the pony ran away with you? Oh! I was half dead with fright, and screamed lustily. Those were happy days—I wonder if we are ever as happy as in childhood. I sometimes wish we were back again on that old lawn.” And she sighed.

“Do you, indeed?” said Preston, his whole face lighting up, and he took her hand by an impulse he could no longer resist.

At that moment the words which would have decided his fate were rising to Preston’s lips, and Kate, as if secretly forewarned, began to tremble and be confused, when the door was flung open and the servant in a loud voice announced Major Lindsay.

If any of my readers has ever been interrupted when about to declare himself, and had to come plump down from rapture to foolishness, he can imagine Preston’s chagrin at the entrance of the visiter. However, he had tact enough to think of Kate’s embarrassment, and as he rose to make his bow, adroitly placed himself so as to conceal her for a moment, and allow her time to recover from her confusion. The major gave both parties, on the instant, a suspicious glance, but his softest smile immediately succeeded, and with easy assurance taking the seat Preston had vacated, he glided into a strain of brilliant small talk, such as would have done honor to any gallant of the day, incomparable at compliments and snuff-boxes. Preston was angry at this unceremonious supplanting, but even more angry to see how quickly Kate recovered herself, and dashed out into the strife of repartee, with a spirit and ease superior even to the major’s. Preston chafed, and thought she might have been a little less interested. At first he was silent and reserved, then he began to be uneasy, and once or twice he yielded to his irritability in words. He cursed his folly for imagining, as he did five minutes before, that she thought more of him than she did of others. He fixed his eyes half frowningly, half contemptuously on Kate. She colored immediately, he thought with conscious guilt. The next instant she turned haughtily away and addressed the major. Now, for the first time, Preston became convinced of the existence of the engagement respecting which he had heard so much. Burning with mortification, after sitting a few seconds, during which Kate did not once address him, he arose and abruptly took his leave.

“She loves him,” he exclaimed bitterly. “Dazzled by the glitter of a coronet, she casts aside her old and tried friend like a worn-out trinket. Oh! God, was it for this I hastened home? was it for this I treasured her memory through long years?”

For hours he remained alone, now pacing his chamber with rapid strides, now burying his face moodily in his hands. He recalled all his various interviews with Kate, and strove to remember her every word and look: the result was to curse himself for his egregious folly in fancying for a moment that she loved him. But after awhile his feelings grew less exasperated. He reflected on Kate’s manner that morning, before the arrival of Major Lindsay, and hope once more dawned in his bosom.

“I will lose no time,” he said, “in learning my fate decisively. I shall see Kate at her aunt’s ball, and her manner there will determine my suspense. If she is cold and haughty I will understand that she wishes to rebuke my presumption this morning. In that case, I will trifle here no longer, but at once join Gen. Marion. Macdonald, my foster-brother, loves me too well to desert me, but he has been crazy to be gone this fortnight past. I will order him to get a pass and have every thing ready in case of the worst, which my heart forebodes.”

It was after arriving at this determination, and receiving Macdonald’s message, that Preston gave himself up to his melancholy, nor did he rise from his desponding position until it was time to dress for Mrs. Blakeley’s ball.

The sound of gay music, the flashing of diamonds and the twinkling of light forms met his sight as he entered the ball-room; but he had eyes only for one object: and he soon sought out Kate amid her crowd of admirers. Never had she looked so transcendently lovely. It is thought a mark of taste and fashion now-a-days to laugh at the enormous hoops and powdered hair of our grandmothers: but let us tell you, good reader, that a belle of the present age, with her deformed tournure and Dutch amplitude of skirt, though she may create a sort of matter-of-fact sensation, very suitable perhaps for this money-making generation, never awakens that deep sentiment of adoration, that respectful, awe-struck, Sir Charles Grandison feeling, bestowed on the beauty of the last century, august in silver tissue and high-heeled shoes. The veriest stickler for modern ease would have given up the point at sight of Kate. She wore, as was then the custom, a petticoat of rich brocade, a single yard of which cost more than the twenty ells of lute-string flaunted by a beauty now. Over this was a robe of white satin, made high on the shoulders, but opening in front so as partially to reveal the swelling bust, and expose the richly-gemmed stomacher and glittering petticoat. The edge of this robe from the neck down was trimmed with a quilling of blue ribbon, which was also continued around the bottom. The tight sleeve, with bands like the trimming of the robe, reached to the elbow: and the deep ruffle of Valenciennes lace which nearly hid the round white arm, heightened with rare art the beauties it affected to conceal. Her hair was gathered back from the forehead, richly powdered, and trimmed coquettishly with blue ribbon. Now, if there be any heretical repudiator of the past, denying the brilliancy that powder gave a fair complexion, we wish he would go and look at one of Copley’s portraits, or—what is better!—could have seen Kate then! We trow his mouth would have watered. We doubt if justice is done to those good old times. Ah! those were the days of courtly dames and high-bred cavaliers—when the stately minuet still held sway—when gentlemen bowed reverently over the hand they scarcely dared to kiss—and when it was the crowning felicity of a whole evening’s devotion to hand a partner to the table by the tips of the fingers. Now-a-days people bounce through frisky quadrilles, while gallants tuck the arm of a mistress under their own as cozily as an old codger does his umbrella.

Preston was advancing toward Kate, when a buzz of admiration announced that Major Lindsay was about to lead her forth to the minuet. He won accordingly only a hasty curtsey in reply to his bow. He was meanwhile subjected to the mortification of hearing from a dozen bystanders the rumor of Kate’s engagement to the major; and one or two officiously applied to him to confirm the rumor, knowing his intimacy with the family. When the dance was concluded, which attracted general admiration, Major Lindsay still remained at Kate’s side. Never before had Preston noticed such meaning and delicate assiduity in his attentions. Between the incidents of the morning and those of the evening, no wonder Preston’s anger continued unabated. Still he made several attempts to obtain a moment’s tête-à-tête with Kate: but the crowd of her admirers frustrated this. At length, toward the close of the ball, he approached her.

“I come to bid you farewell,” he said abruptly; “to-morrow I leave Charleston.”

“Leave Charleston!” repeated a dozen voices in dismay. “What shall we do without you?” Kate alone betrayed neither surprise nor emotion. “Ah! indeed,” was her unconcerned reply.

Preston turned pale with suppressed mortification at this indifference; mere friendship, he said to himself, demanded some expression of regret at least. His feelings were not allayed by what followed.

“You’re not going to join Marion, are you?” said Major Lindsay, in a tone of triumphant banter, little imagining how near he was to the truth. “Has he frightened you by the great oath he has sworn to revenge his nephew, who was shot for a rebel? I hear he threatens some mighty deed. Only think of his doing any thing with that brigade of invincible tatterdemalions—Falstaff’s ragged regiment over again!”

“Take care that you are not one of those to pay the penalty of Marion’s oath,” retorted Preston, stung by the insolence of his successful rival, and reckless what he said. “It was a foul deed, and will be terribly revenged.”

Major Lindsay flushed to the brow, and his hand mechanically sought his sword hilt; but he controlled himself immediately, and said with a sneer—

“That might be called sedition, only we know you are a man of peace, Mr. Preston. But he is certainly Marion-bit, is he not?” and he turned to Kate.

Now Kate felt piqued at this unceremonious leave of her lover, as well as at his haughty conduct in the morning. She fancied herself trifled with, and answered cuttingly,

“Never fear Mr. Preston’s joining Marion. Our American gentlemen, on both sides, are but carpet knights of late. They resemble Sancho Panza, who, good soul, would not stir a step till a rich island was promised for his share.”

Preston tingled in every vein at this speech, which he regarded as aimed at himself. He bowed sarcastically to Kate, and glanced angrily at Major Lindsay, as he replied,

“One might almost be tempted to join Marion after this, in order to raise the reputation of American courage, since just now British bravery has it dead hollow.”

“Oh! pray,” said Kate, laughingly, “play the Atlas for the patriots then. That’s a good man: Be the St. George to destroy this British dragon.”

Major Lindsay looked for a moment as if he thought there was more in this than met the ear; but he contented himself with retorting on Preston.

“Do, by all means,” he said, “and, if you take Bobadil’s plan, you may defeat a whole army yourself. You know he proposed to challenge a single enemy and slay him by duello: then challenge a second, and slay him: then a third, and dispose of him also: and so on until the whole army was annihilated.”

Kate, as well as the rest, laughed at this sally. Preston needed but this to complete his anger and disgust. The field, he saw, was his rival’s, and he was glad when other persons approached and broke up the colloquy, which, to tell the truth, was growing too personal. But Kate was piqued and Preston enraged: and as for the major, seeing there was a quarrel between his rival and mistress, he had striven to widen the breach.

Preston hurried from the ball-room, and taking time only to change his dress, repaired to the rendezvous where Macdonald awaited him. Without a word he flung himself into the saddle, and his companion imitating his example, they were soon without the city. They had passed the outposts for some time, when Macdonald, pushing his horse close to Preston’s, opened the conversation.

“We’re clear of that confounded town at last, thank Heaven!” he said, “and I, for one, aint sorry. Them Englishmen are as saucy as princes, and think nobody has any courage but themselves. But I know one stout fellow that can snuff a candle with his rifle at two hundred yards, and before a week we’ll have a rap at ’em, for I s’pose you go direct, sir, to Marion’s camp?”

Preston nodded a gloomy assent, for buried in his own thoughts he cared not to be disturbed. Macdonald saw this, and, defeated in his attempt to open a conversation, dropped back, but when out of hearing muttered,

“I see how it is. Them women’s always getting a man into trouble. For my part I’ll be a bachelor. Marrying’s like getting tipsy, very pleasant except for the after repentance.”

——

CHAPTER II.

Grave men there are by broad Santee,

Grave men with hoary hairs,

Their hearts are all with Marion,

With Marion are their prayers.

Bryant.

The period of which we write was one that will ever be memorable in the annals of our country. Never had the fortunes of the patriots been at so low an ebb in the south, as between the defeat of Gates, at Camden, and the inroad of Cornwallis into North Carolina. After the fall of Charleston no time had been lost in overrunning the colony. All organized resistance being at an end, a proclamation was published, inviting the citizens to return to his majesty’s government, and stipulating for little more on their part than neutrality. Large numbers, even of the Whigs, accepted these terms: and had Cornwallis adhered to his promises, then indeed might liberty have been despaired of. But the royal leader soon threw off the mask, and required all who had accepted the protection, as it was called, to declare themselves openly on the royal side, in the further prosecution of the war. Finding themselves thus basely deceived, many flew to arms; but such, whenever captured, were executed as rebels. The fate of Col. Hayne, who was put to death at Charleston under these circumstances, was but a type of that of hundreds of lesser note, who perished often without a trial.

The war, meanwhile, was carried on with savage ferocity against the Whigs. Their plantations were laid waste, their negroes carried off, their houses given to the flames. The seven vials of wrath were literally poured out on South Carolina. Instances of cruelty without number are left on record. One may suffice. An innocent Quaker who took care of a sentry’s musket for a few minutes, while the soldier went on an errand, was seized for this pretended crime and thrown into prison. His wife hurried to the jail to see him. She was told to wait a few minutes and she should be conducted to him. With this brutal jest on their lips, the royal myrmidons hurried to the man’s cell, dragged him forth and hung him at the jail window: then, returning to his wife, they led her into the yard, and showed her husband to her quivering in the agonies of death. But God at last raised up an avenger for these and other atrocities. Suddenly, in the very heart of the oppressed district, there arose a defender, bitter, sleepless, unforgiving—seemingly endowed with miraculous powers of intelligence—whose motions were quick as lightning—who dealt blows now here, now there, at points least expected—and who, by a series of rapid and brilliant successes, soon made his name a terror to the British. Volunteers flocked in crowds to his standard. His boldness and gallantry filled the colony with astonishment and rejoicing. Wherever a surprise took place—wherever a convoy was cut off—wherever a gallant deed was unexpectedly done, men said that Marion had been there.

Preston had succeeded in raising a troop, for his name was an influential one in his neighborhood, and he was soon one of Marion’s most trusted adherents. A man who is willing to throw his life away on every occasion, speedily acquires the reputation of daring and bravery. The country around the Santee, which was the chief scene of his exploits, rung with the name of our hero. Nor was his foster-brother, now a serjeant in Preston’s troop, and one of Marion’s acutest scouts, without his share of renown.

Meantime the gay society of Charleston had suffered considerable diminutions. Many of the royal officers were absent with their commands, and a large portion of the gentry had retired to their estates. Among these was Mr. Mowbray, who secretly meditated joining the continental side again. Kate, too, was absent with her aunt, at the estate of the latter.

To this place the course of our story now carries us. Mrs. Blakeley’s mansion had heretofore escaped the visitation of war, but within a few days a detachment under Col. Watson had halted there on its march to Camden. With him came Major Lindsay, still an eager suitor for Kate. But scarcely had Col. Watson encamped on the plantation, when a body of Marion’s men, conspicuous among whom was Capt. Preston, made their appearance, and daily harassed the British officer, by cutting off his communications, assailing his pickets, and sometimes even beating up his camp.

One evening Kate was sitting sewing with her aunt in the parlor, conversing with Col. Watson, and several of his officers, who were their guests, when the servant came in to light the candles. Old Jacob, as he was called, filled the office of butler in the family, and was quite a character. He was a Whig at heart, and cordially disliked his mistress’s compulsory visiters. Having been his deceased master’s personal servant, he had thus acquired a footing of familiarity which allowed him to have his joke even at the table where he waited. He piqued himself moreover on what he thought his breeding and fine diction. He was a source of constant amusement to the British officers, who, however, found him sometimes their overmatch in repartee.

“Well, Jacob, what news?” said Major Lindsay. “Any more rebels captured?”

Old Jacob turned, bowed his head profoundly, and showing his teeth in a broad grin, said—

“Dare is no news yet, sar, dat I know on; but ’spose dare will be some afore mornin’; for, sartain, Capt. Preston will beat up your quarters as usual: and den, how de red-coats run!”

Kate looked up archly, yet colored when she caught the major’s eye. That personage bit his lip, and remarked—

“Never mind Capt. Preston, Jacob: he’ll be our prisoner very soon. Has the flag of truce come back?”

“Oh! yes, sar,” said old Jacob, his face radiant with delight. “Habn’t you heard? Dat great news, sar. ’Spose you know Sargent Macdonald?”

“What of him?” said the major, beginning to suspect he was making a ridiculous figure. “He’s a savage. Why he shot Lieut. Torriano yesterday three hundred yards off.”

“Dat he did,” said the old butler, waxing grandiloquent, “he hit de leftenant judgematically, I insure you. But dat is not de news. You knows Sargent Macdonald sent in word, toder day, dat if his baggage, took in de sally, was not recorded immediately to him again, he would kill eight of your men. You know dat? To-day de baggage was sent back, for dat sargent be de berry debbil, and now he send word dat, since his baggage be recorded punctiliousy, he will only kill four of your men!” And the speaker, though too well-bred to laugh at what he considered so good a joke, grinned from ear to ear.

“The cannibal!” said Lindsay, shrugging his shoulders, “but what can be expected of the men when their leaders countenance the firing on pickets.”

“Yet you hang them for rebels,” said Kate, with spirit.

“They shoot down officers,” continued Lindsay, not thinking it advisable to reply to her palpable hit, “as if this Mr. Marion paid for them at so much a head. I never saw such unchristian fighting. They are a set of boors; and cowards at heart, all of them, I’ll be sworn.”

“Cowards they are not,” said Kate, her eyes flashing to hear her countrymen thus stigmatized. “At least you did not seem to think them such when Capt. Preston, at the head of his troop, dashed up to your lines, and challenged you to fight singly, or otherwise. I heard myself the alarm with which the soldiers cried, ‘Here comes Preston again!’ ”

“He well knew no one would accept his challenge: so his bravado cost him nothing.”

“Go meet him when he comes again, and see whether he meant it for bravado!” retorted Kate; then, all at once remembering the enthusiasm into which she had been hurried, she colored, and resumed her work in some embarrassment.

Major Lindsay stifled a muttered execration on his American rival, for he began to fear, from the spirit which Kate had shown, that the chivalric exploits of Capt. Preston were making a decided impression on her heart. The desperate daring which the rebel officer had shown within the last few days, Major Lindsay had attributed, in his own mind, to a desire on the part of Preston to dazzle his mistress; but Kate’s behavior toward himself had been so flattering, in comparison to that bestowed on others, that, until this moment, he had consoled himself that these exploits had been thrown away. He sat, therefore, silent and moody; and the conversation ceased.

Gradually, one by one, the visiters thinned off and returned to their quarters, until only Col. Watson and himself were left. The Colonel and Mrs. Blakeley had sat down to a game of cards in a distant corner of the apartment. Here was an opportunity to decide his fate. It might be the last time he would find Kate alone, for the camp was expected to move in a few days. The occasion was not to be neglected, and, doubtful as he felt of the issue, he arose, and leaning over her, said, in a low voice,

“I fear, my dear Miss Mowbray, that I offended you by what I said of Capt. Preston. I forgot, for a moment, that he was an old playmate of yours. You cannot tell how pained I am that any thing I said should displease you.”

“It matters little—I am not at all displeased,” said Kate, keeping her eyes on her work, her heart beating violently. “Capt. Preston needs no defender in me, nor asks one. I but spoke generally in behalf of my countrymen.”

Major Lindsay saw her embarrassment, and, misinterpreting the cause, drew a favorable omen from it.

“You relieve my heart from a load,” he said. “I could bear any thing rather than your displeasure. Indeed you must long have seen how I loved you. Nay, do not rise from the table. I worship the very ground you tread on—my life itself is bound up in your smiles—all I have, heart, fortune, reputation, I lay at your feet⁠—”

He would have continued in the same impassioned strain, but Kate, summoning up all her self-command, rose with dignity.

“It pains me to hear this, Major Lindsay,” she said. “I will be frank. That you sought my society, I saw, but that you loved me I never believed.”

The face of Major Lindsay flushed, but he controlled his features, and detained her as she would have moved away.

“Do not bid me despair,” he said. “In time I may be allowed to hope. Let me fancy that my devotion may at last win me this fair hand.”

“No time can alter my sentiments,” said Kate, coldly.

“I will serve for you as for a second Rachel,” and the major still detained her.

“Nay! I can listen to this no more. You forget yourself!” said Kate, severely.

At this instant, and before Major Lindsay could reply, Kate saw that her aunt had finished the game of cards, and was coming toward her. The major with chagrin turned away. He would have given worlds if the tête-à-tête could have been protracted, for then he would have endeavored to discover if Kate really loved Preston, or was indifferent to all.

“Rejected, by George!” he muttered. “But I must have her, however,” he soliloquized. “She is too lovely, too charming altogether, to be sacrificed on a provincial—what a sensation she would create at court! Then she is heiress to one of the best properties in this colony, and since my cousin has married again, there is no telling how many new lives may come in between impoverished me and the earldom. By Jove! I wish this Preston had remained abroad a little longer, or that he would get knocked over in some skirmish. I wouldn’t hesitate to give him his coup de grâce myself, if I had a chance. But he shan’t foil me. I’ll have Kate in spite of him. What a delicious creature she is! What eyes!—what an arm!”

Major Lindsay met Kate the ensuing day with an unruffled brow and without embarrassment. If there was any change in his demeanor, it was perceptible only in the assumption of greater deference toward her than before. Not Lord Orville himself, the preux chevalier of Evelina, could have shown more tact and delicacy in bestowing those thousand little attentions which go so far toward winning the female heart. Kate was annoyed. She saw that Major Lindsay, in spite of her decided language, still cherished the hope of winning her favor; but his conduct was so guarded as to forbid maiden modesty again alluding to the subject. She could only, therefore, endeavor, by a cold though polite behavior, to show that her sentiments were unchanged, hoping that in time he would tire of the pursuit. She little knew the pertinacity and unscrupulousness of the man with whom she had to deal.

Kate dared not, meanwhile, too closely to examine her own heart. She could not forget the exquisite pleasure which attended her last tête-à-tête with Preston, and her bosom thrilled whenever she thought of what might have been his words if Major Lindsay had not come in. The subsequent coldness and suspicion of Preston had piqued her, and she had resolved to punish him for his want of confidence and jealousy, by a little innocent coquetry with Major Lindsay in the evening. Fatal error! When she heard of his speedy departure from his own lips, she regretted for a moment her revenge; but her second feeling was that of anger at his conduct, and hence her assumed indifference. And yet, after the lapse of months, she felt herself the aggrieved party. Preston ought not to have been so jealous. He had no right to be offended at the show of only ordinary courtesy to a visiter. If he chose to be suspicious and proud, he ought to be taught better by neglect. He had trifled with her, else he would have called again, and sought an explanation. But perhaps he did not love her, perhaps he had meant nothing by his words. She usually ended her reveries at this point with a sigh, and a haughty resolution to discard him from her heart. She would love no one who did not love her.

In a few days Col. Watson left his encampment for Georgetown, where he arrived, harassed by constant attacks, Major Lindsay accompanying him.

——

CHAPTER III.

And there was arming in hot haste.

Byron.

The war meanwhile went on with increased ferocity. The tide of battle, which at first ran in Marion’s favor, had now turned, and his enemies were everywhere in the ascendant. The army of Greene was in North Carolina, occupied in watching Cornwallis. Lord Rawdon held Camden with a strong force. All the other important posts were in the hands of the British. Marion, for the first time disheartened, talked of retiring behind the mountains. Armed bodies of Tories, in the mean time, traversed the country, plundering at will, and hanging, without even the form of a trial, those of their unfortunate prisoners they had found in arms.

Mr. Mowbray had long contemplated rising in favor of his country again, and no time seemed to him so proper as the present, when all others were becoming disheartened. His daughter he knew to be in safety with her aunt, who had always maintained a strict neutrality: so there was nothing to withhold him longer from his purpose. He had accordingly secretly exerted himself to raise a troop among the young men of his neighborhood, and his recruiting had been attended with such success, that their rising only waited the removal of a large body of armed Tories who had lately infested the vicinity. On the first signal from Mr. Mowbray, they were to rendezvous at the Hall.

Mowbray Hall was one of those fine old mansions a few of which linger in South Carolina, fast fading monuments of the departing splendors of her old provincial nobility. The building stood at the head of a long avenue of trees, and was a large double house, with an immense hall in the centre. The outhouses had suffered considerably since the war began, and many of the fields lay bare and uncultivated; but the mansion itself was still in a remarkably fine state of preservation, and the architectural boast of the county.

It was a fine, clear morning when Mr. Mowbray stood on the steps of his house, to welcome the recruits who, in obedience to his long expected signal, were on that day to repair to the rendezvous. His feelings, as one stout yeoman after another rode up, were those of exultation, dashed a little perhaps with regret for having ever despaired of his country.

“How fortunate that Capt. Ball, with his Tories, has moved up the river,” said his lieutenant, who stood beside him. “We shall have time to discipline our men, and rally a greater number to our ranks. Our twenty tall fellows, though brave enough, could scarcely make head against his hundred troopers. We have a good week before us.”

“Very true; and we have assurances of nearly thirty more, provided we display our banner. Three days of quiet is all I ask. Then, I hope, we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves even if Ball’s Tories return,” said Mr. Mowbray.

“If we are gone when he comes back, my dear sir, he will wreak his vengeance, I fear, on our homes,” said the other, with something of a sigh.

“I hope you do not think of drawing back,” replied Mr. Mowbray. “In this cause a man must be willing to sacrifice father and mother, house and land, good repute, and all else he holds dear in the world. God help us!”

“I am with you till death,” said the lieutenant, thinking at that moment how much more his superior had to lose than himself: and affected by such heroic and self-sacrificing patriotism.

At this instant a horseman was seen galloping furiously down the avenue, and as he came onward, he waved his cap as if desirous to call their attention to something in the road which he had left. Mr. Mowbray looked in that direction, but a clump of woodland shut out the highway from sight; however, after a moment’s delay, the voice of one of the recruits called his attention to what seemed a cloud of dust rising above the tree tops. Almost at the same instant a number of troopers appeared at the head of the avenue. The approaching horseman now had reached the lawn.

“We are betrayed,” he cried, almost exhausted. “Ball’s Tories are behind, and have chased me for two miles. To arms—to arms!”

The time was too short to allow of barricading the house; but the great hall was speedily turned into a fortification. The doors at either end were closed, barred, and further defended by chairs and tables piled against them; while the entrances into the parlors were closed effectually in the same way. The great window at the head of the staircase, and the one at the other extremity of the upper hall were guarded by a proper force. These dispositions had scarcely been completed when the Tories galloped up to the lawn, on which they dismounted with loud shouts, and began instant preparations for the attack.

When Mr. Mowbray’s scanty troop was mustered, it was found to contain but ten exclusive of himself, for nearly half of the expected recruits had not yet had time to arrive. It was evident there had been treachery somewhere among them; for none but those who had enlisted knew of this rendezvous; and the sudden disappearance of the enemy two days before, it was now apparent, had been a feint. However, nothing remained but to sell their lives as dearly as possible.

Mr. Mowbray walked around among his men, and himself saw that every thing was ready. He exhorted them, in a few words, to do their duty manfully. His short harangue was brought to a speedy conclusion by a loud cheer on the part of the assailants, and by a shower of bullets aimed at the hall window, as they advanced to the attack.

“Fire coolly—and waste no shot!” he said, sternly, himself handling a musket.

Four men fell at that first discharge; and, mad with rage and shame, the assailants strove to climb up the pilasters of the hall door; but they were beaten thence by the butts of the defenders’ muskets. The men, however, who achieved this were severely wounded by the rifles of the Tories, who, keeping watch, aimed wherever a head appeared. An effort was now made to break in the hall door. An axe was brought, and, after several blows, one of the heavy panels gave way. But the moment the wood fell crashing in, a volley poured through the aperture drove back the assailants, who, thus foiled at every point, retreated to the cover of the outhouses, as if to hold a consultation.

The little garrison was now mustered. One of its members had been shot dead at the great hall window, and several were wounded. The hurts were bandaged as well as possible, and the stock of ammunition was distributed more equally. Their slight successes had inspirited the men; they began now to talk of foiling the enemy; and when notice was again given of his approach they repaired to their posts with alacrity and exultation.

The Tories now seemed to have resolved trying a combined attack on all parts of the house. One party advanced toward the hall door in front—another made the circuit of the mansion to assail the one in the rear—and a third remained at one angle, as if contemplating an assault on the side when the rest should be fully engaged. Mr. Mowbray’s heart forewarned him of the result when he saw these preparations.

“They are breaking into the parlors,” exclaimed one of the men, rushing up the staircase, at the very instant that a new volley was discharged on the house from the assailants.

Mr. Mowbray listened and heard the dull crash of an axe, followed by the breaking of glass. The parlor shutters had merely been barred, and the parlors once gained it was only necessary to break down the doors leading to the entry, which were comparatively weak, and slightly barricaded. To desert the hall up stairs would be to seduce the Tories in front and rear from their cover, and throw open an entrance to them by the way they had first essayed. It became necessary, therefore, to divide his already small force, and, leaving a few to maintain the old positions, defend the threatened door with two or three trusty arms.

“We must sell our lives dearly,” he said, as he took his station behind the door, posting a man on each side.

The enemy was now heard leaping into the parlor, and simultaneously a general attack began on all sides. The bullets rattled against the wall; shouts and cries of encouragement rose on both sides. From the quick firing overhead Mr. Mowbray knew that his men in that quarter were actively engaged. The axe was now heard against the parlor door before him, and the frail wood quivered under every blow. Another stroke and the panel gave way. Instantly the musket of Mr. Mowbray was aimed through the aperture at the man who wielded the axe, who fell dead at the explosion. But another promptly seized the instrument, and, posting himself with more caution at the side of the opening, dealt such vigorous strokes that the door speedily fell in. As the planks crashed to the floor there was a general rush on the part of the Tories in the parlor, toward the aperture.

“Meet them bravely!” shouted Mr. Mowbray. “Strike home, and we drive them back.”

He fired a pistol as he spoke at the foremost assailant; but the Tory knocked up the weapon, and the ball lodged in the ceiling.

“Hurrah! we have them now,” shouted this man, who was their leader. “Revenge your comrades!”

“Stand fast!” cried Mr. Mowbray, the lion of his nature aroused.

For a few seconds the melee was terrific. Now that the foe had effected an entrance, the defence of the other posts was no longer necessary, and the followers of Mr. Mowbray crowded to his assistance. On the other hand the Tories poured into the parlor, and thence struggled to make their way into the hall. Inch by inch they fought their road with overpowering numbers; and inch by inch, with desperate but unavailing courage, the Whigs gave ground. The clash of swords, the explosion of pistols, the shouts of either party were mingled in wild disorder with the oaths and shrieks of the wounded and dying. Swaying to and fro, now one party, now the other giving ground, the combat raged with increasing fury. But numbers at last prevailed. When most of his followers had fallen, Mr. Mowbray, however, still remained, wounded yet erect, struggling like a noble stag at bay.

“Surrender, and we give quarter!” shouted the Tory leader, who, throughout the conflict, had seemed desirous rather of taking him prisoner than slaying him.

Mr. Mowbray thought of his child and faltered: but remembering that the enemy never showed clemency he said, striking at his adversary,

“Never, so help me God!”

But that moment of indecision sealed his fate. The Tory leader made a sign to his followers, two of whom rushed in on the old man; and, as he spoke, his sword was knocked from his hand, and himself overthrown and bound.

Two days after he was led in triumph into the streets of Georgetown, nor was it concealed from him that his life had been spared only that he might expiate his rebellion on the scaffold.

His captor immediately repaired to Major Lindsay’s quarters, where he remained for nearly an hour. When left alone, Major Lindsay exclaimed, “My information was true, then; he has been caught with arms in his hands. So far all goes well. That proud beauty is now mine, for she will marry me to save her father’s life.”

[To be continued.

MIRIAM.

———

BY KATE DASHWOOD.

———

Oh Harp of Judah! long thy thrilling strain

Hath slumbered ’mid the gloom of centuries⁠—

Save when some master-spirit woke again

Thy silent chords of thousand symphonies.

Not thine, his swelling anthems loudly ringing⁠—

Oh Maid of Judah! with thy prophet-song,

And sounding timbrel’s voice, all proudly flinging

Thy warrior-notes Judea’s hills among!

Oh voiceless harp! fain would my soul-wrapt ear

Catch some faint echo from thy silent strings.

And, as these trembling fingers half in fear

Sweep o’er thy slumbering chords—lo! there up-springs

Strange spirit-music, tremulous and low

As half-breathed sigh—to fitful silence hushing

Those thrilling strains my unskilled fingers know

Not to control. But hush! again their gushing

Swells like loud battle-peal on fierce blasts rushing.

Night! o’er thy mountains, oh Gilboa! where

The mighty spear of Saul was rent in twain.

And haughty Israel’s curse was branded there⁠—

The blood of her first king—dark as the curse of Cain!

Night—on Mount Moriah! o’er his solemn brow

Those sentinels that guard the halls of Heaven

As brightly keep their wakeful vigils now

As when He knelt ’neath their pure beams at even,

And prayed in agony that we might be forgiven.

Moonlight o’er Galilee! the sparkling wave

That bounded as the sunbeams kissed its breast,

Are now all motionless and silent, save

Their low, hushed murmurs where the soft winds rest.

Night o’er lone Samaria! thy dark hill’s crest

Fades proudly into gloom. Still linger there

Thy maidens at “The Well” His feet have prest;

Still floats their broken music on the air

At eve, blent with the wave’s low murmured prayer.

Thy moon rides slowly o’er thy hills, oh Galilee!

Proud Queen of Heaven! bound to her far-off throne

Behind the Syrian mountains—and thy sea,

Oh lone Tiberias! where of late she shone,

Mirrors the stars upon thy bosom—stars of voiceless Night.

The dark Chaldean, from his cloud-hung tower,

Keeps his lone vigils by thy waning light,

For Israel keepeth Feast of solemn power,[^[1]]

When thy bright beams shall fade at morning hour.

The stern Chaldean turns him from his lore

Where he hath writ the mighty destiny

Those stars revealed. Now seeks he thy dim shore,

Tiberias! the spirit-minstrelsy

Of unborn Ages breathes upon his lyre

In soul-wrapt flame. But hush! the far-off notes

Of timbrel-echoes ’mong the hills expire,

As ’twere some seraph’s song o’er earth that floats

And fades away in air—when lo! proud Miriam stands

Before him and his prophecy commands.

THE CHALDEAN’S PROPHECY.

“Daughter of Judah! on thy brow

Thy kingly line is proudly blent

With Israel’s faith, and woman’s vow⁠—

Now love, now pride—each lineament.

Thine is the faith thy fathers bore⁠—

A heritage despised, contemned⁠—

The fearful curse still lingers o’er

Israel’s outcast tribes condemned.

Thine is their faith—but dost thou deem

Thy soul is with the Nazarene?”

“False Prophet! had Ben Ezra’s ear

But heard thy lying prophecy,

Thou stand’st not, Heaven-daring here,

To mock our Faith thus impiously!

For Israel’s Lord is still our God!

And Israel’s outcast tribes shall turn

Back to these hills our fathers trod,

And fallen Judah cease to mourn.

False Seer! thy words I heed them not⁠—

Those stars are dim thine eyes have sought.”

. . . . . .

Darkness o’er the Eternal City!—gloom

O’er her thousand palaces! and Night,

Deep, solemn Night! broods ever o’er the tomb

Of her vast temples, fallen in their might.

Still to their broken shrines worn pilgrims come⁠—

And ’neath their mighty columns, sunken low,

The fierce Bedouin seeks his midnight home,

And treacherous lurks where footsteps chance to go.

Proud Rome! thy thousand hills are silent now⁠—

Where waved the “Imperial Eagle” o’er their brow.[^[2]]

Yet o’er her mighty temples’ fallen shrines

Still sleeps the sunshine ’mid the shadows there;

There many a wearied pilgrim-wanderer finds

A peaceful rest from Life’s dark toil and care.

And there awaiteth many a scattered one

Of Israel’s people—till the joyful day

Shall see the long “lost tribe of Judah” come

Once more to thy blest land, oh Palestine! for aye,

And here, ’mid fallen Rome, Ben Ezra bides⁠—

Miriam is not—earth hath no joy besides.

. . . . . .

America the blest! all proudly to thy shore

Fled Rome’s imperial eagle! thy fair land

Sleeps e’er ’mid bloom and sunshine; evermore

Thy Freedom’s holy cause shall firmly stand.

Our noble sires! their true hearts’ incense rose

Here upon God’s free altars; let us keep

Their memories holy! Room at our shrines for those

Who seek, like them, a rest from bondage deep.

And Miriam! was that prophecy a dream?

Thy soul—thy faith is with the Nazarene.

THE NIGHT WATCH.

A TALE.

News, fitted to the night.

Black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.

King John.

On a cold December night, in the winter of 183-, four persons were assembled in an upper chamber of an old out-house in one of the crooked streets at the “North End” of Boston. This was in former times the most fashionable part, the court end, as it were, of the town, and the house of which I speak had been the residence of one of the old colonial governors, and bore traces of its former magnificence, now almost effaced by the ravages of time and neglect.

It was a dark and tempestuous night. The wind howled mournfully through the narrow streets and around the tall houses of the “North End,” and the few passengers who were abroad wrapped their garments tighter about them, and hurried to seek shelter from the cutting blast. Within doors the aspect of things was more cheerful. An old-fashioned wood fire burned brightly on the hearth; the heavy folds of the crimson curtains excluded every breath of cold air, and the usual conveniences of comfort and luxury were distributed through the apartment. The company, consisting of myself and three female friends, were drawn closely up to the cheerful blaze, apparently as comfortable as possible. The cause of our meeting here was this. A neighbor, one Mr. Helger, had died very suddenly the day before. He had formerly been engaged largely in trade, but meeting with reverses which soured his disposition, and cast a shade of gloom over his character, he had withdrawn entirely from the world, and lived all alone by himself in this large house. We, being neighbors, had offered our services to watch with the corpse, as was the custom. The room in which we were had been the apartment of the deceased, and was fitted up with much taste, and even luxury, but all the rest of the house was bare and unfurnished, and was said by the neighbors to be haunted. The corpse was placed in a room just across the entry, so that we could hear a noise or disturbance if there should be any. Refreshments had been provided, and we had nothing to do but to make ourselves comfortable, and amuse ourselves until morning should release us from our duty.

The time flew by very quickly in pleasant chat, and when, during a lull of the storm, we heard the neighboring clock on the steeple of the North church strike the hour of twelve, we were all surprised at the lateness of the hour.

“’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When church-yards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to the world,”

said I; “can’t some of you ladies tell a genuine, old-fashioned, terrific ghost-story for our edification? Surely, Mrs. Johnstone, you must know one; you always have plenty of interesting stories.”

The lady addressed thought a moment in silence, and then replied, “I can tell you a ghost-story, and what is more, vouch for its reality, for the incident happened to myself. It was a good many years ago, but it is as distinctly imprinted on my memory as if it took place yesterday.” A ghost-story, told by one of the actors in it, could not fail to be interesting; so we drew our chairs nearer the fire, assumed a listening attitude, and the lady began.

“You must know, in the first place, that I was married at a very early age, and a year or two after, left my native place, and went with my husband to live in the interior of Vermont. The country was little settled at that time, being mostly covered with unbroken forests. I felt the change of situation very strongly. I had lived all my life in the midst of a large city, surrounded by a numerous family of brothers and sisters. We had gone into society a good deal, and had been in the habit of seeing many people, and engaging in all the amusements of the day. My present residence was in the midst of dense forests, the next neighbor lived two miles off, and the nearest town was on the Connecticut, more than ten miles from our farm. The house stood on one corner of the clearing, not more than a hundred yards from the woods, through which, on stormy nights, the winds howled in mournful and sad tones. In winter the deep snows cut off all communication with the other parts of the country, and sometimes we did not see a stranger for months. To this lonely spot I had removed, after having always been accustomed to the noise and bustle of a city, and it was not strange that it should seem gloomy to me.

“One day in autumn, in the month of November I think it was, my husband told me that he was going to take his men and go over to the next town for some necessary articles, and he was afraid that he should not be able to get home that night. So away he went, and left me alone in the house, with the exception of my infant child. I had brought a black woman with me from home, but the change of situation did not agree with her. She had been taken ill, and had died about a fortnight before the time of which I speak. On account of the difficulty of procuring servants, I had not been able to get another woman to supply her place, so I was entirely alone.

“After supper I sat by the kitchen fire some time, till at last I dropped asleep in my chair. I was awakened by the shrill sound of the tall, old-fashioned clock, striking the hour of ten. The candle had burned low in its socket, and the expiring embers diffused a faint glow through the room. I jumped up, rubbed my eyes, and prepared to go to bed. I took the light and was leaving the room, when somebody knocked at the outside door of the house. I was a little startled that any one should knock at the door at that time of night, but presently I thought that my husband had changed his mind and returned home after all. I went and opened the door, but nobody was there. I shut the door, rather surprised, and sat down by the fire.

“To understand my story clearly, you must know the arrangement of the room in which I was. On one side was the door leading into the open air, on the opposite side, the doors leading to the parlors, etc. On the third side of the room was the fireplace, and on the fourth, the door of a bed-room in which black Charlotte had slept, and where, as I have said, she died a fortnight before. This door was a little way open. I went and shut it, and had hardly done so, when the knocking was repeated with startling distinctness, and a moment after I saw the door of the bed-room slowly open, and remain ajar. I went again to the door and looked out, but, as before, I could see no one. I then shut the door of the bed-room and latched it fast. I began to feel frightened, for I could find no one who could have knocked at the door, nor could I account for the mysterious opening of the bed-room door. All the stories of ghosts and witches that I had ever heard came into my head, and hundreds of imaginary horrors beside. I made up my mind, however, that if I should hear the knocking again, I would go into the bed-room and see if any thing was there. I listened. All was quiet, and I could hear nothing but the beating of my own heart. A third time the knocking was repeated, slowly and distinctly, and a third time the haunted door slowly opened. I seized the candle and rushed in. I looked every where, but nothing was to be seen. I came out, shut the door behind me, and then went out into the open air. No one was in sight. There was a storm coming up, and the wind howled mournfully through the branches of the tall trees. To my excited fancy every thing looked strangely and differently from its usual appearance. By the dim light of the waning moon, which was half obscured by the driving clouds that shrouded her disk, I fancied I saw something moving in the deep shadow of the trees. I shuddered and closed the door. I went up stairs and looked at my child. He lay calmly sleeping in his cradle, and his deep breathing was the only sound that disturbed the stillness of the house. I felt more assured after looking at the innocent face of the little boy. I felt that even if God should permit an evil spirit to work its will for a time, he would never allow it to harm a thing so holy and innocent as that little child. I endeavored to calm my mind by the reflection that I had always treated the dead woman with kindness, and if it was really her ghost that was haunting the house, it would have no reason to injure me. But my heart grew sick within me when I heard again—‘Knock! knock! knock!’ and saw the door of the haunted room slowly open as before.”

Here Mrs. Johnstone stopped talking, and listened intently, as if she was trying to catch some distant sound.

“I certainly heard it,” at length she said. “I hear it now—I certainly hear a noise as of some one moving in the death-chamber. Let us go in and see if any thing is there.”

So saying she arose, took a candle in her hand, and went across the entry to the neighboring apartment. Presently she shrieked and ran back into the room where we were, with her face as pale as death, and said, in a very excited tone⁠—

“Oh! such a sight as I have seen! The corpse sat upright in his coffin, and seemed as if trying to speak to me.”

“You want to frighten us, Mrs. Johnstone,” said I. “First you tell an awful story about a mysterious knocking, and then, to increase the effect, you come in and tell us this. I am sorry to say that I don’t believe a word of it.”

“It is no time for jesting now, young man,” rejoined she. “God forbid that I should sport with such an awful thing as death. But as true as I hope for salvation I saw Mr. Helger sitting erect in his coffin, and such a look as he gave me—it will haunt me till my dying day. But, if you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.”

I hastily seized a candle, and went to the room where the corpse was laid. The rest of the company followed at a little distance. Just as I approached the door I thought I heard a step in the inside of the room, as of one coming to meet me. I said nothing, however, and took hold of the door-handle to open the door—but to my horror it was grasped on the inside and violently turned. I seized the door and held it to with all my strength, while it was pulled strongly against me by whatever infernal shape was in the room. The women screamed dreadfully and dropped the lights, which went out, leaving us only the dim light from the fire in the opposite room. The storm without howled round the old house with redoubled fury. It was a fearful scene. I felt faint and sick—my strength gave way—I let go the door. Mr. Helger, in his grave-clothes, stood in the door-way, deathly pale, his face streaming with blood, and his features distorted by a ghastly grin. We turned and ran frantically down stairs, tumbling over each other in our haste.

Just as we were running out of the house we heard Mr. Helger behind us. We ran up the street all the faster, the women screaming at the top of their voices. The noise and hubbub at last woke up a watchman, who had been peaceably slumbering in a sheltered corner. That functionary, wrathful at being disturbed from his nap, arrested our farther progress with his hook.

“An’ what the divil wud yees be doin’ wid yerselves here, the night?” inquired he, in a decided brogue.

This pertinent question brought me to my senses. I pulled some money from my pocket, and told the son of Erin to come back with us and he should be well paid for his services. We went back toward the house, and there, near the door, we found Mr. Helger, lying exhausted and fainting on the ground.

We raised him up and carried him back into the house, and put him into bed; and then I despatched Pat for a physician. He soon returned, bringing one whom he had roused from his slumbers. The physician took out his lancet and bled the patient, and, having administered the usual remedies, I had the satisfaction of hearing him say that he thought it probable in a few days Mr. Helger would recover, and be as well as ever. He advised us to remain with him, however, that night, and give him hot drinks from time to time. I paid the physician and the watchman for their trouble and dismissed them.

It was understood that Mr. Helger’s death had been very sudden, and it turned out that instead of really dying, he had only fallen into a deep trance, and on arousing from it had frightened us so dreadfully. We were all put in excellent spirits by this happy termination of our adventure—this restoration of the dead to life.

“Supposing you let us hear the rest of your ghost story now, Mrs. Johnstone,” said one of the ladies—“if that awful interruption hasn’t taken away all your desire to finish it.”

“Oh, no,” replied Mrs. Johnstone, “I will tell you the rest with much pleasure—perhaps it may turn out as well as our present adventure has.

“I believe I left off where the knocking was again repeated at the door. Well—the mysterious door again opened, but nobody was there. I felt desperate. I felt that my reason would give way if I should remain quiet any longer without doing something, and I determined that, if the knocking was repeated, I would take my child in my arms and run round the house, and see if any thing was there which could have produced these unaccountable sounds. I waited patiently till the knocking was repeated, and then went out of doors and ran round the house. The mystery was solved.

“The sheep had come down from the woods, through fear of bears, and were collected in a crowd behind the house. I stood looking at them, and presently one raised his fore-leg and knocked against the house. It is done with the bent joint of the fore-leg, and those who are acquainted with the habits of sheep know that it produces a sound exactly like the knocking of a human being at a door. I went back into the house, and in a few moments I heard the sheep knock, and saw the door open a moment afterward. The house, built in a hurry, as is usual in a newly settled country, had not been clap-boarded, so that the jarring of the knock was easily communicated to the bed-room door, and the latch being worn, it opened a little way by its own weight, and then remained fixed.

“Thus was the mystery cleared up, and you may conceive what a load was taken off of my heart. I went to bed and slept soundly till morning, when the glorious sun with his cheerful beams effectually dispelled all the phantoms and terrors of the preceding night.

“Next day my husband returned home, and I related to him all the circumstances of my fright. He praised me for the courage I had shown in going out to investigate the cause of the sounds, and said that he thought that few men would have been as brave as I was. And sure enough, on the very next night, my husband and I were sitting in the parlor, when suddenly the man-servant, a great strapping fellow, came running in, as white as a sheet, and cried out,

“ ‘Oh, Lord! we’re haunted! we’re haunted! Charlotte’s ghost has come to haunt us!’

“ ‘What do you mean, you foolish fellow?’ said my husband, ‘go back into the kitchen, and don’t let me hear any more such nonsense.’

“He went back again, somewhat abashed, but soon returned, almost frightened to death.

“ ‘I wouldn’t go back into that room again if you’d give me fifty dollars,’ said he; ‘it’s haunted. There was a dreadful knocking, but nobody was at the door, and then I saw Charlotte’s ghost open the door of the bed-room. Oh, Lord! what will become of us! what will become of us!’

“My husband took pity on him, seeing that he was so much alarmed, and showed him the cause of the phenomena. He was very much ashamed of his fright, and we heard no more of Charlotte’s ghost after that.”

Here Mrs. Johnstone finished her story, which we all declared was an excellent one, and praised not a little the courage she had shown. By this time the morning had dawned;

“Aurora’s harbinger,

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,

Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone.”

TO THE HUSBAND.

Speak kindly to her, little dost thou know

What utter wretchedness, what hopeless wo

Hang on those bitter words—that stern reply⁠—

The cold demeanor and reproving eye;

The death-steel pierces not with keener dart

Than unkind words in woman’s trusting heart.

The frailer being by thy side

Is of a finer mould—keener her sense

Of pain—of wrong—greater her love of

Tenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!

Each ruder breath upon its strings complains

In lowest notes of sadness, not heard but

Felt. It wears away her life like a deep

Under current, while the fair mirror of

The changeless surface gives not one sign

Of wo.

Ella.

SENSE AND SYMPATHY.

———

BY F. E. F.

———

CHAPTER I.

Use every man after his desert, and who shall escape whipping. Hamlet.

“Did you ever hear a man talk so like a fool as Mr. Barton did yesterday, Sarah?” said Mary Minturn to Miss Gorham. “I declare, I pitied his wife—did not you?”

“No, certainly not,” replied her friend. “Why should I? Mr. Barton does not talk more like a fool now than he did before his marriage. Fanny chose him with her eyes or rather ears open, and if she could put up with his folly then, she may now.”

“True enough,” answered Mary. “And how she came to fall in love with him passes my comprehension. I would not have believed it had it not actually happened.”

“Really, Mary,” said Sarah laughing, “your sympathies and compassions often pass my comprehension. Here you are pitying Fanny for having married a man, who, by your own account, she is in love with.”

“No, Sarah,” replied Mary, “I am not pitying her for marrying the man she is in love with, but for being ashamed of the man she loves.”

“Ashamed of the man she loves!” repeated Miss Gorham with infinite contempt. “Now, really, Mary, you had better reserve your compassion for a more deserving object. If Fanny has married a man she is ashamed of, she should be ashamed of herself.”

“Did you see how painfully she colored as she caught the glance you gave me, when he was attempting an account of Dr. H’s lecture? I could not help feeling for her.”

“I did not remark it,” replied Miss Gorham, “and I have no sympathy for a woman who has so little feeling or principle, I care not which, as to marry a man she despises. She probably does not feel for herself, and I do not know why we should put ourselves to the pain of feeling for her. I remember the time when Fanny Jones used to laugh at Tom Barton as much as either you or I.”

“So do I,” replied Mary. “She little thought then she would ever have him.”

“But finding she could get nobody better, she has thought it as well to marry him, and that is what you call falling in love, Mary.”

“Not at all,” rejoined her friend warmly. “But remember it is three years since Mr. Barton first addressed Fanny, and although she ridiculed him then, she has become attached to him since. His devotion and constancy have really won her.”

“If then she is in love with him,” said Sarah, “she should be satisfied with him; and if she is not she should not have married him; so arrange it any way you will, Mary, I do not see that she is deserving of much pity. If she fancies he has grown wiser during the last three years, so much the better for her; and if she knows he has not, so much the worse. Either way I have no sympathy to bestow upon her, Mary.”

“Well, I have,” replied Mary. “I always pity a sensible person who does a silly thing. It is laying up themselves such a store of suffering for the future.”

“’Pon my word, Mary, you amuse me,” said Sarah, laughing. “Now I might possibly feel for a fool who was committing a folly, as I would for a blind man who walked into the fire, but as to wasting my compassion on those who do such things with their eyes open, is really more than I can undertake. But then,” she continued, half contemptuously, “I have not your stock of sensibilities to go upon, and consequently, perhaps, do well to economize mine, or I certainly should exhaust them before they were called upon for a really deserving object.”

“I consider all suffering as deserving pity,” replied Mary quietly.

“That is more than I do,” returned Sarah with spirit. “Sin and suffering may go together, but I do not consider them equally deserving of compassion, or I should go to the jails and work-houses to bestow my sympathies.”

“And if you did,” replied Mary, “I believe you would go to the places of all others where they would be most called forth. I never pass the city prison without thinking of the many unwritten tragedies it contains. Could we but know the true history of every heart, and the real anguish of every crime that have peopled its walls, I believe we should feel more sorrow than indignation for its unhappy inmates.”

“Then,” replied Sarah, almost angrily, “I think it is well we do not. If in your fine sensibilities we are to lose all sense of right and wrong, I think your ‘unwritten tragedies’ had better remain ‘unwritten’ and unread. They would do infinitely more harm than good. ‘Sorrowing for the unhappy inmates of prisons and work-houses!’ Who would imagine you were talking of jail-birds and vagrants! This is the sickly sentimentality of the day, and I am sorry to see you falling into it, Mary. Let sin meet with its due punishment, and crime call forth the righteous indignation it merits, and then we may hope to see them somewhat diminished.”

“That sin meets with its punishment, even in this world, there can be no doubt, Sarah,” said Mary.

“Does it?” said Sarah, with some bitterness. “And roguery is never successful, nor dishonesty prosperous, I suppose. I think some of our broken institutions and flourishing directors might tell a different story! However, that it will be punished in the next,” she added, in a tone that implied she would be much disappointed if it were otherwise, “is certain, but in this sin and impudence decidedly carry the day. You have only to look around you to see the truth of what I say.”

The discussion, which was growing rather warm, was here fortunately interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Eldon, a married sister of Sarah’s, who as usual had much to hear and to say when she had not seen Sarah for several days, as happened to be the case on the present occasion. A lively and somewhat satirical description of the dinner at Mrs. Barton’s formed the chief topic of conversation for some time, which highly amused Mrs. Eldon, and even Mary could not help joining in the laugh, although she could not always agree with her quick-witted and rather merciless friend. In fact they seldom did agree, for two more opposite characters than Mary and Sarah could scarcely be met; and what the bond of attraction could be that rendered them so intimate, would have puzzled most people to determine. Sarah was endowed with more than an ordinary share of sense, but it was that kind of good clear hard sense that seldom attracts, although it often amuses. Her chief virtue was her justice, on which she prided herself, and she valued principle, while she placed little faith on feeling. Sensibility and imagination she utterly despised.

Mary, on the contrary, was full of quick sympathies and bright theories, and though often wrong in her premises, was always amiable in her conclusions.

Notwithstanding that they seldom thought alike on any subject, Sarah loved Mary, and, moreover, loved to put her down, which, being easily done, was perhaps a charm in itself; and then she could take liberties with Mary’s good temper, which she could not do with every body’s. And Mary respected Sarah’s mind and relied upon her integrity, although she was somewhat afraid of the severity of her judgments. And besides, they had grown up together, and had got used to each other, which, after all, explains more attachments than any theory of sympathies and associations we have yet met with.

Mrs. Eldon was often amused with the opposite accounts the young friends gave of the same occurrence, and would frequently say, as she laughed,

“One would really suppose, girls, you had been at different places.”

Sarah boasted that she told things just as she saw them, and was very fond of what she called “the plain English of the case;” while Mary perhaps arrived quite as nearly at the truth in making some allowance for human weakness, and in having some compassion for its inconsistencies.

“Why did you not come to tea last evening, Charlotte?” said Sarah, addressing Mrs. Eldon. “I kept the table waiting almost an hour for you.”

“My dear child, I was in such a fright and agitation at that time, that I forgot all about you and your tea-table. Master Georgey escaped from his nurse, and we could not find him for hours. I was almost wild with anxiety and alarm.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed her sister, with much interest; “and where did you find him?”

“Nearly a mile and a half from home. I don’t know how he managed to wander so far, for you know he is not quite two years old yet.”

“And what did you do to him when you found him?” inquired Miss Gorham.

“Do to him? poor little soul; why I gave him his supper and put him to bed,” replied Mrs. Eldon. “The child was exhausted with crying, besides being half dead with fright and fatigue.”

“You don’t mean to say that you did not punish him for his excursion?” exclaimed Sarah, almost incredulously.

“Punish him! No, certainly not,” replied her sister; “but I did what was much wiser. I had a padlock put upon the gate through which the little dog made his escape; so it cannot happen again, and that, you know, is all that is wanted.”

But upon that point Sarah did not at all agree with her sister. She wanted a little summary justice besides, and she said,

“Well, if that is not spoiling children, I do not know what is. And this is the way you let Georgey disobey with impunity, is it?”

“I am sure even you would have been satisfied if you had seen the state the poor little fellow was in when he was brought home,” replied Mrs. Eldon. “You would have thought him quite punished enough. She will not be so hard-hearted by and by, Mary, when she has children of her own,” continued Mrs. Eldon, smiling.

But Sarah was far from satisfied, and was disposed to contend the point, when her sister, rising, said,

“It is time for me to be going home. Is there any thing you want, or that I can do for you?”

“Nothing,” replied Sarah.

“Without,” said Mary, laughing, “you will give Georgey a whipping as soon as you get home. Now acknowledge, Sarah, that you would feel better if Mrs. Eldon would promise to act upon the suggestion.”

“I think Georgey would be the better, if I am not,” replied Sarah. “It is of great importance that he learns early that no misdemeanor will be overlooked.”

“When I can prevent the recurrence of a fault, I am satisfied,” replied Mrs. Eldon.

But Sarah was not. She was always for punishing the past, whether it had reference to the future or not.

Her sister bade her good morning, and Sarah remarking that “Charlotte would ruin her children if she persisted in her present system,” the subject dropped, and the friends soon after parted.

“Do you think Sarah will ever marry, Mrs. Eldon?” Mary asked one day; to which she replied,

“No, Mary, I fear she never will. Sarah, from having been placed so young, I suppose, at the head of my father’s house, has acquired an independence both of manner and temper, that, I think, will prevent her marrying. With her quick insight into character, and satirical turn of mind, too, she is not easily interested,” and, Mrs. Eldon might have added, was not interesting; for Sarah was now two-and-twenty, and never had had a lover, nor any thing that approached to one.

She was not handsome, and had no charm of manner that supplied the attraction of beauty. It is true she had more mind and information than usually falls to the lot of women, but though she often amused, she never won. She was upright, true, sincere, but there was a hardness in her uprightness, a brusquerie in her truths, and a downrightness in her sincerity, that rendered them any thing but attractive; and, in fact, she was not popular, and never had been admired. The few young men who from time to time visited at her father’s house she ridiculed without mercy, and Mrs. Eldon soon gave up all hope of ever seeing her married. She consoled herself for the fact by saying that Sarah was one of the few women to whose happiness it was not necessary, and that though with her strong mind and active habits she would have made an admirable head of a family, yet, as it was, she would probably become what is termed a “society woman,” and as such be a most useful member of the community. And, in fact, she seemed gradually falling into the course her sister had in her own mind marked out for her. There was so much good sense in all her views, and so much efficiency in carrying them out, that when once she fell into the class just indicated, she was found too useful to be readily relinquished. Nor was the occupation distasteful to her. Her high sense of duty forbade her living for her own pursuits alone, and watching over the poor, and correcting the idle, and directing and dictating generally, suited not less with her tastes than her principles. It was wonderful how much good she did, and how little gratitude she got for it. No one detected an impostor as quickly as she did, and all doubtful and difficult cases were turned over to her management, and every department that fell to her share was directed with vigilance and understanding, but at the same time many of her poor feared, and some of them hated her. She relieved their necessities while she scolded their recklessness, and most of them, as she turned away, said with bitterness, “that she was a hard lady,” while they blessed Mary’s bonny face when she accompanied her, and never failed to call her “a sweet spoken young lady,” for though she seldom went among them, and gave little, she listened kindly, and felt for their trials and distresses. The difference was, that Sarah’s charity was that of principle, Mary’s of feeling, and to the latter the poor and ignorant always respond, while they shrink from the former.

“Sarah,” said Mary one day, with some embarrassment, “I have a secret to tell you.”

“A secret,” said Sarah, “well, what is it?”

Mary colored as she answered, “Perhaps it may surprise you, and yet it seems to me you must half suspect it.”

“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” replied Sarah, “but if it is a long story give me that flannel petticoat I was making. There,” said she, threading her needle, “begin, I am ready.”

But it did not seem so easy to begin as Sarah supposed, for Mary cleared her throat and then said with an effort,

“I am going to be married.”

“You!” exclaimed Sarah, with extreme surprise. “Why, who to?”

“Oh, Sarah!” said Mary with some disappointment, “how can you ask? To Frank Ludlow, to be sure.”

“To Frank Ludlow!” repeated Sarah.

“Yes; you suspected it before, did you not?”

“Not I, indeed,” replied Sarah, so decidedly that Mary saw the surprise was perfect. “I have noticed that he was attentive to you, but I never dreamt of your liking him.”

“And why not?” asked Mary, not without a little mortification.

“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Sarah carelessly. Her manner seemed to imply that she saw nothing in Frank Ludlow to like particularly.

“You are not pleased,” said Mary presently, in a low voice. “I hope you don’t dislike Frank, Sarah?”

“Who! I dislike him?” said Sarah, looking up from her sewing with surprise. “Not at all. I don’t care about him either one way or the other. But that is not the point in question. If you are in love with him, that is enough, provided,” she added with a smile, “you do not require all your friends to be the same.”

Mary smiled faintly as she said, “Oh no!” for there was something in Sarah’s manner that disappointed and chilled her. She made an effort to say something about her long knowledge of his character and principles, to which Sarah replied,

“I dare say he is a very nice young man, Mary,” while she inwardly wondered what Mary could see in him, to think him worth all the sacrifices she must make if she married him.

Mary could say no more. There was something so slighting in the phrase “nice young man,” and it was so evident that Sarah did not think much of him, that her spirits sunk, and she soon after left her friend, more dejected than she had been since her engagement had taken place.

Mary soon after married, and Sarah was left more to herself and her independent ways than ever, and what with her societies and Sunday-schools, and the many occupations she contrived to make for herself, time rolled quietly on, and Sarah continued very much fulfilling the destiny her sister had long since predicted would be her fate.

“Charlotte,” said Mr. Eldon to his wife one day about this time, “what is Allen doing forever at your father’s? It seems to me that I never go there that I do not meet him.”

“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Eldon carelessly. “Yet, now that you speak of it, I remember that he is there a good deal. He is such a quiet, silent person that one sees him without thinking of him. I wonder what does take him there. I suppose it is a habit he has fallen into. You know young men will sometimes visit at a house without any particular object.”

“That may be,” replied her husband, “but I do not think it is so in the present instance. I think Allen admires Sarah.”

“Do you?” said his wife with surprise, for the idea of Sarah’s exciting particular admiration was new to her. “I should be sorry for him if it were so,” she added.

“Why so?” inquired Mr. Eldon.

“Because,” she replied, “he seems an amiable young man, and I should be sorry for his disappointment.”

“But I am not so sure he will be disappointed,” pursued Mr. Eldon.

“My dear husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon almost indignantly, “you surely do not suppose that Sarah would have a man so inferior to herself as Allen—he is a gentlemanly, amiable person, but decidedly weak.”

“Sarah would not be the first clever woman who has married a fool,” continued Mr. Eldon.

“But he must be younger than herself,” pursued Mrs. Eldon.

“About the same age, I imagine,” said her husband. “However, if the idea has not occurred to you before, look to it now. If I am not much mistaken, Sarah is interested in him. It would not be a bad match for her, though certainly not one we would have expected her to make.”

And, strange as it may seem, Mr. Eldon’s observations had not deceived him. Weak men generally admire clever women. Not having the capacity to entertain themselves, they like somebody who can do it for them. Sarah was now upon the point of doing what she had ridiculed others for all her life, viz., falling in love with one who was not her equal. She had often wondered before where the charm, where even the flattery could be, of the admiration of an inferior. But Sarah had reached her twenty-seventh year without even exciting that admiration, and consequently did not understand the charm, and it is wonderful what a difference the thing’s being personal makes in these matters. We often refuse with the utmost sincerity for our friends somebody who, perhaps, would be accepted for ourselves. So it proved with Sarah. She would not have hesitated had Mr. Allen proposed for Mary, but the case was changed when she found herself the object of his humble and devoted attentions, her sayings admired, her opinions adopted, her looks watched, as they had never been admired, adopted, or watched before. Flattery is certainly bewitching, and few can withstand genuine admiration. But when they come with the freshness of novelty, and the charm of unexpectedness, the head must be very sound, or the heart very cold that can altogether repel them. Sarah had abandoned herself to their influence before she was aware of it. She did not yield gracefully, however, nor without a struggle; and she had been engaged several weeks before she could summon courage to communicate the intelligence to Mrs. Eldon. It was in vain she repeated to herself that she “had only her own happiness to consult,” and that “she cared not what others said.” Her usual independence almost deserted her, and for the first time in her life she dreaded a smile, and shrank from hearing “plain English.”

“Dear, dear Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Ludlow, as she embraced her friend most affectionately, “how could you keep me so long in the dark? But I am come to congratulate, and not scold you. And now tell me all about it;” and the how, and the when, and the where, followed in quick succession, and was listened to with such animated interest and cordial sympathy, and all that Mary knew or thought, or had ever heard, that was favorable to Mr. Allen, was poured forth so kindly, that Sarah’s spirits rose, and, as she parted with her friend, she felt an elasticity and joyousness of heart that she had not experienced since her engagement.

“Heaven bless her kind nature!” said Sarah, with a degree of enthusiasm that was unusual to her; “I always feel better after I have been with her.”

Had the same observation ever been made on parting with Sarah? We doubt it.

——

CHAPTER II.

It made me laugh to hear Jock skirl in the chimney. “Now,” said I, “you know what hanging is good for.” Heart of Mid Lothian.

“Mr. Allen looks feeble, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon to her sister, some time after her marriage—“Is he well?”

“Yes, perfectly,” replied Sarah. “Pray don’t put it into his head that he is not, or you will make him more indolent than ever. He wants exercise, that is all. I wish him to ride on horseback before breakfast.”

“At what hour do you breakfast?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.

“At six,” replied her sister.

“At six at this season!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon. “Why it can scarcely be light. Does Mr. Allen like such early hours?”

“No,” answered Mrs. Allen, laughing, “he would greatly prefer nine, I believe. But such indolent habits destroy all order and regularity in a household.”

“Now, Mrs. Eldon, I appeal to you,” said her brother-in-law, good-humoredly, “if there is any use in being up at candle-light. I tell Sarah we have the twenty-four hours before us. I do not see the use of hurrying so. It appears to me I hardly get asleep before the bell rings for breakfast.”

“The use of early rising,” replied Sarah, “is that we need never hurry. There is time for every thing, and unless the master and mistress are up, every thing stands still. And, after all, it only depends upon habit whether we dislike it or not;” and there was something in her tone and manner that implied it was a habit her husband must acquire.

Now in fact Mr. Allen was not strong; but Sarah, who had never been ill for an hour, and scarcely knew what it was to be fatigued, had no more comprehension of the languor of a feeble frame, than she had mercy for a weak mind, and, consequently, the breakfast bell rang as pitilessly at break of day, as if Mr. Allen had been endowed with her own “steel and whalebone constitution.” Strong health makes one sometimes unfeeling, and so it was with Sarah. She thought a good walk or long ride a panacea for all the ills flesh is heir to, and that if sickness was not sin, it was what she considered next to it—laziness.

“And now, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon, “I want a favor of you. I want you to ask young Brandon and his wife to your party next week.”

“Which one?” inquired Mrs. Allen. “I did not know Frank was married, for I don’t suppose you mean the other.”

“Yes I do,” replied her sister.

“Not the one who was implicated in that affair some years since?” pursued Mrs. Allen.

“The same,” continued Mrs. Eldon. “He was almost a boy when that happened, and he has quite redeemed himself since. And now that he is married, his friends wish to make an effort to bring him forward again; and I promised to ask you to invite him. It will be of service to him to be seen here.”

“Never!” said Sarah, with decision; “I never will countenance any one who could be guilty of such conduct. I am astonished you could ask it.”

“My dear Sarah, remember what a lad he was at the time,” urged Mrs. Eldon.

“He was old enough to know better,” replied Mrs. Allen.

“Undoubtedly,” resumed her sister—“but, Sarah, if you had a family of boys growing up around you, as I have, you would learn to look with more leniency upon their errors.”

“If I countenance such young men as Brandon,” replied Sarah, “I don’t know what right I should have to look for better things in my own sons. When society overlooks such acts, we may as well abandon all principle and order at once.”

“As a general rule, I agree with you,” returned Mrs. Eldon; “but situated as we are with regard to the Brandon family, I should wish here to make an exception. They were my mother’s earliest friends, and we are under many obligations to them.”

“Any thing that I could do for them but this, I would do cheerfully,” replied Sarah.

“But there is nothing else you can do, Sarah,” persisted Mrs. Eldon. “They want nothing else; and it seems to me that friendship is but a name, if we are not willing to make a sacrifice for our friends.”

“Any but that of principle I am willing to make for them,” replied Mrs. Allen, resolutely.

When Sarah took it up as a matter of principle, her sister desisted at once, as she knew the business to be hopeless. She only sighed, and hoped Sarah might never know some of the trials of a mother’s heart, to teach her mercy and compassion.

Sarah continued, as a married woman, to be very much what she had been as a girl, for marriage does not modify the character as much as people think it does. Her active and energetic nature, which had formerly been expended on societies and paupers, was now devoted to her household, husband and children, and all were managed with the same upright principle and relentless decision which she had ever shown in all her undertakings.

The attachment between herself and husband was strong, although the perfect harmony did not always exist between them that might have been expected, from the sense on her side and the good temper on his.

Mr. Allen, like most weak men, was obstinate, and when he wanted to do a thing, generally did it, and only showed his consciousness of Sarah’s disapprobation by not telling her of what he had done; and many a time was she bitterly provoked to find that projects which she had opposed, and supposed abandoned, had long since been quietly effected. Her heart was often in a “lime kiln,” though perhaps about trifles. Yet upon the whole she enjoyed as much of happiness, probably, as her nature was capable of. Her children were pattern children, orderly, correct and obedient. No act of rebellion had ever been known in the little circle, but one, and that was in her eldest boy, which had been so severely punished that it had become a matter of fearful tradition with the rest. In fact, Sarah was a stern mother, more feared than loved by her children, yet they were generally looked upon as a “remarkably well brought up family,” and Mrs. Allen received no small praise for her admirable management of her young flock.

“Who do you think was suspended to-day?” said Charles Eldon, as he threw down his books on his return from college.

“Who? who?” exclaimed his young brothers and sisters.

“Tom Allen!”

“What, Tommy good-shoes!” exclaimed the children, with shouts of merriment. “Oh, that is too good! Mamma, only think, Tom Allen is suspended!”

“Hush, hush, my dear!” said Mrs. Eldon, gravely, “I am sorry to hear it.”

“That is more than I am,” said Fanny, in a low voice. “It is the best news I have heard this many a day. Aunt Sarah made such a fuss when Lewis got into that scrape, and it was not much after all.”

“What has been the matter, my son?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.

“Nothing of much consequence—only Tom has lagged behind the class almost ever since he has been in it, so now the Puts have suspended him, and he must take a tutor, and try and pull up.”

“To think of one of those pattern children being suspended!” said Frank, laughing. “It is the best joke I ever heard.”

And in spite of all their mother’s proper admonitions and grave looks, the news was matter of perfect jubilee with the young Eldons. Not that they had positively unkind feelings toward their young cousins, but they disliked their aunt heartily, and, in short, pattern children always incur a certain share of unpopularity among juveniles of their own standing. Free and spirited natures will not brook the superiority which is often accorded by their elders to the tame and correct inferiority of such children. Then, too, the sins of the parents are often visited heavily on their offspring under similar circumstances; and “Aunt Sarah’s lectures,” and “the fuss Aunt Sarah made on such and such an occasion,” “and now Aunt Sarah need not make big eyes at Charley any more,” and “let Aunt Allen shut up about Lewis now,” and many more such reminiscences and ejaculations of the kind, broke forth on all sides. In fact, if the whole truth were known, Mrs. Eldon herself, in spite of her efforts to maintain the proprieties, did not feel, at the bottom of her heart, the sorrow for her sister’s mortification she assumed. “It will do her good,” she said to herself. “Sarah is too hard upon other people’s children. The thing is not a matter of importance in itself, but it is enough to show her that her boys are like other boys.”

“I thought your sister was wrong when she insisted upon that boy’s taking a collegiate education,” remarked Mr. Eldon. “He resembles his father in mind: that is to say, he has none, and besides, is naturally indolent. He showed a disposition to enter the counting-house, and he would have done better there.”

“Sarah thinks it great weakness in parents to yield to what she calls the whims of young people.”

“Undoubtedly; but, at the same time, not to study and make allowances for their natural capacities and dispositions, is equally unwise. Nature is to be guided, but not controlled.”

“You would find it difficult to persuade Sarah that she could not control all events falling within the sphere of her domestic circle,” replied Mrs. Eldon.

“Then probably she has a bitter lesson yet to learn,” replied Mr. Eldon—and so the conversation dropped.

The summer coming on, Mrs. Eldon left the city early with her family, and consequently did not see Mrs. Allen for several months. When she did, she was much struck with the change in her appearance.

“Are you well, Sarah?” she asked.

“No, I am not,” replied Mrs. Allen. “I have heard people talk of being weak and miserable, but I never knew what they meant before. I saw they were not really ill, and I thought it was only imagination or indolence. I now feel that I was wrong. For the first time in my life, I know what it is to be oppressed with languor. Every thing is a burden to me; and when I try to rouse myself and shake it off, my limbs refuse to obey my will.”

“My dear sister,” said Mrs. Eldon, “don’t attempt that. You need repose—If you overtask yourself now, you may feel the ill effects all your life.”

“That is what my dear, kind husband says,” replied Mrs. Allen. “And oh,” she continued, with much emotion, “you don’t know, Charlotte, how my conscience reproaches me for my former want of consideration—for my unkindness, in fact, to him. You always told me he was not strong, but I thought it was only one of your notions, and I laughed at his dislike of early rising, and had, in short, no sympathy for much that I now am convinced was bodily indisposition. Formerly, I could not comprehend what possible good it could do him, even supposing, according to you, that he was not well, to rise an hour later in the morning. The idea seemed to me absolutely absurd. And now when I wake so languid, I feel that an hour’s rest is of such infinite importance, and I ask myself, ‘Where is the use in getting up?—what matters it whether the household commences its daily routine an hour earlier or later?’ Charlotte, I sometimes feel that this breaking down of my health is sent as a punishment, and a lesson to teach me sympathy and mercy for those of a naturally different constitution from my own.”

When Mrs. Eldon repeated this observation of Mrs. Allen’s to her husband, he dryly remarked that, “it was a pity the lesson had not come earlier.”

Pecuniary losses, too, fell heavily upon the Allens about this time. A public institution failed, in which Mr. Allen had invested much of his wife’s property. It had never been an institution in which she had much confidence, and when he had consulted her on the subject, she decidedly objected to the changing certain for what she considered uncertain property. But Mr. Allen, as we have said, was a weak man, who, when he had once got a notion in his head, never rested until he had executed it. He was just sufficiently under his wife’s influence to make him conceal the fact when it was done. If circumstances discovered it, he would only reply to her remonstrances, which were not always of the gentlest, “Well, well, it is done now, and there is no use in talking about it.” Sarah was not often to be pacified in that way, and if any thing could have provoked her more than the facts themselves, it would have been the quiet, meek, yet obstinate air withal, with which he listened to her lectures on the subject.

Either Sarah was not the woman she once had been, or the magnitude of the present offence seemed to stun her into silence, for she bore with dignity and fortitude what she felt to be a serious misfortune.

What was grief to her, was matter of gossip, however, to the circle of her immediate acquaintance, and that, too, not always in the most sympathizing and good-natured spirit.

“Are you not sorry for the Allens?” inquired one of her set. “It is said they have lost the greater part of their fortune in this company that has just failed.”

The lady thus addressed was one who prided herself on her frankness, and she answered, with a spirit and promptness that caused the other to laugh,

“No, I can’t say I am. Mrs. Allen has hitherto thought that every body else’s misfortunes were their faults. Let her now bring the matter home.”

The other seemed to enjoy the remark, although hardly daring to say as much herself, and she only replied, with an affectation of amiability that her gratified looks denied—

“But it is a hard lesson to learn.”

“My dear Mrs. Binney,” replied her friend, “we have all of us hard lessons to learn in our experience through life. But I have no sympathy for those who need them before they can feel for others.”

“She certainly has been rather hard upon those who fell into misfortune,” gently resumed Mrs. Binney.

“Rather hard!” ejaculated the other—“I never shall forget when my brother failed—” and then came a stored up host of bitter remembrances and old offences against Mrs. Allen, speeches long forgotten, that had rankled deep, to rise up in judgment when her turn came to call for public sympathy and general discussion.

Mr. Allen seemed to escape without either sympathy or animadversion. If alluded to, he was called “a poor, weak fool,” by the men, and “oh, he is nobody,” was all the consideration deigned him by the women. But Mrs. Allen was canvassed and talked over according to the feelings of the speakers, as if she were both master and mistress of the establishment. Mrs. Ludlow, her early friend, was still her friend, and sympathized, from the bottom of her heart, in all her trials.

Prosperity often seems to mark certain families for its own for years—but when the tide changes, misfortune frequently clings as obstinately to those who have hitherto seemed the favorites of fortune. To most of us, life is as an April day, checkered by clouds and sunshine; but there are others whose brilliant morning and calm noonday suddenly darken into clouds and storm. A certain portion of sorrow is the lot of all, whether it comes drifting through life, or is compassed within any particular period of existence. Come, however, it must to all.

Sarah’s life had hitherto been blessed above that of most women. But youth, health and wealth had now passed from her, and her proud, stern spirit had yet to undergo trials she had never dreamed within the scope of possibility as falling to her lot. Her eldest boy, the “Tommy good-shoes” of former days, was now the source of an anguish a mother’s heart alone can know. Forced upon a course of education for which he had no taste and scarcely any capacity, the four years allotted to collegiate studies were to him four years of unbroken idleness. The same easy, docile nature that had made him the “Tommy good-child” of early years, rendered him still pliant to the influences about him. These, unhappily, as is generally the case in idleness, were not good. College suspensions and remonstrances were the commencement of a course of which little bills soon followed in the wake. When these fell into his father’s hands, they were often paid without a word, for he had learned to dread, scarce less than the boy, the bitterness of his wife’s indignation when they reached her knowledge.

To his mother’s keen reproaches, Tom listened in silence, the same kind of frightened, meek, obstinate silence with which his father had endured many a harangue before him. But they did not mend his ways.

Mrs. Eldon had heard from time to time rumors that “Tom Allen was very wild,” but she had thought that “boys will be boys,” and her husband said “young men will be young men,” and thus they had both attributed the rumors they had heard to the indiscretions of a youthful spirit. But here they were mistaken. Tom’s were not the errors of a youthful but of a weak nature. The influence abroad was bad, and the conduct at home injudicious. If Mr. Allen’s children did not exactly say with the world, “Oh! he is nobody,” they yet felt the fact; while their mother was to them “the everybody” they feared and looked up to. Consequently, if Tom got into a scrape there was nothing he so much dreaded as his mother’s hearing of it. There was scarcely any public opprobrium he would not rather have endured than her anger. In fact, the sort of Coventry in which he was put, the sad, severe looks that were bestowed upon him at home were slight inducements to a weak and timid spirit to reveal difficulties, pour forth confession and implore relief, and thus what had begun in weakness ended in disgrace.

A debt which, though not large in itself, yet of considerable magnitude in the eyes of a youth, had been contracted almost unconsciously, and which he had not courage to avow at home. Harassed, tormented, terrified, he made use of funds which were not his own, and which his situation in a counting-house, where he had at last been placed, put within his reach. Weak, timid and reserved, he neither revealed his situation, nor asked for aid from either his young companions or natural friends—but when he found detection could no longer be warded off—fled.

Public disgrace was the consequence; and the insignificance of the sum and the magnitude of the offence were alike the theme of general discussion. Mingled commiseration and blame were bestowed upon the unhappy parents. People generally love to think that a faulty education is the root of the evil. Some, therefore, censured the system that had restricted him in means; others thought a too ample allowance had been the origin of the sin.

The affair was canvassed in every possible spirit, and though commiseration could not be refused to the heart-stricken parents, yet the tone of it was often qualified by the personal sentiments of the speakers, for it is wondrous how unpopularity will cling to those who have incurred it, even under calamities which one would suppose were enough to bury all old griefs.

“I cannot but feel sorry for any mother under such circumstances,” had been said, “but I feel as little for Mrs. Allen as I could feel for any one so situated. She meets with more sympathy now than she ever would have given to another.”

“Had it been any one else’s son but Sarah Allen’s,” exclaimed another, “I should have been sorry indeed. But hers is a hard temper. Now, however, she knows what trials are.”

“I am sorry for any one so situated, but if such things will happen, I had rather it had fallen on Mrs. Allen than on any one else I know.”

The Brandons breathed a deeper but silent comment upon the blow that had fallen on the haughty and unfeeling woman whose early slight they never had forgiven.

“My early, only friend,” cried Mrs. Allen, as she threw herself into Mary Ludlow’s arms, who, ever true to her in sorrow as in joy, was with her now in her hour of bitterest anguish, “you, you alone feel for one who did not feel for others. The heart that was hardened by prosperity deserved to be broken by sorrow.” And then the full tide of anguish, and repentance, and confession, gushed forth with a freedom and humility that wells up alone from a broken and a contrite heart.

The stern lesson had been taught, and received in a spirit that shows that where there is Sense, experience must teach Sympathy. The rock had been smitten, and the waters that gushed forth were pure and regenerating.

“OH MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE.”

———

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

———

Oh mother of a mighty race,

Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!

The elder dames, thy haughty peers,

Admire and hate thy blooming years.

With words of shame

And taunts of scorn they join thy name.

For on thy cheek the glow is spread

That tints thy morning hills with red;

Thy step—the wild deer’s rustling feet

Within thy woods are not more fleet;

Thy hopeful eye

Is bright as thine own sunny sky.

Aye, let them rail—those haughty ones⁠—

While safe thou dwellest with thy sons.

They do not know how loved thou art,

How many a fond and fearless heart

Would rise to throw

Its life between thee and the foe.

They know not, in their hate and pride,

What virtues with thy children bide;

How true, how good, thy graceful maids

Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades;

What generous men

Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen.

What cordial welcomes greet the guest

By thy lone rivers of the west;

How faith is kept and truth revered,

And man is loved and God is feared

In woodland homes,

And where the solemn ocean foams.

There’s freedom at thy gates, and rest,

For earth’s down-trodden and opprest,

A shelter for the hunted head,

For the starved laborer toil and bread⁠—

Power, at thy bounds,

Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds.

Oh fair young mother! on thy brow

Shall sit a nobler grace than now.

Deep in the brightness of thy skies

The thronging years in glory rise,

And, as they fleet,

Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

Thine eye, with every coming hour,

Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower,

And when thy sisters, elder born,

Would brand thy name with words of scorn,

Before thine eye

Upon their lips the taunt shall die.

CAIUS MARIUS.

———

BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.

———

“Man—darest thou slay Caius Marius?”

Semblance of him who at three-score-and-ten,

Bleeding and stark, chained in a dungeon lay⁠—

Yet all untamed—whose eye flashed fire as when

The stormy fight he led in war array;

Well might the Cimbrian slave in awe start back,

Oh! fearful Roman, when he met thine eye!

Well might the Gaul, though bold, the courage lack

To consummate thy purposed destiny.

For through the dim and solemn twilight burnt

That eye—in stern and awful grandeur flashing

Its warning light on one who ne’er had learnt

Pale fear till then. Well might his sword fall clashing

At that dread voice—“Man, darest thou slay me?”

So didst thou look, and speak, and wert made free!

ONE OF THE “UPPER TEN THOUSAND,” AND ONE OF THE PEOPLE.

———

BY MRS. J. C. CAMPBELL.

———

CHAPTER I.

At the annual commencement of one of our colleges, the youth who delivered the valedictory had, by the vigor and beauty of thought displayed in his address, and by his polished and graceful elocution, drawn down the applause of the large audience assembled on that occasion. Not a few eyes were moistened as he bade farewell to the venerable men under whose care and tuition he had gained the highest honors, and to the schoolmates with whom he had passed so many happy hours, and who now, like barques again put forth to sea that had long been safely moored in one quiet haven, were each to stem alone on life’s great deep.

“He! he! he! that’s Bobby Dunning, his father keeps a grocery-store,” said a foppish-looking stripling who wore the academic gown, as he pointed with his finger to the speaker on the platform, and at the same time seated himself beside a young lady in the gallery.

“He! he!” echoed his companion, “I dare say he has weighed many a pound of sugar in his time. A grocery-store! What queer associates you have at college, Gus.”

“Associates! No indeed, Sophy, when Bob first entered I thought him a fine, generous fellow, and was just about to ask him to our house, when I found out who his father was. A lucky escape, by Jupiter! I soon cut his acquaintance, and made him feel by my cool, contemptuous manner that the son of a grocer was no fit associate for the son of a gentleman.”

Again the young lady tittered, “That’s just like you, Gus, you are always so high spirited.”

“So my father says; he often calls me his ‘gallant Hotspur,’ and laughs heartily when he hears of my waggish pranks.”

Many honors were that day borne away by the ambitious youths who had late and early sought to win them, but none had been awarded to Gus, or as he liked best to write himself, Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine.

“Why, Gus, you’re a lazy dog,” said his father on their return home; “come, you must do better next time. And so Bob Dunning, the grocer’s son, graduated to-day, and carried away more honors than any of the other students; rather strange that!”

“There was nothing strange about it, father. Bobby knew he had to get his living somehow or other, and as Latin and Greek smacked more of gentility than brown paper and pack-thread, he abandoned the latter, and took to the former with such avidity, that he has grown thin and pale as a shadow. A capital village pedagogue Bob will make, to be sure! But something more manly than poring over musty old books, or flogging ragged little boys, must be my occupation through life. I say, father, when does that race come off between Lady Helen and Bluebeard?”

“Next week,” answered Mr. Tremaine, who was a member of a jockey club—“next week. Well remembered, Gus.—I dine with the club to-day, and this devilish college concern had nearly driven the engagement out of my head. We are to have splendid arrangements on the race ground for the accommodation of the ladies—a fine stand erected, covered with an awning—wines, ices, patés, and I don’t know what all. Sarah,” turning to his wife, “I expect you to be there; mind, none of your vapors—and, Gus, do you bring Sophy Warren; she is a spirited creature, and would make a capital jockey herself.” And with this equivocal compliment to Miss Sophia Warren, the elder Tremaine left the house.

A tyrant at home, a capital fellow abroad, was Oscar Tremaine. Over his wife, a mild, gentle creature, he had exercised his authority until she had become a perfect cipher in her own house; and, unnatural as it may appear, he had encouraged their son to flout his mother’s opinions and scorn her advice. It was not strange, then, that Mrs. Tremaine had remained silent while her husband and son were speaking, but now, looking on the boy with tenderness, she said,

“I regret, my dear Gustavus, that you have not been more successful in your studies; how happy and how proud I should have been had you brought home some token of reward, some prize, on which I might have looked, and said, ‘My child has won it!’ ”

“Fudge! this is all nonsense, mother. What do you know about such matters? Father has more money than I can ever spend, and why should I be compelled to mope away my lifetime over the midnight oil, as they call it? I’d rather have a canter on Fancy in the afternoon, and then to the theatre or opera at night—that is the life for me;” and, humming a fashionable air, he turned from the room.

His mother gazed after him sorrowfully. “God help thee, my child!—alas! I fear the worst; God help thee!” she repeated in anguish, and, feeling how “sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” she bowed her head on her hands, and wept bitterly.

In less than a month after the commencement, Robert Dunning began the study of the law, and Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine was expelled from college.

——

CHAPTER II.

“Confound the fellow! I can’t take up a newspaper without having his name staring me in the face. Eminent lawyer, superior talents—superior—nonsense; I don’t believe a word of it. I always hated him;” and the speaker flung the offending paper on the floor, apparently unconscious that that very hatred made him blind to the merits of the man whom he so berated.

“What’s the matter now, Gus?—angry again? Was there ever such a man!” exclaimed an ultra-fashionable lady, who swept into the apartment “with all her bravery on.” “Come, I want you to go with me this morning, to select a new jewel-case. I saw a superb one the other day for a few hundred dollars; but it is no matter what it may cost.”

“It is a matter, and a serious one, too, Sophia. I told you, six months ago, we should be ruined by your extravagance, and, by heaven! you must put a stop to it.”

“And I told you, twelve months ago, Mr. Tremaine, that if you did not quit betting at the race ground and the gambling table, we should certainly be ruined. You spend thousands, for no earthly good whatever, while I only make use of hundreds, to purchase things absolutely necessary for one holding my position in society. Once for all, let me tell you, Mr. Tremaine, I will have whatever I want;” and, turning to the piano, the amiable lady ran her fingers over the keys, with the most provoking indifference.

“Mrs. Tremaine, you are enough to drive a man mad. Do you think I’m a fool, that I will bear to be treated thus?”

“Oh no, Gussy dear, I should be sorry to suppose such a thing; but you know the lesson by which I profited was learned in your home. There I saw how well your father could enact the tyrant, and how your gentle mother was treated like a slave; and I silently resolved, that from the hour we were married, I would be mistress in my own house.”

“Where is the use of repeating that nonsense continually? I have heard the same story a dozen times before.”

“And shall hear it a dozen times again, or at least as often as I hear the word must from your lips, Mr. Tremaine. But come, you have not yet told me why you were so angry when I came in. Let me see,” she continued, taking up the newspaper, “let me see whether this will not solve the mystery. Ah, now I have it—Robert Dunning, Esq.!”

“Yes, now you have it—that upstart, whom I so hate—to see his name paraded in this manner before the public, is enough to drive me mad.”

“No wonder you hate him, Gus. Only to think of his being retained as counsel for the heirs of old Latrobe, and gaining the suit by which you lost one hundred thousand dollars! Now this reminds me of what I heard yesterday, that Dunning was about to be married to Fanny Austin.”

“Nonsense, Sophia, the Austins move in the first circles.”

“So they do, my dear, but Fanny has strange ideas, and there is no knowing what freak she may perform. However, I shall drive there today, and ask her about it. I ordered the carriage at one—ah! there it is—will you assist me with my cloak, Mr. Tremaine, or shall I ring for my maid? Thank you—thank you—I don’t know when I shall return.”

“And I don’t care,” muttered her husband as she drove from the door. For a few moments he stood under the heavy crimson curtains at the window, looking listlessly in the direction in which the carriage had gone, and then taking his hat and cane left the house.

Just one little year had passed since Gustavus Tremaine and Sophia Warren were wedded—but one little year since he had promised to love and cherish her as his wife, and she had vowed to love and obey him as her husband, and yet such scenes as the one above related were daily occurring. The mother of young Tremaine had long since sunk broken-hearted to her grave, and his father had died in consequence of injuries received by falling from a staging erected on a race-course.

Shortly before the death of the elder Tremaine, the law-suit had terminated, by which he lost one hundred thousand dollars, and on the settlement of his affairs it was found that but a comparatively small fortune would be possessed by his heir. Sophia Warren, “the capital jockey,” prided herself on her marriage, with being wife to one of the richest men (that was to be) in the city, and it was a bitter disappointment when she found her husband’s income would not be one-third of what she had anticipated.

As the union had not been one of affection—where heart and soul unite in uttering the solemn and holy vows—where “for richer for poorer” is uttered in all sincerity—as it had not been such a union, but one of eligibility—a question of mere worldly advantage, no wonder the peevish word, and the angry retort, were daily widening the breach between a spendthrift husband and an arrogant wife—no wonder each sought refuge in the world, from the ennui and the strife that awaited them at home—no wonder that the wife was recklessly whirling through the giddy maze of fashion, while the husband was risking health, honor, reputation on the hazard of a die.

When Mrs. Tremaine reached Mr. Austin’s, young Dunning was just leaving the house, so here was a fine opportunity for bantering Fanny Austin. “Ah! I’ve caught you, my dear, and Madam Rumor is likely to speak truth at last—ha! blushing! well this is confirmation strong—and it is really true that Mr. Dunning and Miss Austin are engaged.”

Too honest-hearted to prevaricate, too delicate-minded not to feel hurt at the familiar manner in which Mrs. Tremaine alluded to her engagement, Fanny remained silent, her cheek glowing, and her bright eye proudly averted from the face of her visiter.

A woman of more delicate feeling than Mrs. Tremaine would have hesitated on witnessing the embarrassment caused by her remarks, but she had no such scruples, and continued,

“I contradicted the statement; for it was impossible to believe any thing so absurd.”

Fanny Austin looked up inquiringly, and the glow on her cheek deepened to crimson as she said,

“Absurd! may I ask your meaning, Mrs. Tremaine?”

“Why, I mean that you would not render yourself so ridiculous in the eyes of society. You marry Bob Dunning—the son of a grocer—you, who belong to the first families, and who ought to make a most advantageous match! Why, Fanny dear, no wonder I contradicted it.”

“I regret that you took the trouble.”

“Oh! it was none at all, and our families had been so long on friendly terms, that I thought it but right to say you would not throw yourself away.”

“Allow me to ask why you speak in this manner,” said Miss Austin, now fully roused, and recovering her self-possession, “if I should marry Mr. Dunning, how could I be thought to throw myself away?”

“What a question! Why the man has neither family nor fortune to boast of, while you have both.”

“As far as money is concerned, I grant you I have the advantage; but as for family, few of us republicans can boast on that score. My grandmother, and yours too, Mrs. Tremaine, superintended their own dairies, made butter and cheese with their own hands, and sent them to market to be sold, nor did I ever hear that the good ladies were ashamed of their domestic employments. Your father and mine commenced life with naught save probity and perseverance; they were first clerks, then junior partners, and at last great capitalists, and we their children have thus been placed at the head of society.”

“I know nothing at all of this nonsensical grandmother story about butter and cheese. I never heard of such a thing in our family.”

“No, I suppose you did not. You have been taught to look on praiseworthy industry as derogatory to your ideas of gentility; but my father has always delighted in recurring to those days of boyhood, and he venerates the memory of his mother, whom he regarded while living as a pattern of domestic virtue.”

“Oh, it is all nonsense talking in this way, Fanny. I wonder what Baron d’Haut-ton will say when he hears that the lady he wooed so unsuccessfully has been won by the heir of a man in the ‘sugar line?’ ”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Tremaine, if I say you are forgetting yourself, or at least that you are presuming too far on your long acquaintance. My parents have no such ideas as yours, about fortune and family, and with their approval my heart is proud of its choice—proud, too, that it has been the chosen of the gifted, the noble-minded Dunning.”

“Well, Fanny,” persisted Mrs. Tremaine, nothing abashed by the gentle rebuke which had been given—“well, Fanny, depend upon it you will place yourself in a false position. The friends who are now eager to court the society of Miss Austin, will stand aloof when invited to the house of Mrs. Dunning.”

“Friends! did you ever know a true friend do aught that would depreciate the husband in the eyes of his wife, or lessen the wife in the esteem of her husband? For such of my so-called friends as would not honor the man I had chosen, when he was well worthy of their highest regard, I can but say the sooner we part company the better. It is not the long array of names upon my visiting list of which I am proud, but the worth of those who proffer me their friendship.”

“Two o’clock!” said Mrs. Tremaine, glancing at the pendule on the chimney-piece—“two o’clock! Good morning, Miss Austin. How surprised Tremaine will be to hear that you are really going to marry Bob Dunning.”

And Robert Dunning and Fanny Austin were married—and never was there a happier home than theirs. The wife watched for her husband’s step as the maiden watches for that of her lover. Daily she met him with smiles, while her heart throbbed with a love as warm and as pure as that she had vowed at the altar. And Robert Dunning idolized his wife, and his fine endowments drew around him a host of admirers and friends, until Fanny’s former acquaintances, including Mrs. Tremaine, contended for the honor of an invitation to the gifted circle, which weekly met at the house of Mrs. Dunning.

——

CHAPTER III.

“So it has come at last—ruin, final, irretrievable ruin—every thing gone—the very house I’m in mortgaged. Confusion! But I’ll not give up yet—no, not yet! I’ll see Browne to-night—what if we should fail? But that is impossible. Browne has been too long engaged in getting his living from the dear public to let it scrutinize very closely the process by which the needful is obtained. If I thought I could win any thing at play—but I have had such an infernal run of ill luck lately that there is no chance in that quarter. Well—well! There appears to be no alternative—and when it is once done, then ho! for England!”

Thus soliloquized Gustavus Tremaine, as he sat at a late hour in the morning sipping his coffee in his room, for his wife and he had long ceased to take their meals together. Separate rooms and separate tables had served to complete the estrangement which caprice and ill temper had begun, and they now exhibited that pitiable spectacle of a house divided against itself. And what is more pitiable than to see those who should mutually encourage and support each other, who should bear one another’s burdens, and in the spirit of blessed charity endure all things, and hope all things—what is more pitiable than to see them unkind, self-willed, bandying bitter sarcasms and rude reproaches?

Oh, that the duties, the responsibilities, the self-sacrifices of wedded life were better understood, their sacred character more fully appreciated, how would each home become a temple of love, each fireside an altar, on which was daily laid an offering of all the amenities, all the sweet charities of social life. How would the child who, in his early home, had heard none save kind words, had seen none other than heart-warm deeds, who had been trained to habits of submission, and taught to yield the gratification of his own wishes for the good or the pleasure of others, taught to do this even as a child may be taught, in the meek spirit of the gospel—how would such an one grow up a crown of glory to the hoary hairs of his parents, and a blessing to society. But, alas! the spirit of insubordination is rife in the world. The child spurns the yoke of domestic discipline, sets at naught the counsels of his father, and hearkens not to the voice of his mother—and the man disregards the voice of conscience, sets the laws of his country at defiance, and becomes an outcast and a felon!

It was a cold winter evening, and the heavy clouds were looming up in broad masses over the troubled sky, while the wind howled through every cranny, and sent the snow-mist, which began rapidly to descend, into the faces of the stray pedestrians who were either hardy enough to venture abroad in search of pleasure, or wretched enough to be obliged from dire necessity to leave their homes. Mr. Tremaine was among the few who were braving the fury of the storm. He had left his elegant but cheerless mansion in the upper part of the city, and sped onward, regardless alike of wind and snow, to the place of his destination.

It was the haunt of vice, but in no dark alley nor out-of-the-way nook did it seek to hide itself from public contempt. No—it reared its front unblushingly in the public thoroughfare—within sound of the church-going bell—it was fitted up with every luxury; silver and gold, polished marble, and costly hangings, in lavish profusion, adorned the place which fostered every malignant and evil passion, and made human beings, endowed with immortal souls, ripe for deeds of desperation. The man who robbed his employer, the defaulter, the forger, the destroyer of female virtue, the murderer, the suicide, each and all of these had been within its walls—each and all of these had taken their first lessons in iniquity in that place, so truly and emphatically called a hell. And it was to this place of pollution that Tremaine was hastening. Here he had staked, and lost, and cursed his ill luck; yet, with the desperate infatuation of a confirmed gamester, he had staked again and again, until all was gone. On entering he looked round with a furtive and eager glance, and, evidently disappointed, sauntered toward a roulette table round which a crowd was standing.

“Do you play to-night?” The speaker was a tall, slender young man, scarcely past his minority, but with a wan, sickly countenance, and the premature stoop of old age. “Do you play to-night?” he repeated.

“I—I believe not,” answered Tremaine, again glancing round the room.

“You are a foolish fellow; the fickle goddess may even now be turning the wheel in your favor. Come,” he continued, laughing, “if you have not been at your banker’s to-day, I have, and can accommodate you with a few hundreds;” and he took a roll of bills from his pocket, and handed them to Tremaine.

“But when shall I return this, Gladsden?”

“Oh, a fortnight hence will be time enough.”

Tremaine turned to the table and staked the money—he won; staked the whole amount—won again; the third time. “You had better stop now,” whispered a voice in his ear. He turned, and saw the person for whom, a short time before, he had been looking so eagerly; but he was elated with success, and paid no heed to the speaker. The fourth—the fifth time, he won. Such a run of luck was most extraordinary; he trembled with excitement, and now determined that he would try but once more, and, if successful, he might yet retrieve the past.

“Are you mad, Tremaine?—you surely will not risk all?” again whispered the voice.

“All or nothing. I am fortune’s chief favorite to-night. All or nothing,” repeated the gamester, as if communing with himself, “all or nothing!”

The bystanders looked on earnestly; for a few moments there was a dead silence—then Tremaine’s face became livid, his brow contracted, and his lips compressed. He had risked all; he had gained—nothing!

“What a fool you have made of yourself!” once more whispered the ominous voice.

“Not a word, Browne; perhaps it needed this to make me wholly yours,” replied Tremaine, as he walked through the crowd, which opened to let him and his companion pass. When in the street, the two walked on for a time in moody silence, which was first broken by Browne.

“Well, Tremaine, that last was a bad stake of yours, and may cost one of us the halter.”

“Why, I thought you told me there would be no blood spilt?”

“Well, blood is rather ugly looking, I must confess; but if the man should wake?”

“Did you not say you would have him well drugged?”

“I did, but by the slightest possible chance, I find it cannot be done!”

“How so?”

“You know it was expected that he would sail in the packet from this port, but I find he has determined on going by the steamer, and will start to-morrow morning by the Long Island railroad; so that we must do it now or never.”

“Now or never be it, then. I am a ruined man, and ripe for mischief.”

Again the two walked on in silence, until they reached a fine looking house in the vicinity of the Battery. Here Browne applied his key to the night latch, and in a few moments he and Tremaine had entered one of the upper rooms and locked the door.

“Where does he sleep?” abruptly inquired Tremaine.

“In the opposite room.”

“And you are sure that you can effect an entrance without arousing any of the boarders?”

“Sure! I wish I was as sure that he would not wake,” and Browne smiled contemptuously. “But you are not growing faint-hearted, eh, Tremaine? Come, here is something will give you courage, man;” and, taking a bottle from a side closet, he placed it on the table before them, and continued—“fifty thousand dollars! I saw him count it over this afternoon. What fools some men are! Because I flattered him, and pretended to take an interest in his love affair, he opened his whole heart, and, what was of far more value, his purse, and displayed its contents before me. But it grows late, and we must to business. Remember, when I have secured the money, you are to take it and make your escape out of the house, while I shall return quietly to bed to lull suspicion, and to-morrow evening will meet you where we met to-night. Now do you hold this dark lantern while I open the lock. That will do—put it in my room again—so—all right; come in a little farther,” continued he, in a low whisper, “we must be cautious—the money is under his pillow.”

Stealthily approaching the bed of the unconscious sleeper, Browne put his hand softly under the pillow and drew forth a wallet. Thus far they were successful, but in groping their way out of the room, Browne stumbled and fell; the noise awoke the sleeping man, and the cries of “Help!—robbers!—help!” rang through the house. In one moment Browne was on his feet, in another in his room, where the money was given to Tremaine, and in the noise and confusion of hastily opening and shutting doors, the latter escaped.

It is unnecessary to detail the causes which led to the suspicion and arrest of Browne, and the implication of Tremaine. Suffice it that on the following evening, when entering the place in which he had appointed to meet his accomplice and divide the booty, Tremaine was taken into custody, and the money found in his possession.

Sophia was dressing for the opera. It was the first night on which she had laid aside the mourning worn for the loss of her parents, and, determined on appearing in a style of almost regal magnificence, she had placed a circlet of jewels on her brow, and a diamond bracelet was seen flashing on her arm amid the rich lace of a demi-sleeve as she reached out her hand to receive a note brought in by the servant. On opening it her agitation was extreme, and, hastily dismissing her attendants, she read over word by word the news of her husband’s crime, and subsequent imprisonment.

And now was she tortured by conflicting emotions. She had never believed that her husband’s affairs were in the ruinous state in which he had represented them to be—but she could no longer doubt. Crime had been committed—disgrace had fallen upon them—and then came the thought, “Have not I helped to goad him on to ruin?” and pity for him brought a momentary forgetfulness of self—the woman was not wholly dead within her!

The next day the hateful news was bruited abroad that Tremaine, the dashing Tremaine, was imprisoned for robbery! His fashionable friends wisely shook their heads, and raised their hands, and uttered sundry exclamations. But they stood aloof—not one offered to go forward as bail for the unfortunate man. Not one of Mrs. Tremaine’s gay lady visiters went to speak a word to the humbled woman as she sat writhing under her disgrace. But we forget—there was one! Fanny Dunning, like a ministering angel, strove to soothe and comfort her, promised that her husband would do his utmost to aid Mr. Tremaine, and, when the mortgage on the house was foreclosed, took the weeping Sophia to her own home and was to her as a sister.

——

CHAPTER IV.

It was not in human nature to forget the repeated slights and insults with which Tremaine had sought to wound the feelings of his old school-mate; but it was in human nature to imitate the divine exemplar, to forgive injuries, and to return good for evil, and Robert Dunning promised Sophia that he would do all in his power to effect the liberation of her husband. For this purpose it became necessary that he should visit Tremaine in prison. But the culprit obstinately refused to see him, until at length, finding the time draw near when he would be publicly arraigned at the bar, he consented to his admittance. Dunning gave him to understand that he must know the facts of the case, at the same time assuring him that he would plead his cause with pleasure, and that there was no doubt of his acquittal.

“The thing can be easily managed,” said Tremaine, doggedly—“I intend to plead an alibi.”

Dunning started.

“Is this necessary, Mr. Tremaine? I thought the charge could not be proven against you?”

“Nor can it, if you are the expert lawyer you are said to be.”

“Mr. Tremaine, let us understand each other. Is it important that you should plead an alibi?”

“It is.”

“Then I regret that I cannot undertake your cause. I was still under the impression that you were innocent.”

“And who dares say I am not? Did you, sir, come here to entrap me in my words? Who will dare say I am not innocent, when the most famous lawyer in town shall have proven that I was far from here on the night of the robbery?”

The last words were said in a sneering and almost contemptuous manner.

“I must repeat my regret that I cannot undertake your cause, while at the same time I assure you that I shall be silent as to what has transpired between us.”

“Puppy!” exclaimed Tremaine, thoroughly enraged. “Who asked you to undertake it? Who asked you to come and thrust yourself upon me? Puppy—plebeian! did I seek advice or assistance from you?”

“Mr. Tremaine,” replied Dunning, with a calm and gentlemanly dignity—“Mr. Tremaine, it is vain talking in this manner. I came to you in the spirit of kindness—but my errand has been a fruitless one.”

Before Tremaine had time to reply the door was opened by the keeper, and Dunning passed out of the cell.

It was with a heavy heart Fanny heard from her husband that he could not undertake to plead for the accused, and, gently as she could, she broke the sad news to Sophia. Browne and Tremaine were tried, convicted and sentenced to the State prison. And now the hand which had sinfully lavished thousands—the hand that had been kept so daintily white and soft—the hand of the “son of a gentleman” was roughly manacled, and linked to the brown, hard, weather-beaten hand of a fellow convict. He who had been the pampered heir of luxury was now to be the partaker of coarse fare—the daily companion of all that was base and vile—and the nightly dweller in the lone dark cell of a prison. He, the once flattered, courted and caressed, was to pass shamefully from the haunts of his fellow-man, and, after a few exclamations of wonder and reproach, was finally to be forgotten.

But there was one secretly at work, one who had been spurned, one whose noble hand had been flung aside with contempt—and that one was now busily employed in writing petitions, in traveling to and fro, and doing all in his power to obtain the liberation of the man who had ever treated him with insult and scorn. At length he was successful, and Tremaine was pardoned on condition of his leaving the State. But for Browne, who had been recognized as an old offender, there were no attempts made to procure his release.

It was with mingled feelings of shame and defiance that Tremaine ungraciously received the assurance of his freedom from the mouth of Dunning; for, the better to avoid observation, the latter went himself for the prisoner, brought him from his convict cell, and conveyed him to the warm hospitalities of a happy home, where he was received by Mrs. Dunning with that refined delicacy and unobtrusive kindness which soon placed him comparatively at ease in their society.

A strange and embarrassed meeting was that of Tremaine and his wife. Sophia’s first impulse was to break out into invective against him who had thus brought disgrace and ruin, not only upon himself, but upon her. Better feelings, however, prevailed, for she had learned many a lesson of late, and had already begun to catch the kind and forgiving spirit of those with whom she dwelt; so, after a few moments’ hesitation, a few moments’ struggle between pride, anger and womanly tenderness, she drew near to her husband, laid her head upon his bosom, and sobbed in very grief and sorrow of heart. “Sophia!” “Tremaine!” were the only words uttered during that first outburst of anguish. But soon the fountain of thought was unsealed, when, instead of taunts and mutual upbraidings, the bitter lessons learned in the school of adversity made them self-accusing, and willing to excuse each other.

But little time was given to make arrangements for the departure of Tremaine, who had determined not only on leaving the State, but the country. Mr. and Mrs. Dunning wished Sophia to remain with them, at least until her husband had procured some situation which might afford him a competent support. But Sophia would not listen to this—she would go with him—“she could do many things,” she said, “to aid him.” Fanny Dunning smiled, but she knew that Sophia was right in thus fulfilling her wifely duties, and both herself and her husband prepared every thing necessary for the comfort of the voyagers.

It was a bright morning in May, when these true and tried friends accompanied Tremaine and his wife in the noble ship which bore them down the bay, and with many a warm tear and repeated blessing wished them a prosperous voyage to England, and returned to the city.

And now we cannot better conclude their story than by giving an extract from a letter, written some time after the occurrence of the events already related, by Mr. Tremaine to his friend Judge Dunning.

“I must congratulate you, my dear Dunning, on your elevation to the bench; but I must not allow myself to utter all the praises that are swelling at my heart, nor does it require words to convey to you my respect, my esteem, my gratitude, and my love—ay, my love—for I do love you as a brother.

“Sophy bids me haste and tell you our good fortune—softly, dear wife, I will do so in a moment or two. You may perhaps recollect, my dear friend, that I wrote you how difficult it was for me to procure employment on my first arrival in Liverpool, and that this was mainly owing to my total ignorance of any kind of business. Indeed, had it not been for the few valuables belonging to my wife, which she cheerfully parted with, and had it not been for her kind and encouraging words, I should have yielded to despair. You know, too, my dear Dunning, that, glad to do any thing in honesty, I at last obtained a situation as clerk in a grocery store.

“How often has my cheek burned with shame, at the recollection of my silly contempt for trades-people, when I was worse than idling away my time at college? How often has my heart smote me when I thought of my conduct toward you, my noble-minded, my best earthly friend? But why repeat all this? You have long since forgiven me, and yet I never can forgive myself. And now for my good fortune. My employer has enlarged his business and taken me into partnership, so that I am in a fair way of being once more a rich man, (and may I not add a wiser one?) and your little namesake here, Robert Dunning, who is standing at my knee, is in an equally fair way of remaining what he now is—the son of a grocer. Heaven grant that he may in every thing resemble the man to whom his father once used the words as a term of reproach. This is now my highest earthly ambition for my boy, and I pray that my own lessons in the school of adversity may enable me to teach him to place a juster estimate on the empty distinctions of society, and to learn how true are the words of the poet—

“Honor and shame from no condition rise;

Act well thy part, there all the honor lies.”

LOVE.

———

BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.

———

A fading, fleeting dream!

That blinds awhile with bright and dazzling ray,

Until the heart is wildered by its beam,

And wanders from its lofty path away,

While meteors wild like holy planets gleam,

To tempt our steps astray!

A creature of the brain!

Whom poets painted with a hue divine⁠—

That, bright embodied in their thrilling strain,

Makes the soul drunken, as with mental wine,

While the heart bows in longing and in pain

Before its mystic shrine!

The shadow of a bliss!

That flies the spirit hastening to enjoy⁠—

That seems to come from fairer climes than this,

To throw its spells around the dreaming boy,

But steals his quiet with its siren-kiss,

And robs his soul of joy!

Is this that power unknown

That rules the world with curbless, boundless sway,

Binding the lowest cot and loftiest throne

In golden fetters, which resist decay,

And breathing o’er each cold and rugged zone

The balminess of May?

No! By the soul’s high trust

On Him whose mandate bade the planets move!

Who, kind and merciful, though sternly just,

Gave unto man that loftiest boon of love,

To bless the spirit till his form is dust,

Then soar with it above!

’Tis no delusive spell,

Binding the fond heart in its shadowy hall;

But ’neath its power the purer feelings swell,

Till man forgets his thraldom and his fall,

And bliss, that slumbers in the spirit’s cell,

Wakes at its magic call.

Where’er its light has been,

But for a moment, twilight will remain;

Before whose ray, the night-born thoughts of sin

Cease from their torture of the maddened brain.

The spirit, deepest fallen, it can win

To better thoughts again!

’Tis for the young a star,

Beckoning the spirit to the future on⁠—

Shining with pure and steady ray afar,

The herald of a yet unbroken dawn,

Where every fetter that has power to bar

In its warm glow is gone!

Who ne’er hath oped his heart

To that dove-messenger on life’s dark sea,

Binds down his soul, in cold, mistaken art,

When vainly hoping he has made it free!

In earth’s great family he takes no part⁠—

He has not learned to be!

Who longs to feel its glow,

And nurtures every spark unto him given,

Has instincts of the rapture he shall know

When from its thralling dust the soul is riven.

He breathes, so long it blesses him below,

The native air of Heaven!

SOLITUDE.

———

BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

———

Oh! what a solitude doth mind create!

A solitude of deep and holy thought⁠—

Alone with that Ideal good and great,

Which never yet companionship hath sought;

E’en as the eagle, when he highest soars,

Leaves the dim earth and shadows all behind⁠—

Alone, the thunder-cloud around him roars,

And the reft pinion flutters in the wind⁠—

Alone, he soars where higher regions sleep,

And the calm ether knows nor storm nor cloud⁠—

And thus the soul its heavenward way must keep,

Despite the tempest raging long and loud;

Alone, to God bear up its earthly weight

Of human hope and fear, nor feel all desolate.

MUSA; OR THE PILGRIM OF TRUTH.

———

BY JAMES K. PAULDING, AUTHOR OF “THE DUTCHMAN’S FIRESIDE,” ETC.

———

In the famous city of Bagdad there lived a rich merchant, named Abdallah, of whose numerous offspring the youngest alone survived in the person of Musa, an ingenuous and sprightly youth, in whom all the hopes and affections of the father were centered. He often pondered on the course of life to which he should direct the attention of his beloved son, and at length consulted the sage dervise Motalleb, celebrated for his learning, wisdom and virtue above all the inhabitants of that renowned city, where the Kaliph Haroun Al Raschid once reigned amid the splendors of oriental magnificence. Motalleb answered in few words, after the manner of wise men, “Thy son will be rich without the labor of acquiring wealth. Make him good, and, for that purpose, let him be taught to distinguish what is true from what is false; for I say unto thee, O Abdallah! that the knowledge and the love of Truth is the foundation of all virtue.”

At the earnest solicitation of Abdallah, the dervise consented to superintend the education of his son, and Musa was accordingly committed to his care. His first lesson was never to depart from the truth, whatever might be the danger or temptation. This was continually repeated, until one day Musa, with all the simplicity of youth, asked, “What is Truth?”

“Truth,” replied the dervise, “is that which is confirmed by the evidence of the senses, or sanctioned by the assent of the understanding. What thou seest, hearest, and feelest, thou mayst be certain is true; and what is sustained by thy reason, or understanding, though it may not be true, thou mayest assert, and believe, without being guilty of falsehood.”

Musa pondered on these definitions until his young and tender intellect became involved in a maze of mystery; and the next time Motalleb repeated his daily injunction, he again asked, “What is truth?” “Have I not already told thee?” replied Motalleb. “True,” answered the other, “but I confess I cannot comprehend what I heard. I may believe what is not true, and if I assert it to be the truth, surely I speak falsely?” “But,” replied the dervise, “thou wouldst not commit a crime, since it is the wilful violation of Truth that constitutes the guilt.”

Just at that moment a great crowd passed, with loud shouting and tumult, outside the garden where Musa received his instructions, and, with the curiosity natural to youth, he climbed up the wall to see what caused the uproar. “What seest thou, my son?” asked the dervise. “I see a man with his hands tied behind him, followed by an enraged multitude, pulling his beard, spitting in his face, and beating him with staves and stones, while he is staggering toward the river. What means all this, O wise Motalleb?” “Allah be praised!” cried Motalleb, who had been tempted by these details to look over the wall, “Allah be praised! it is the recreant Mussulman, who, incited by the spirit of darkness, the other day renounced the Koran and the true Prophet, for the Bible and the false prophets of the Christian dogs. He is going to suffer the penalty of his crime by being impaled alive.”

Musa fell into a profound reverie, from whence suddenly rousing himself, he asked, “If the follower of Mahomet is convinced by the evidence of his senses, or the dictates of his reason, that the religion of the Christian dogs is the true faith, is he guilty of a crime in forsaking that which he believes to be false?” “But,” rejoined Motalleb, “he is deceived by the angel of darkness, or more probably only affects to believe in his accursed creed.” “Methinks, then,” said Musa, with perfect simplicity, “that he must be a great fool either to suffer himself to be deceived, or to sacrifice his life for that in which he does not believe.” “But if his belief in the creed of the Christian dogs should be serious, what then, my son?” asked Motalleb. “Then,” replied Musa, “he ought not to die, for you have often told me, that what is sanctioned by our reason may be adopted without being guilty of falsehood or committing a crime.”

Motalleb hereupon fell into a long dissertation, involving various nice distinctions between wilful and involuntary errors of opinion, owing, in a great measure, sometimes to the influence of early education, habits and example; sometimes to the seduction of the passions, and at others to the weakness or perverseness of the understanding. When he thought he had made the subject quite clear to the comprehension of his pupil, the latter, after reflecting a few moments, asked him how he could distinguish those opinions which were adopted through the influence of education, passion, habit and example, from those derived from the convictions of pure impartial reason. “That is impossible,” said Motalleb; “Allah alone can see into the human heart, and detect the secret springs by which it is directed.” “It seems to me, then,” said the youth, doubtingly, “that to Allah alone should be left the punishment of errors of opinion, since none other can know whether they are wilful or involuntary. But,” continued he, after another pause of deep reflection, “surely there must be some standard of truth, equally invariable and universal, to which mankind may appeal, instead of sacrificing each other, as this poor man is about to be, for a difference of opinion.” “Thou art right, my son, there is such a standard. Thou shalt study the Koran, for that is the fountain of truth, the only exposition of the wisdom of Allah himself.”

Motalleb placed the Koran in the hands of his pupil, who studied it with equal ardor and intelligence, the dervise having, by his repeated exhortations, inspired him with a fervent admiration of truth, as well as a longing desire to obtain its possession. But there were many portions of the book which neither corresponded with the evidence of his senses nor the dictates of his reason. When he read that the Prophet had, according to his own assertions, ascended to the seventh heaven in company with the angel Gabriel, on the back of a white camel, and advanced alone so near the throne of the Almighty as to be touched on the shoulder by his hand; and that he had, in less than the tenth part of a single night, thus performed a journey of at least a thousand years—these and other miraculous tales confounded his understanding, and contradicted not only the lessons of past experience, but the evidences of his senses. He tried to believe, but found it impossible; and when his preceptor, after allowing him sufficient time to study the great work of the Prophet, asked him whether he had not at length drank at the pure fountain of truth, he frankly expressed his doubts as to the miraculous journey. The dervise stroked his long beard, and frowned indignantly. “What!” cried he, “dost thou disbelieve the revelations of the Prophet himself?”

“I am compelled to do so,” replied Musa, “since they neither accord with the evidence of my senses nor are confirmed by the assent of my reason.”

Motalleb grew angry, and cried out with a loud voice, “What hath the evidence of the senses or the assent of reason to do with that which is beyond the reach of the senses or the comprehension of reason? Know, foolish youth, that these things are miracles, and that neither the understanding nor the reason of mortals can comprehend them. Dost thou doubt the testimony of him who communed with angels, and was inspired by Allah himself?”

“I am neither learned nor wise as thou art, O! Motalleb,” answered Musa, bowing his head, and touching his forehead reverently, “but it seemeth to me that thy words do not exactly accord with the definition of truth which was one of my earliest lessons, and which thou hast repeated to me every day. Thou didst tell me that truth was the evidence of the senses, confirmed by the assent of the understanding. Now thou sayest otherwise, and I am to believe what neither my reason can comprehend, nor my senses realize as possible, because it contradicts all my experience.”

“Thy reason! thy experience!” answered Motalleb, contemptuously. “Thy beard is not yet grown; thou hast as yet read little and seen nothing. When thou hast mastered all the learning of Arabia, and traversed the distant regions of the earth, thou mayest then found thy belief on the evidence of thy senses, the dictates of reason, and the results of experience. Go thy ways, my son. Thou art already too wise for me, since thou doubtest the miracles of the Prophet.” Saying this, he dismissed his pupil, who bent his way homeward, thoughtful and depressed.

Abdallah received him with his usual affection, and being told of the dismissal of Musa by his preceptor, straightway went forth and purchased great store of costly manuscripts, containing all the learning, science and philosophy of the East, together with many translations from the Grecian sages and poets. To these Musa applied himself with such zeal and perseverance for several years, that he at length possessed himself of all the wisdom they contained. Every step, however, that he proceeded in his search after truth, only seemed to render its existence more doubtful. Scarcely any two of those illustrious wise men agreed in their religious, moral or political opinions, and he counted among the philosophers upwards of three hundred different definitions of the summum bonum—that is, the great constituent of human happiness. “Strange,” thought Musa; “surely that which leads to happiness can be only the truth; and yet, in this most important of all concerns, these sages almost invariably dissent from each other. I will henceforth see with my own eyes, instead of those of others. Surely truth must exist somewhere in this world. I will traverse the earth, according to the advice of Motalleb, until I find it, or perish in the search.”

At this moment he heard a loud cry at the door which opened toward the street, and going hastily forth, encountered four slaves bringing in the body of his father, who had been suddenly smitten by the angel of death, while drinking from a cool fountain in one of the public gardens of the city. Musa fell on the body and wept, and mourned a long while with all the depth and sincerity of filial love. But when time had assuaged his sorrows, he recalled to mind the anxious wishes of his parent, that he should seek and find out the truth; and being now rich, and his own master, he resolved to set out on his pilgrimage without delay. Placing the management of his affairs in the hands of a discreet friend of his father, he one morning, just at the dawning of day, mounted his Arabian steed, and turned his back on the once splendid capital of the Kaliphs.

In the course of twenty years, Musa visited a great portion of the habitable globe, with the exception of the new world, which was not then discovered. He sojourned among the Persians, whom he found almost equally divided between the worshippers of fire and the followers of the sect of Ali, abhorred by all the faithful. Each believed in the truth of their faith, and were ready to die in its defence. He then joined a caravan of merchants, and bent his way toward Hindostan, where, having safely arrived, he quitted his companions, and pursued his journey alone. The first thing that attracted his attention was a party of young people of both sexes bathing promiscuously together, who seemed to be utterly unconscious of any impropriety, and laughed and gamboled with all the hilarity of innocence. To a disciple of Mahomet, accustomed to the jealous seclusion of females, the spectacle was revolting in the extreme, and he turned away in bitter disgust, exclaiming against such a violation not only of decency, but the law of the Prophet.

Proceeding onward, he observed several persons with a piece of fine muslin or gauze before the mouth, and others walking slowly, with brooms, carefully brushing away the dust before they ventured to take a step forward. On inquiring the reason, he was told that the former method was adopted lest they might accidentally swallow some insect, and the latter to prevent their treading on some living thing, and thus depriving it of life—a crime which subjected them to severe penance and mortification, as being against one of the fundamental principles of their faith. On hearing this, Musa pursued his way laughing, though a grave Mussulman; and, having crossed a river, encountered a person uttering the most horrid execrations against an evil spirit, who, it seems, had, in the shape of a dragon or serpent, raised a great thunder storm, which laid waste his fields and destroyed his crop of rice.

“Head of Mahomet!” said Musa, “what a set of ignorant barbarians are these! There is no use in seeking for truth among them. I will visit their wise men, and hear what they have got to say for themselves.”

Learning, on inquiry, that the sect or caste of the Brahmins were considered the most wise and enlightened of all the people of Hindostan, he sought and obtained the society of some of the chief bonzes, under the character of a traveler in search of the truth. From these he learned, with no little surprise, that their religion was a perfect mystery, confined altogether to the priests, and that so far from wishing to make proselytes of strangers, none could be admitted among them but by hereditary succession. “Strange,” thought Musa, “that people should be so selfish. If they believe their faith the only true one, it is cruel to keep it from the knowledge of others.”

Passing away from these exclusives, he came to a temple, where he beheld a number of persons undergoing a variety of the most extraordinary tortures, to which they were voluntarily submitting. Some of these had held up one arm in the same position till it became fixed and inflexible, and so remained during the rest of their lives. Others had clenched their fists with such force, and kept them thus so long, that the nails had grown through the palms, and projected from the back of the hand. Others had turned their faces over one shoulder, until they were irrevocably fixed in that direction. Others were suspended, by iron hooks fixed in the shoulder-blade, to a beam which turned round with great velocity on a pivot at the top of a long pole, while the penitent sometimes sung a song, or blew a trumpet, as he whirled around, to the great admiration of the spectators. On inquiring the meaning of all this, he was told that they were celebrating their religious rites, and exemplifying the sincerity of their devotion.

Musa turned away from this exhibition with mingled feelings of pity and contempt, and pursued his way pondering on the strange diversities of human opinion, most especially on subjects involving not only the temporal but eternal welfare of mankind.

“All cannot be true,” exclaimed he, “and yet one must be the truth. I will not be discouraged, but continue my pilgrimage until I find the fountain of truth, or become involved in endless, inextricable doubt, and believe nothing.”

Continuing his journey, he entered the great empire of China, where he found three hundred millions of people, divided into the followers of Loo Tsee, Fokè, and Confucius, or Confutsee, each equally convinced of the truth of their creed, and each equally despising the others. Thence he proceeded to Japan, where he arrived at the period of celebrating a great religious festival, and saw them trampling the cross under foot, and sacrificing human beings to a great idol, which resembled neither beast, bird, fish, nor man, but exhibited a monstrous combination of the deformities of almost every species of animal.

It would be tedious to follow him throughout his various peregrinations through Asia and Africa. Suffice it to say, that he everywhere encountered the strangest diversities of manners, habits, opinions and modes of faith, and every day became more hopeless of gaining the object of his weary pilgrimage. The course of his wanderings at length brought him to Cairo in Egypt, where he accidentally fell into the company of a learned European traveler, who had visited the country to unravel the mystery of the pyramids, and decipher hieroglyphics. On learning from Musa the object of his journeyings, he turned up his nose somewhat scornfully and exclaimed⁠—

“Pooh! what is the use of seeking for Truth among the barbarians of the East? You should visit enlightened Europe, the seat of learning, philosophy and true religion. I have completed the purposes which brought me hither, and am about to return home, where, I flatter myself, I shall prove to the satisfaction of all reasonable people that the whole tribe of travelers who preceded me are no better than a parcel of ignorant blockheads. You shall accompany me to Europe, where alone is to be found true religion and true philosophy.”

Musa caught at the proposal. They embarked together in a vessel destined for Marseilles, where in good time they arrived without accident. On the night of his first sojourn in that city he was suddenly roused from a sweet sleep by a series of heart-rending shrieks and groans, mingled with loud imprecations and shouts of triumph, that seemed to come from all quarters of the city. Starting from his bed, he ran to the window, where he beheld bodies of armed ruffians raging through the streets, massacring men, women and children without mercy, breaking open the houses, tearing forth their wretched inmates, whom they slaughtered with every species of barbarous ingenuity, and committing their bodies to the flames of their consuming habitations. While shivering at this exhibition of barbarity, and meditating an escape from its horrors, he was interrupted by his friend, and addressed him in a voice trembling with apprehension,

“In the name of the Prophet!” cried he, “what does all this mean? Is the city become a prey to banditti or hostile barbarians, who spare neither sex nor age, and riot in blood and fire?”

“It is nothing,” answered the other, coolly. “They are only punishing the heretics for not believing in the Pope.”

“And is that the name of your God?” asked Musa, with perfect simplicity.

“No—he is only his vicar on earth.”

“But do not these poor people believe in your Bible, which you have told me is the great volume of Truth, and in that Supreme Being who you say is the only true God?”

“Yes—but they deny the supremacy of the Pope, and deserve to be punished with fire and sword.”

“Then the Pope must be greater than your God,” said Musa.

His friend turned away with a gesture of impatient contempt, and muttered something of which he could only distinguish the words—“Ignorant barbarians!”

At dawn of day he left the city in disgust, but wherever he came he found the country smoking with the blood of helpless innocence and unresisting weakness, and was told by the priests in tones of triumph that in one night all the heretics of the kingdom had been exterminated. He asked then what these poor people had done, whether they were thieves and robbers, traitors or rebels, that they should be cut down in one single night without discrimination and without mercy. But all the answer he received was⁠—

“They deny the supremacy of the Pope!”

“Strange!” thought Musa. “But I am among true believers and enlightened philosophers, and no doubt shall find the Truth at last.”

He, however, determined to leave the country as soon as possible, and bending his course to the seaside, embarked in a vessel destined for England, but which was driven by stress of weather into a port of Ireland. Here he found every thing in confusion. People were setting fire to the churches, pulling down stately abbeys and convents, and driving their inmates before them with every species of violence and of opprobrium.

“Who are these people?” asked he—“and what have they done—most especially those poor women and children, whom I see fleeing from their pursuers, pale with affright, and crying out in despair?”

“They are heretics and believe in the Pope,” was the cool reply.

“That is very strange,” said Musa—“I am just from a land where they were massacring men, women and children because they did not believe in the Pope. How is this?”

“We are only retaliating their persecutions. When they had the upper hand they oppressed us, and it is but just that they should suffer in turn.”

“But does not your religion inculcate forgiveness of enemies?”

Before Musa could receive a reply, an aged, bald-headed friar ran tottering past, with a nun holding by his hand, and pursued by several people who seemed half mad with hate and eagerness, and assailed them with missiles of every kind. His companion joined the throng, and left him without an answer. He inquired of another what the old man, and especially the poor woman, had done to merit such unworthy treatment, and was told that one was a friar of the Order of Mercy, and the other a Sister of Charity.

“And what are their occupations?” inquired Musa.

“One is employed in the redemption of captives among the infidels—the other passes her life attending the bedside of the sick, relieving their wants, administering to their comfort, without fee or reward, and devoting herself to charity and devotion. But they both believe in the Pope, and that is the great original sin.”

“Head of the Prophet!” exclaimed Musa—“and yet you persecute these people! Surely that cannot be the true religion which deals thus with the votaries of mercy and charity.”

The man, instead of answering, stooped down and seizing a stone, threw it at Musa with such good aim that it grazed his turban, and began crying out—“A Papist!—A Papist!” whereupon Musa made the best of his way to the ship, where he sought shelter from an angry crowd that was shouting and shrieking in his rear. He continued his journey through England, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and wherever he went perceived such strange diversities and contrasts in the standard of morals and religion, that in despair he at length resolved to return home, having come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as truth in this world. With this intention he arrived at Rome, on his way to Venice, whence it was his purpose to embark for Smyrna, and thence to proceed by land through Asia Minor to Constantinople, on his way to Bagdad. At Rome he saw the Pope, a feeble, decrepit old man, who had, in order to give more imposing dignity to the ceremony, consented to preside at the burning of a heretic, who was convicted before the Inquisition of having pulled off his hat and made a bow to the statue of Hercules and the Centaurs. The poor victim, who was an ignorant peasant, solemnly declared that he mistook Hercules for a saint; but all would not do. He perished at the stake, after which Te Deum was sung, and high mass celebrated throughout the ancient capital of the world.

Sickened and disgusted with Europe, he embarked for Smyrna, and crossing Mount Sipylus on his way to Constantinople, was benighted and lost his way. He wandered about amid the deep recesses, until at length he descried a light at a distance, which, on approaching, was found to proceed from a cave, where Musa beheld an aged man, with a long white beard, reading by the light of a lamp. So deeply was he engaged, that the lost traveler entered the cave and stood beside him ere he was aware of his presence. He was not, however, in the least startled when he perceived the stranger, but courteously requesting him to be seated, closed the manuscript volume in which he had been reading, and kindly inquired into his wants and desires.

Musa related to the old man how he had lost his way in returning homeward, after an absence of twenty years, and requested his hospitality. The old man assured him he was welcome, and having provided a frugal repast of milk, dates and bread, they sat and conversed together, making mutual inquiries of each other. The aged hermit informed his guest that he was of the sect of the Maronites, and had many years ago sought refuge from the persecutions of his fellow Christians in this spot, where he could alone enjoy liberty of conscience. “But thou,” continued he, “hast just informed me that thou art returning home after twenty years of travel. Thou must have gathered vast stores of wisdom and many truths during thy long pilgrimage.”

“I did indeed set forth in search of the truth,” replied Musa, “but am returning only more in doubt than before. I have sought for some standard of manners, morals and religion, by which all mankind might regulate their opinions and conduct, for such a standard can be only the truth.”

“And didst thou find it?” asked the hermit, smiling.

“Alas! no, venerable father,” replied Musa. “I found no two nations agreeing in one or the other. A river, a mountain, or even an imaginary line of separation, not only produced a contrast in all these, but a bitter feeling of hostility, the parent of broils and bloodshed, seeming to proceed from mere differences in opinion, of which a great portion knew neither the grounds of their belief nor the source of their convictions. Even in matters involving their eternal welfare, I found no standard of truth, for millions differ with millions on the subject, and shed each other’s blood for a diversity in creeds which are alike derived from the great book in which they all believe.”

“And to what conclusion has all this travel, study and experience brought thee at last?” asked the hermit.

“I scarcely dare tell thee, O! venerable father. But if I have formed a decided opinion on any one thing, it is that there is no such virtue as truth on earth, and no Supreme Being in Heaven, since there are so many different opinions with regard to one, and so many modes of worshiping the other. Surely where such diversities exist, it is the height of presumption for men to persecute each other for not believing alike.

“But,” asked the hermit, “amid these endless varieties of faith, didst thou ever encounter, in all thy pilgrimage, a people who believed not in a Supreme Being, either by himself or his ministers, presiding over the government of the universe?”

Musa reflected awhile, and then answered, “No; however different might be their faith, in their modes of manifesting it, I do not recollect ever to have found a people, civilized or barbarous, where I could not distinctly perceive, even among the darkest clouds of ignorance, a recognition, more or less distinct, of a Supreme Intelligence, in some shape or other. Even where they worshiped beasts or idols, I thought I could always trace their devotion, step by step, to a Supreme Being.”

“Then,” said the old man, “thou mightest have found in thy long search, hadst thou made a wise use of thine experience, at least one great truth, of more importance to the welfare of mankind than all the conclusions of learning and philosophy. Instead of drawing, from the various modes in which religion manifests itself, the conclusion that there is no God, thou shouldst have gathered, from the universal belief of all mankind, that there is assuredly such a Being, since neither the most wise nor the most ignorant deny his existence.

“This is one great truth thou mightest have learned in thy twenty years of travel. A second, scarcely less important, at least to the temporal happiness of mankind, is, that since almost all nations and communities differ in a greater or lesser degree in their modes of worship, and there is no earthly standard to which all are willing to submit, it becomes us short-sighted, erring beings, instead of persecuting each other by fire, sword and defamation, to be tolerant of that which we call error of opinion in morals or religion. However we may differ in the modes by which these are manifested, we may be assured that though we may be mistaken in abstract points of faith or morality, still there is one great universal truth which all may comprehend, namely—that charity for human errors must be the bounden duty of all, since without such charity on the part of the Most High, the gates of Heaven would be forever closed against his sinful creatures.”

Musa remained several days in the cave of the hermit, during which time the old man often repeated the lesson he had given, and then bent his way toward Bagdad, which he reached without any adventure. Here he passed the remainder of his life in practising the precepts of the wise hermit of Mount Sipylus. He became the friend of the ignorant, the benefactor of the needy; nor did he ever inquire, ere he relieved them, to what sect they belonged, or pamper the pride of superior wisdom by despising their inferiority. And when, after many years of happy repose and wide-spread benevolence, he was smitten by the angel of death, he died in the full conviction that he had found the truth, and that it consisted in reverence for the Creator of the world, and charity toward all his creatures—charity not only for their wants, but their errors and opinions.

THREE ERAS OF DESTINY

IN THE LIFE OF THE PAINTER ANGELICA KAUFFMANN.

———

BY MISS H. B. MACDONALD.

———

PART I.

There is perhaps no scenery in the world so ravishingly beautiful as that offered by those vast plains of northern Italy situated at the base of the Rhætian Alps. A champaign elaborately tilled, and laid out into those regular divisions of meadow, corn-field, and vineyard, which make so much of the beauty of cultivated landscape; groves and belts of trees so disposed as to be productive of the highest effect; classic looking villas, villages and towns, with their surrounding orchards and pleasure-grounds; bright rivers winding their way through all this beauty till they lose themselves in those magic lakes, which, with their green banks kissed by the waters, and bordered on every winding promontory and inlet by belts of overshadowing trees, reflect the sunset splendors of the Alps, and seem, in every rainbow grotto and crystal palace mirrored in their lucid depths, meet homes for those genii of the waters with which a graceful superstition peoples their enchanted caverns. All these, with the back ground of gigantic mountains, pile on pile, that seem to raise a barrier from earth to heaven between this Paradise and a ruder world beyond, fill us with the idea of wandering amid some remnant of the scenery of the Golden Age, where of old, as the fables tell, the primeval deities used to dwell with a purer humanity, and in a younger and lovelier earth.

From a village situated at a considerable elevation on the surface of the slopes into which these smiling plains incline themselves as they approach the mountains, one bright spring evening, a troop of young girls might have been seen issuing, apparently as if broken loose from school, so joyous were their gestures, so wild their mirth, as with the vivacious grace belonging to the children of the South they bounded over the grass, some gliding in imitation of the motions of a dance, some skipping, some chasing others with the speed of the wind, till at a call from one, “to the water—to the water!” echoed by a dozen voices, they descended a hollow leading to the bed of the bright Ticino, and in a few moments were plunging and gliding in the stream.

One of them, apparently between fourteen and fifteen years of age, instead of following the example of her companions, had, in the excitement attending this operation, slipped away unperceived, and wandering listlessly along the windings of the river soon found herself out of hearing and sight. Proceeding on her way, and picking up a pebble or a flower just as it suited her, and stopping to observe every effective point of view in the landscape, with a narrowness of observation and sense of its beauty uncommon in one so young, she came to a ravine leading up from the side of the stream, which she ascended, till arriving on a high point that overlooked the channel of the river, she witnessed one of the most superb sunsets that ever gladdened an enthusiast’s eye. Amidst an array of purple clouds, fringed with silver, the sun was descending, gold colored, behind a peak of Mount Rosa, and suffusing the surrounding Alpine masses with a dim violet vapor. At her feet, and flowing in a direction opposite to the eye, was the river, now transformed into a stream of rich ruddy amber, with its sloping and picturesque banks and wooded islands, that diversified its brilliance with emerald shadows, taking its way in a hundred windings, whose succession she could trace, curve beyond curve, as it clove its course through the opening hills—far away, till, in the termination of the vista, gleamed the shining roofs of the Pania, with the white spire of its cathedral seeming to lose itself in the gold of the evening sky. To the left, immediately at the foot of the eminence where she stood, was the little white village, with its orchards and trim vineyards, and, beyond, those vast slopes on which the mountains lose themselves in the Italian plains. To the right, arose perpendicularly from the river a wall of sparkling granite rocks, now of the deepest vermilion in the alchemy of evening; and behind, towered grandly into the sky those white wildernesses of Julian Alps, receiving from their brethren, the Rhætians, the reflections of the opposite sunset in a thousand tints of lingering rose.

A singular effect was produced on the girl by the contemplation of this scene. Her bosom heaved, her cheeks flushed, her eyes filled with tears. “Oh! for the voice of a poet,” said she, speaking to herself, “to celebrate these splendors in some immortal song! Or the hand of a painter, to retain them in undying hues, for a joy to the worshipers of beauty forever. Alas! they are fading—they shall soon be lost to the universe; and there is none here who, with the power of inhaling them into his spirit as I, hath the happier gift of reproducing them in some diviner form. Alas! I am weak, with no power but to feel; as when gazing on some noble statue—some magic scene—some surpassing human form—an irrepressible emotion seizes me, which, when I would invest with expression, my heart dies away in utter impotence!”

Ah! innocent soul, thou didst not then know that the first power of an artist is to feel; that in his susceptibility for emotion lie his strength and the spirit of his calling; and that the achievement of the painter, the poet, or the sculptor, is but the expression of that emotion which our common language is too weak to supply, and only acquired, like any other language, through practice and experience. The girl who mused thus was very beautiful, now rendered more so by the freshness and vivacity of her extreme youth. Long tresses of chestnut hair, braided across her temples and slightly twisted up behind, were then suffered to fall in ringlets over her neck. Her complexion was brilliantly fair, with that rather deep carmine tinge on cheek and lip common to the Teutonic race, on the confines of whose clime she was born; while her slender figure and regular features betrayed the vicinage of classic Italy. But the most remarkable feature were the eyes; they were large and of the deepest black, in whose serious, melting, intellectual expression we could read all the soul of Angelica Kauffmann.

Throwing herself on the grass, she gave way to a delicious reverie on the enchantments of the scene, which the twilight, the fading colors and the silence soon deepened into a sort of dream. She thought herself in the midst of a vast temple, whose dome expanded into the skyey concave above her head, lamp-lighted with its thousand stars. Its area, whose termination on any side she could not descry, seemed to extend into an interminable space, lost amid a wilderness of surrounding columns. By degrees she became aware of the presence of groups of majestic statues, that seemed, by some enchantment, one after another to strike her view, like the scenery of a diorama. Watching them attentively, she saw that though raised on pedestals, in the attitudes and repose of statuary, they were endowed with all the features of animated life, but a life more than human—it seemed immortal, divine; and she recognized in these forms the presence of that gifted and glorious company enshrined in the temple of the immortal heart of man. Amidst the group in whose immediate vicinity she found herself, stood “Rafaelle the Divine,” with that countenance of his so expressive of the spirit of the sainted religion whose attributes he has embodied in glorious painting, and his melancholy eyes filled with the presentiment of his early death. Angelo, grand and majestic like his own Moses, and a brow worthy of the conception of that great St. Peter’s—the temple of the Christian world. Murillo, glorifying in his aspect the stolid simplicity of that humble life whence he drew his origin, and the delineation of which he made peculiarly the subject of his design. Carracci, with that forsaken look when the child of genius, like, alas! too many of his calling, lay down to die of a broken heart. Titian, beautiful as his own Apollos—and many more. But among these her attention was directed in surprise to a conspicuous pedestal, deficient of its statue, whereon was engraven in large letters, on the granite of its base, the name of “Angelica Kauffmann.” Looking up at the same moment to the vast sky-blue dome above her head, she saw blazing directly over the vacant pedestal a large, bright, solitary star, that lighted the whole temple with its radiance. After a long riveted gaze toward it, she became slowly sensible of looking on the true sky, from which the sunset and the twilight had now quite faded, abandoning it to the deep cobalt blue of the approaching darkness. The statues had vanished; the pillars had resolved themselves into the surrounding trees of the landscape; and, instead of the temple, were the familiar features of the scenery, though now almost lost in the darkness, she had gazed upon before falling into slumber. Every thing had vanished except that bright, solitary star, which, though now restored to complete consciousness, she continued to gaze upon with eyes riveted by wonder and delight. Familiar with the geography of the heavenly world, she was wholly unable to account to herself for the appearance of this particular star, which differed in position and lustre from any of the heavenly bodies she had hitherto been familiar with. It was evidently some new comer, and the girl thought to herself of those presiding stars that were of old said to arise over the destinies of the great ones of the earth, and dreamed—who can tell in that hour—wild dreams to herself of future glory and renown.[^[3]]

——

PART II.

There were preparations for a festival in the halls of the “Royal Academy” of London. A distinguished foreign member of the profession was expected to be present, and the first individual not a native on whom the fellowship of the Academy had hitherto been conferred. The king and royal family had promised the honor of their attendance, and the prize medals of the exhibition were to be presented, of which the eminent foreign artist alluded to had carried off the first. The saloons were gorgeously lighted. All the pictures of the exhibition had been removed from the walls, except those few favored masterpieces obtaining the award of the prizes—and one surpassing work of art that hung by itself at the head of the principal saloon, with a delicate wreath of laurel suspended above it, betokening it the first in honor as in place. It consisted of two figures, of which the most conspicuous was that of a shrinking, prostrate female, expressing the highest ideal of loveliness and grace, joined to utter abandonment, contrition and shame; appearing as if the whole soul had imbued itself through every muscle and lineament of the frame, for the delineation of these emotions, that none could mistake that model of penitential sorrow, afterward so celebrated as “The Weeping Magdalene.” The face was completely buried in her hands, but so far from the absence of this most essential tablet of female beauty being felt as a defect, it was rather an adjunct to the effect, inasmuch as it left to the imagination’s heightening conception the modeling of a countenance meet for such a form, and such magic tones of color—burning with blushes—we know it from the roseate tint that almost seemed reflected from it along the pearly edges of the enshrouding hands—and drowned in tears, that fell like liquid diamonds over the snow of the Redeemer’s feet. The accompanying figure was somewhat inferior, yet it expressed that union of majesty and sweetness joined to godlike compassion, in as great a degree as human art has ever been able to embody in its ideas of the Divine man. On the side of the hall opposite the picture was erected a pavilion, emblazoned with the royal arms of England, and surmounted by a crown, under which George the Third had just seated himself, habited in his usual dress of a marshal’s uniform, with the rather vulgar, squat figure of his queen, the German Charlotte, surrounded by their suite, who gazed, with curious though certainly not very connoisseur like eyes, occasionally through their opera glasses at the divine picture suspended in front of them on the opposite wall.

The Academicians had severally arrived in their badges; there were gentlemen in the splendid Windsor uniform—officers glittering in epaulettes and gold lace—collars and grand crosses of knighthood—ladies in coronets and plumes. The music played, and the festival was begun. The élite of England’s ennobled by birth and ennobled by mind were there, and mingled in conversation—some in animated groups round the pictures and statuary—some promenading the halls, when suddenly the buzz of conversation ceased, and an expression of eagerness pervaded the assembly, greater than that which had greeted the entrance of royalty itself, and there entered through the yielding crowds, conducted by a gentlemanly looking person in the badge of the Academy, a young slender girl—a child indeed no more, but still retaining the chestnut ringlets and glorious black eyes of Angelica Kauffmann. Conducting the young Academician, and the first woman ever invested with such a distinction, toward the pavilion, Sir Joshua Reynolds presented her to their majesties; when the peasant girl of the Alps, as she knelt before them, told that high-born and high-bred throng of a grace derived from the sense of the beautiful in the soul, and which the atmosphere of a court could neither add to nor bestow. Raising her hastily, George the Third, after a few words addressed to her, and graciously made in German by his queen, conducted her, leaning on his arm, through the saloons, rendering her the envied of all the envious.

“Such amiable condescension! But his majesty has such a passion for foreigners—beside his patronage of the Fine Arts—quite indeed auspicious of their restoration to the age.”

“It is whispered,” said another, “that she has been commanded to paint the royal family.”

“By no means,” interposed a gentleman in plain clothes. “My information came from an individual who had it from a high quarter, that such a report is incorrect. I understood that this honor was in contemplation for the signora, but no positive orders have been yet issued on the subject.”

It is to be doubted whether the object of these remarks was so highly sensible of these distinctions as a refined education would have taught her; and we have even a suspicion that she might have gone so far as to wish to escape from the gracious condescension of the conversation with which George honored her, as promenading round the hall she found herself obliged to stand answer to the abrupt and sometimes ridiculous questions originating in the royal mind, after the catechumenical method of conversation then in vogue in intercourse with majesty.

But higher honors awaited the young artist. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then President of the Academy, having mounted the chair, proceeded to descant upon the excellencies of the several productions distinguished by the Society’s prizes—but there was one, he said, which he could not pass over without some more especial notice.

“Need I direct attention,” said he, “to that noble work at the head of the hall, whose magic beauties, as they shine from the canvas, have enchained the admiration of the most distinguished connoisseurs, and evidence stronger reasons for the decision we have come to in its favor than any words of mine could adduce. Although the age and sex of the artist invested the work with an interest in our eyes it would not otherwise perhaps so strongly possess, we would not for a moment have it supposed that they exercised the smallest influence upon our suffrages. We adore beauty, womanhood and youth, but we adore Art more, and have too high a sense of its dignity to permit any extrinsic consideration, however fascinating to the imagination, to divert us from our undivided homage toward it. It is to the solid excellence of the work itself—the new principles which it involves—principles, for the acquirement of which, I am not ashamed to say that I myself, as well as many others grown old in honors as in years, are not unwilling to descend into the character of pupilage—and not the less that we sit at the feet of a genius and a woman. While awarding in this direction the highest distinction, we can speak for our brethren of Art that have come forward in competition for the honors of this day, that they will feel satisfied in withdrawing into an inferior place before her who, from a distant land, chose to throw her merits upon our judgment, and her talents into the service of the British nation. Therefore I bestow the First Prize of the Institution upon the ‘Weeping Magdalene,’ property of the Academy, and executed by the Signora Angelica Kauffman, of the Grisons, whom I have great pleasure in investing with the medal.”

So saying, the President descended, and presented to Angelica, who stood up to receive him, a massive gold medal and chain. There was neither bashfulness nor awkwardness in her demeanor as she stood up amid that vast assembly, whose shouts and plaudits now shook the building to its foundation—only a vivid blush passed over her face as she gazed round the assembly for a moment with an almost bewildered look; but it seemed of some higher emotion than vanity—as if the consciousness and the exultation of genius—the satisfaction of having achieved something for Art—the experienced realization of the hopes and the labors of years—and the knowledge of having won for herself a place among the Immortals, and in the sympathies of her race, which is, perhaps, the principal ingredient in a woman’s passion for fame—were all crowded into the emotion which gave it birth. The simplicity of her appearance contrasted strangely with the splendor of her reputation—young looking for her years, which then amounted to no more than twenty-two, her dress, too, plain and unadorned, and as much after the modest form of the antique as conformity with modern usage would allow without the charge of being particular or fantastic—no less added to this effect, contrasted, as it was, with the gauds and superfluity of hoop and head-dress then in vogue; her arms were bare nearly to the shoulder—and her hair, confined by a bandeau of pearls made to imitate a pointed coronet, was braided over her temples, and twisted up into a loose knot behind, as in times long ago, from which a few rich tresses escaping, fell over a neck possessing the contour and graceful set of an antique statue.

Fatigued and excited, she was glad to escape from the glare of the rooms into an adjoining balcony, to cool her eyes in the dim gleam of the stars—in all moments of excitement or passion, still the same bright, unchanging stars, ever ready to tranquilize us with thoughts of that world where passion and excitement cannot enter. A young man, who had watched her unceasingly all the evening with a deeper interest in his glance than mere curiosity, followed her hastily and in a moment was by her side. She did not attempt to conceal her pleasure at his appearance. “Where have you been, Alexander?” she said; “I often looked for you, but could not recognize yours among the bewildering crowd of faces that swarm in these busy halls.”

“And you thought of me, amid honors and applause, and the caresses of the enlightened, and the smiles of a king!—but oh! Angelica, they may give you praise, they may give you wealth; they may elevate you to a lofty place in the world’s view, where thy beauty and thy worth being recognized, may command the homage of the great and good; they may appoint you to a high rank among the hierarchy of genius that minister in the temple of fame—but I, only I, love thee! Poor in circumstances, poor in dignity, with no other advantage to offer you but a heart rich in affection, I have chosen this moment to lay it at your feet, in homage to a nobleness which, if my thought mistakes not, knows how to esteem such above all other gifts the world else can bestow.” And with many more impassioned words and adoring glances did he woo her, she responding in tones and looks as endearing as his own. Just then, in the midst of her triumphs of art, honors, and of love, she looked up toward the heavens, and saw shining above her that bright, still, solitary star—the same that had risen above the fantasies of her childhood, when she dreamed amid the sunny hills of Italy, far away! Many a strange experience, many a scene had passed before her since it first met her gaze; and now they all seemed to be crowded, as bestirred from her memory, into one moment of review. Her progress from the child to the woman—the strange intervening changes—the same, as she felt herself, yet not the same;—the vistas of fame opened to her with the first appearance of that star—her early struggles, and the space between, to the exulting consciousness of the pinnacle where she now stood, loftier than even her visions had conceived.

“The star triumphs!” thought she; “I am not superstitious,” she continued, aloud, “but, Alexander, I have seen that orb once before, and feel as if I should see it but once again. With every hour of joy does there not mingle a pang?—that telling of the dark reverse, which, in this unstable scene, must sooner or later await the most fortunate.”

“Hush! dear Angelica,” said her lover, laying his finger on her lips; “to-night let us only think of being happy.”

“You are right,” replied she, and, seizing his arm, they were soon mingling and jesting with the crowds of the saloon.

——

PART III.

It had been a day of clouds and heavy rain, and now the night was closing over a dreary and scantily furnished apartment in one of those ruined palaces of Florence, which, like so many objects in Italy, are invested with the romantic prestige of grandeur passed away. A single rushlight threw into view the dilapidated marble walls, on which were the tattered remains of what might once have been gorgeous tapestry, and a large oriel window, in whose immediate vicinity stood a mean uncurtained bed, where lay a woman apparently dying. A single female, sitting near her to administer such assistance as she needed, and a cold, indifferent looking man, who had his chair drawn up in an opposite corner of the room, and evidently stationed there more from duty or necessity than any feeling of interest, were the sole occupants beside. Low murmuring sounds broke from the lips of the dying woman. She was talking incessantly, as in that thronging of indistinct, though perhaps not undelightful images that often flit across the brain of the departing, her thoughts seemed to be wandering over many varied scenes, and her consciousness of existence to be quickened as it was about to be closed forever. Her speech was of flowers and of sunshine, and of every thing fullest of life. Distant, happy years seemed to be restored to her, for her imagination transported her back to the era of her childhood, and she talked of wandering in old familiar places with her companions, many of them dead and gone—for by some subtle process of association, those of them mainly seemed present to her visions—and of “bounding,” as she said, “fast, fast” after something she could not detain. “Let me rest!” she would murmur, “I am breathless with running—let me rest!” The passionless placidity of the countenance was in strange contrast with this—and the helplessness of the limbs, which, cold and nearly motionless, began to assume the semblance of that clay to which they were fast returning. Suddenly she opened her eyes, restored to the full consciousness of her situation. The eyes—those mirrors of the soul which neither time nor sorrow can rob of their magic, as long as they are the reflection of that which is immortal—were all that told of Angelica Kauffmann—and the long chestnut hair, which, though now hard and icy to the touch, still clung round her temples with some of the old luxuriance of those days when she dreamed inspired visions by the Alpine streams, or shone, the star of genius, in metropolitan saloons. For the rest, her features were faded and pale, their classic outline vanished in the hollows of time and the sharpness of death—haggard, too, but bearing that pathetic expression which told it might be the result more of suffering than years. And that cold, almost repulsive looking man!—can he be the same who knelt beside her beneath the stars and talked of unperishing love? Yes, such is life! In those worldly reverses which are too often the doom of the mentally gifted, poverty and neglect arrived—years of indifference followed, the character of the lover soon merging into that of the selfish and somewhat exacting husband—and now it had come to this. Calling him toward her, he took her proffered hand with a look of cold compassion. “I have been dreaming strangely to-night, Alexander,” said she, “and have the strangest sensations, as if all past life were passing in review before me, and its experiences crowded into a few fleeting hours—circumstances which I had believed long since forgotten, and feelings which I had thought to have outlived or crushed into oblivion. Yet there is none that return to me with a more vivid consciousness than my old feeling for you; and even now I seem to leap back over long, weary years of coldness, indifference, and estrangement, and the sad imprints with which they have dimmed your features, and to see you stand before me, ardent and beautiful as when I dreamed that Heaven had no brighter reflection than the fondness of your eyes. You will pardon this,” said she, on perceiving that such sympathies moved him not; “I have no wish to recall you to the past, nor too late to revive an extinguished affection, which can so seldom be brought into review without pain—far less with a thought of reproach for any, except for myself. It is but to testify to you in parting, that with the life I have led, happy as it was before I knew you—spent amid dreams of beauty, and the caresses of a family that sympathized with the delights of my calling, and were proud of my fame, honored as it afterward became when my achievements as an artist, extolled in every country in Europe, drew me forth from my retreat to receive that brief and brilliant homage, less intoxicating to me on the score of my individual self, than as a tribute to the success of that art to which I had consecrated the energies of my existence—yet there is no part of it I would willingly live over again but the early, too brief moments spent near you—no part of it than this I more fervently hold to my heart, as the true gold hoarded from what else appears, in this hour whose solemnity dispels all illusions, the dross and scum of existence. Does not this prove that love is immortal? And now a thought has struck me, that that sweet, bright blossoming which, alas! for us yielded so little fruit, may yet offer a harvest to be reaped in some other world. Will you think of this, Alexander?—let us part forgiving each other—our next meeting will be happier—and brighter!”

She turned her eyes toward the window, which had been thrown open to admit the cool air of the evening, for the wind had died away, and the heavens were clear—and there, conspicuous amongst its fiery brethren, shone that bright, still, solitary star—still fair and tranquil, when life with all its excitements and hopes was passing away, as when shining above the passion of her young life. It spoke to her of the glory of other worlds contrasted with the vapidity of this, which she had weighed in the balance and found wanting—a high and unchangeable emblem of that which is above us amid all the storms, treacherous calms, and exulting yet bewildering spring-tides of life—the star of her destiny, indeed, if it pointed to Heaven as the haven where her hopes should at last find rest! Her soul passed away in that gaze; they could not tell the exact moment when, but by the dull fixture of the eye, and the dead weight of the hand which lay in his, Alexander knew that he gazed upon the dead.

That oracle spoke truth, which told there is nothing stable in the universe but Heaven and Love!

THE PAST.

In her strange, shadowy coronet she weareth

The faded jewels of an earlier time;

An ancient sceptre in her hand she beareth⁠—

The purple of her robe is past its prime.

Through her thin silvery locks still dimly shineth

The flower-wreath woven by pale mem’ry’s fingers.

Her heart is withered—yet it strangely shineth

In its lone urn, a light that fitful lingers.

With her low, muffled voice of mystery,

She reads old legends from Time’s mouldering pages;

She telleth the present the recorded hist’ry,

And change perpetual of by-gone ages.

Her pilgrim feet still seek the haunted sod

Once ours, but now by naught but memory’s footsteps trod.

E. J. E.

SLY LOVE.

OR COUSIN FRANK.

———

BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.

———

CHAPTER I.

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Back and forth, up and down—creak, creak, creak, strides Mr. Hazleton. From the back parlor to the front, from the front to the back—his head down, his lips firmly compressed, his arms crossed behind his back, while, by the knitting of his brows and the occasional jerk he gives his head, it is very easy to see that the mind of Mr. Hazleton is crossed also.

And how perfectly unconscious sits the lady in black satin upon the sofa! With what a nonchalant air she beats the time with her foot, upon the little brioche, to the air she is humming. The spirit of the storm—yet herself how calm! Nothing vexes an angry man more, perhaps, than indifference to his anger. Mrs. Hazleton knew her advantage, and she also knew she was idolized, as young and pretty wives are apt to be, whose husbands, like poor Mrs. ——, are a “score of years too old.” Pretty sure, therefore, of carrying her point in the matter under debate, she highly enjoyed this unwonted ebullition of anger in her usually placid husband. By degrees the features of Mr. Hazleton softened—his step became slower and lighter, and then approaching the sofa, he said, in a tone which was evidently meant to be conciliatory,

“Come, come, this is all very foolish. I think I know your goodness of heart too well, my dear Anna, to believe you serious, or that you will receive so ungraciously the child of my only sister.”

“Mr. Hazleton, I tell you again,” replied the lady, carelessly playing with her eye-glass, “you are demanding a most unheard-of thing! Were she only coming here for a few days, to see the lions and be off to the woods again, I assure you I would be the most attentive chaperone. I would escort her from one end of the city to the other with the greatest pleasure, and load her off with ribbons, gew-gaws, and the latest novel, when the joyful moment came for my release. But a fixture for the winter—and that, too, my dear Julia’s first winter—O, heavens!”

Something very like an oath whistled through the teeth of Mr. Hazleton.

“Madam—Mrs. Hazleton—let me tell you I consider your remark as reflecting upon myself. No relative of mine, madam, can ever disgrace either yourself or your daughter, in any society.”

“Indeed!” was the cool reply.

“And I insist upon your treating my niece, Alice Churchill, not only with politeness, but with kindness—and your daughter also must be schooled to meet her as her equal.”

“Her equal, indeed!” and now the ire of Mrs. Hazleton was fast kindling to a flame. “Her equal! I would ask you, Mr. Hazleton, if the Ninnybrain blood flows in her veins?—the Ninnybrains, Mr. Hazleton, one of whom was maid of honor to a queen—another⁠—”

“Pish!” interrupted Mr. Hazleton, “and confound all the Ninnybrains!”

“Confound the Ninnybrains! Very pretty, really—yes, so much for marrying beneath me! Confound all the Ninnybrains, I think you said!”

“Yes, and I repeat, confound them all! What have they to do with my poor little Alice?”

It was now Mrs. Hazleton’s turn to sail majestically from room to room, muttering,

“Hem! very pretty treatment—very pretty, indeed!”

While her husband, throwing himself into the seat she had just occupied upon the sofa, very coolly knocked his heels upon the unfortunate footstool. At length the lady paused in her walk, and turning to her husband, said,

“My dear,” (and when Mrs. Hazleton said “my dear,” it was no idle word,) “I think you misjudge my motives entirely for what I have said. It is only for the good of your dear niece, for of course she must be very dear to you, and no doubt she is a very sweet girl, that I have raised any objections to her becoming a member of our happy family—no doubt, my love, she would prove a great acquisition—but—hem—but I think I have heard you say your sister, our sister Churchill, was in rather limited circumstances, and has been obliged to use great economy in bringing up her family. Now I ask you, my dear, if—if—we should not be doing wrong, very wrong, to vitiate the simple, happy tastes of Alice, and render dull and uncongenial the home of contentment in which she has ever so peacefully dwelt? This surely would be the case were we to introduce her into the gay world. So perfectly unsophisticated as she is, she would the more easily be led astray by the frivolities of fashionable life. Would it not be better for her, then, better for her dear mother, that this visit should not take place?”

“No, I tell you no!—she shall come, she shall go everywhere, she shall see every thing the city has to boast.”

“That can easily be done, love, in a few days,” replied the plausible lady. “Some pleasant morning you can go with her to the Museum, and Girard College, and the Water-Works. When I spoke of her going out, I meant to parties⁠—”

“And I mean to parties, and to theatres, and concerts, and⁠—”

“You are absurd, Mr. Hazleton!”

“Go on!”

“You have no regard for my feelings!”

“Go on.”

“You would willingly mortify me, and embarrass my sweet Julia, by linking her in companionship with this uncultivated hoyden!”

“Go on.”

“And also ruin the girl!”

“What next?”

“No, let me tell you, Mr. Hazleton, it must not, shall not be. Julia shall not be put to the blush continually for the solecisms this niece of yours will commit upon the rules of etiquette!”

“Little dear!”

“And, and—and, Mr. Hazleton—Lord, I wish I had never married!” and Mrs. Hazleton burst into tears.

Mr. Hazleton walked out.

——

CHAPTER II.

A BACHELOR IN CUPID’S NET.

In blessed bachelorhood had passed sixty years of Mr. Hazleton’s life. With no one’s whims but his own to nurse—no one to scold but his tailor and washerwoman, their flight had left little trace save in the silver threads with which Time weaves experience—linking the what has been to the what is and what will be. It is true, in early life he had wooed but not won, and it might be from disgust at the willful blindness of the lady of his love, he from that moment looked coldly upon the whole sex—blind to their beauty—deaf to their voices, and invulnerable to all their witchery, “charmed they never so wisely.”

But, alas! the work of years may be shattered in a moment! Hard as the heart of Mr. Hazleton had become, it melted like the frost of an autumn morning under the sunny beams of Mrs. Ketchim’s eyes! It was at Saratoga, that great hunting-ground of Cupid, that Mr. Hazleton first encountered the glances of the pretty widow. Whether that lady was in truth on a matrimonial chase cannot be definitely stated. Yet one thing is certain, no sooner did she meet with this rich, hard-hearted old bachelor than she determined to forget her departed Ketchim, and catch him—thus nobly avenging in her own person the slights her sex had received. What could not a fair and handsome widow accomplish with “sparkling black e’en and a bonnie sweet man!” Mr. Hazleton was lost.

The age of the widow was an enigma which no one but herself could solve. She did acknowledge she was too young—she did also own to the interesting fact that one sweet child called her “mother.” “Ah, a little golden-haired cherub, of some four or five summers!” thought our lover. What, then, was the surprise of Mr. Hazleton when, a few weeks after their marriage, a tall, beautiful girl of seventeen rushed into the parlor, and, giving him a hearty kiss, called him “papa!”

He had abjured spectacles, using only the eyes of love, but he now for a moment involuntarily resumed them, and gazed long and inquiringly at his charming wife. He was satisfied. Mrs. Hazleton smiled as sweetly, and looked just as young and bewitching as she had appeared to him before—so he returned the filial salute of his daughter with a paternal embrace, and unlocked another chamber of his heart to receive her.

Some months passed pleasantly on, and the honey-moon waxed not old. The so long time bachelor almost wept with sorrow over those lost years spent alone, and blessed the hour which had harbingered his present happiness. By degrees a little, a very little difference of opinion began to display itself—but insensibly gathering strength from frequent recurrence. Most generally, however, the husband yielded, and harmony was restored.

Julia was a lively, good-hearted girl—her faults more the result of her mother’s mismanagement than her own willfulness. In fact, it was Julia herself who first suggested the invitation which Alice Churchill received from her uncle.

“Dear me, papa, how dull it is! Pray have not you any relations?” she inquired one evening, when they were left tête-à-tête.

This was rather a posing question, for indeed Mr. Hazleton could hardly remember whether he had any or not.

“No sisters, or nieces?” continued Julia.

“Or nice young nephews?” added Mr. Hazleton.

“Yes, papa—a cousin would be so delightful!” and here Julia sighed and looked sad. Why she sighed the reader shall know bye and bye.

This careless remark of Julia aroused a train of long banished reflections in the mind of Mr. Hazleton. Early associations came thronging upon him, vividly calling up the image of his only sister, as tearfully and patiently she had turned from his reproaches at their last meeting, to follow the fortunes of him she loved. Ere Mr. Hazleton sought his pillow, the letter to his long neglected sister was written, and not even the possession of the late Mrs. Ketchim had made his heart so light as this simple act of duty and kindness.

Mrs. Hazleton had many weak points, but there were two upon which she was peculiarly sensitive. The first, viz.—her family. The Ninnybrains could trace a pedigree almost as far back as Adam—a sprig of nobility, too, had once engrafted itself upon the family tree, which important item had been handed down from generation to generation, and Mrs. Hazleton never lost an opportunity of proclaiming her noble lineage, while at the same time she indulged an almost slavish fear of deviating from the code of gentility, in her acceptation of the term. Her second tangible weakness was an affectation of juvenility. The idea of growing old gracefully was preposterous. Although she saw the seams and creases of Time’s fingers on other faces, she would not see them on her own, and while all the world were growing old around her, she resolved to set the gray-beard at defiance.

Mrs. Hazleton loved her daughter as much as she was capable of loving, yet she could not forgive her for the very contradictory evidence she brought against her youthfulness—could not pardon her for stepping forth from the nursery a tall, grown up girl, instead of quietly contenting herself with pantalettes and pinafores. The widow felt there must be a rapid race, or her daughter would reach the goal of Hymen before her—hence her conquest of Mr. Hazleton. Her own purpose attained, she then generously resolved to give Julia a chance, who, nothing loth, was summoned from a country boarding-school to catch a husband as quick as possible. To be sure this latter clause was not expressed in so many words—it was the ultimatum of the mother alone. As for Julia, she thought only of escaping from the odious Mrs. Rulem—of new dresses, theatres, and dancing till two o’clock in the morning. For once, then, Mrs. Hazleton concluded to assume maternity gracefully, and to matronize her daughter with all the dignity of the Ninnybrain school.

She was exceedingly annoyed, therefore, when she found her plans might all be defeated by the arrival of Alice Churchill. No way could she reconcile herself to this unavoidable evil. If handsome and engaging, she would only be in the way of her daughter’s advancement—if awkward and ugly, a constant source of mortification. Every device of which she was mistress was put in practice to thwart the expected visit, but that she did not accomplish her object has already been shown.

——

CHAPTER III.

THE ARRIVAL.

Alice Churchill was none of those fragile beauties whose step is too light to bend “a hare-bell ’neath its tread”—whose eyes are compared to those of the gazelle, or to violets and dew-drops—with cheeks like the blush rose, and lips vieing with sea-corals, contrasted by teeth of pearls! No such wealth of beauty had Alice, but she was a very sweet girl notwithstanding—just pretty enough to escape being called plain, and yet plain enough to escape being spoiled for her prettiness. Mrs. Churchill was a widow of very moderate fortune, living in a retired village of Pennsylvania, more than fifty miles from any town of note, and which even in the year ’45, (happy little village!) could boast of neither steam-boat nor railroad. It was here she had removed with her husband soon after their marriage, and here for a few brief years their happiness had been unclouded—until the shadow of death resting on that happy home severed all earthly ties. Peaceful now in the quiet grave-yard is the sleep of the husband and father.

Seventeen summers of Alice’s life had passed away—not all cloudless, but happily—for she was kind and affectionate—in making others happy she was herself so—indeed, as I said before, although she had no wealth of beauty, Alice was rich in goodness and purity of heart. Mrs. Churchill had offended her family by marrying a poor man, and there had been little or no intercourse since that period. When, therefore, she received a letter from her brother, not only affectionate, but accompanied also by a kind invitation for her daughter Alice to pass a few months in Philadelphia, it is difficult to say whether joy or surprise preponderated. Anxious alone to promote the happiness of Alice, Mrs. Churchill, sacrificing her own feelings at parting with her child, hesitated not to accept the offer. Little did Alice know of the world, except from books. Books had been her only companions, and, under her mother’s judicious selection, these best of friends had wrought a silent influence over her mind, preparing her to meet the realities of life, its pleasures and its trials also, with rationality.

Such, then, was Alice Churchill, the innocent cause of the matrimonial fracas illustrated in a preceding chapter.

The boat touched the wharf, and the motley crowd which had been watching her approach, noisily sprang on her deck. “Have a cab, miss?” “Cab, sir?” “Take your baggage, ma’am?” “Have a carriage?” Poor Alice shrank back into the farthest corner of the ladies’ cabin, perfectly bewildered with the noise and confusion. At length she heard her own name called, and, stepping forward, she was the next moment in the arms of her uncle. Mr. Hazleton embraced her affectionately, and then, gazing long and earnestly upon her, exclaimed, as he wiped a tear from his eye⁠—

“Yes, you do look like your dear mother!”

But this was no time for sentiment, especially as the stewardess, anxious herself to be on shore, already began to bustle about preparatory to the next trip—so, after attending to the baggage, they left the boat, and were soon rattling through the streets at the mercy of an independent cabman who “had another job.”

Who that has passed through the streets of a great city for the first time cannot imagine the feelings of our simple country-girl, as she found herself thus borne amid the busy throng—the side-walks crowded with people hurrying to and from their business—the gaily ornamented windows—elegantly dressed ladies—beggars—squeaking hand-organs—dancing monkeys—the cry of the fish-man, mingling with the noisy bell of the charcoal-vender—carriages clashing rapidly past—omnibuses rattling heavily along—dust, din, smoke—no wonder the poor girl rejoiced when the cab stopped at her uncle’s dwelling, and she found herself safe within its walls.

“My dear love, let me have the pleasure of introducing you to my niece,” said Mr. Hazleton, advancing with the blushing Alice on his arm.

Mrs. Hazleton coldly raised her eyes from the book on which they had been pertinaciously fixed, and with a slight bow and a formal “How do you do, Miss Churchill!” as coldly dropped them again.

Not so Julia, who, in spite of the lessons her ma’ma had been teaching her for the last half hour, could not see this young, blushing stranger so repulsed—she therefore rushed forward, exclaiming⁠—

“O papa, do stand away, and let me greet my new cousin.”