GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXV. AUGUST, 1849. No. 2.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

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

LA SIESTA.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXV. PHILADELPHIA, AUGUST, 1849. No. 2.

THE CURTAIN LIFTED.

OR PROFESSIONS—PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL.

———

BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.

———

CHAPTER I.

The Deacon.

Everybody called Mr. Humphreys a good man. To have found any fault with the deacon would have been to impugn the church itself, whose most firm pillar he stood. No one stopped to analyze his goodness—it was enough that in all outward semblance, in the whole putting together of the outward man, there was a conformity of sanctity; that is, he read his Bible—held family prayers night and morning—preached long homilies to the young—gave in the cause of the heathen—and was, moreover, of a grave and solemn aspect, seldom given to the folly of laughter.

All this, and more did good Deacon Humphreys; and yet one thing he lacked, viz., the sweet spirit of charity.

I mean not that he oppressed the widow, or robbed the orphan of bread; no, not this, it was the cold unforgiving spirit with which he looked upon the errors of his fellow man—the iron hand with which he thrust far from him the offender, which betrayed the want of that charity “which rejoiceth not in iniquity, suffereth long, and is kind.”

He was also pertinaciously sectarian. No other path than the one in which he walked could lead to eternal life. No matter the sect, so that they differed from him, it was enough—they were outlawed from the gates of Heaven. Ah! had the deacon shared more the spirit of our blessed Saviour, in whose name he offered up his prayers, then, indeed, might he have been entitled to the Christian character he professed.

Mrs. Humphreys partook largely of her husband’s views. She, too, was irreproachable in her daily walks, and her household presented a rare combination of order and neatness. The six days work was done, and done faithfully, and the seventh cared for, ere the going down of the Saturday’s sun, which always left her house in order—her rooms newly swept and garnished—the stockings mended—the clean clothes laid out for the Sabbath wear—while in the kitchen pantry, a joint of cold meat, or a relay of pies, was provided, that no hand might labor for the creature comforts on the morrow. As the last rays of the sun disappeared from hill and valley, the doors of the house were closed—the blinds pulled down—the well-polished mahogany stand drawn from its upright position in the corner of the sitting-room, which it occupied from Monday morning until the coming of the Saturday night—the great family Bible placed thereon, while with countenances of corresponding gravity, and well-balanced spectacles, the deacon and his wife read from its holy pages.

Thus in all those outward observances of piety, whereon the great eyes of the great world are staring, I have shown that the deacon and his good wife might challenge the closest scrutiny. Nor would I be understood to detract aught from these observances, or throw down one stone from the altars of our Puritan fathers. We need all the legacy they left their children. The force of good example is as boundless as the tares of sin—let us relax nothing which may tend to check the evil growth—and who shall say that the upright walk of Deacon Humphreys was without a salutary influence.

But it is with the inner man we have to do. The fairest apples are sometimes defective at the core.

——

CHAPTER II.

Grassmere and its Inhabitants.

Grassmere was a quiet out-of-the-way village, hugged in close by grand mountains, and watered by sparkling rivulets and cascades, which came leaping down the hillsides like frolicksome Naiads, and then with a murmur as sweet as the songs of childhood, ran off to play bo-peep with the blue heavens amid the deep clover-fields, or through banks sprinkled with nodding wild-flowers.

A tempting retreat was Grassmere to the weary man of business, whose days had been passed within the brick and mortar walks of life, and whom the fresh air, and the green grass, and the waving woods, were but as a page of delicious poetry snatched at idle hours. Free from the turmoil and vexations of the city, how pleasant to tread the down-hill of life, surrounded by such peaceful influences as smiled upon the inhabitants of Grassmere, and several beautiful cottages nestling in the valley, or dotting the hill-side, attested that some fortunate man of wealth had here cast loose the burthen of the day, to repose in the quiet of nature.

Although our story bears but slightly save upon three or four of the three thousand inhabitants of Grassmere, I will state that a variety of religious opinions had for several years been gradually creeping into this primitive town, and that where once a single church received the inhabitants within one faith, there were now four houses of worship, all embracing different tenets. But the deacon walked heavenward his own path, shaking his skirts free from all contamination with other sects, whom, indeed, he looked upon as little better than heathen.

The pastor of the church claiming so zealous a member, was a man eminent for his Christian benevolence. His was not the piety which exhausted itself in words—heart and soul did he labor to do his Master’s will, and far from embracing the rigid views of the worthy Deacon Humphreys, he wore the garb of charity for all, and in his great, good heart loved all.

He had one son, who, at the period from which my story dates, was pursuing his collegiate course at one of our most popular institutions, and in his own mind the deacon had determined that Hubert Fairlie should become the husband of his only daughter, Naomi. In another month Hubert was to return to pass his vacation at Grassmere, and Naomi looked forward to the meeting with unaffected pleasure. They had been playmates in childhood, companions in riper years; but love had nothing to do with their regard for each other, yet the deacon could not conceive how friendship alone should thus unite them. At any rate Naomi must be the wife of Hubert—that was as set as his Sunday face.

The deacon was a man well off in worldly matters. He owned the large, highly cultivated farm on which he lived, as also several snug houses within the village, which rented at good rates.

But the little cottage at Silver-Fall was untenanted. Through the inability of its former occupant to pay the rent, it had returned upon the hands of the deacon, and although one of the most delightful residences for miles around, had now been for several months without a tenant.

A charming spot was Silver-Fall, with its little dwelling half hidden by climbing roses and shadowy maples. Smooth as velvet was the lawn, with here and there a cluster of blue violets clinging timidly together, and hemmed by a silvery thread of bright laughing water, which, within a few rods of the cottage-door, suddenly leaped over a bed of rocks some twenty feet high, into the valley below. This gave it the name of Silver-Fall Cottage—all too enticing a spot it would seem to remain long unoccupied. Yet the snows of winter yielded to the gentle breath of spring, and the bright fruits of summer already decked the hedge-rows and the thicket, ere a tenant could be found, and then there came a letter to Mr. Humphreys from a widow lady living in a distant city, requiring the terms on which he would lease his pretty cottage.

They were favorable, it would seem, to her views, and in due time Mrs. Norton, her daughter Grace, and two female domestics, arrived at Silver-Fall.

——

CHAPTER III.

One Fold of the Curtain drawn back.

A new comer in a country village is always sure to elicit more or less curiosity, and Mrs. Norton did not escape without her due share from the inhabitants of Grassmere. With telegraph speed it was found out that she was a lady between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in bombazine, and wore close mourning caps. Miss Norton was talked of as a slender, fair girl, with blue eyes, and long, flowing curls, and might be seventeen, perhaps twenty—of course, they could not be strictly accurate in this matter.

Bales of India matting were unrolled in the door-yard—crates of beautiful china unpacked in the piazza—sofas and chairs crept out from their rough traveling cases, displaying all the beauty of rosewood and damask, until finally by aid of all these means and appliances to boot, Mrs. Norton and her daughter were pronounced very genteel—but—

“But, I wonder what they are!” said Mrs. Humphreys to the deacon, as talking over these secular matters she handed him his second cup of coffee.

Not that the good lady had any doubt of their being bona fide flesh and blood; neither did she believe they were witches or fairies who had taken up their abode at Silver-Fall. “I wonder what they are!” must therefore be interpreted as “I wonder what church they attend,” or “what creed they profess.”

The deacon shook his head and looked solemn.

“It is to be hoped,” continued Mrs. Humphreys, complacently stirring the coffee, “that at her period of life Mrs. Norton may be a professor of some kind.”

The deacon dropped his knife and fork—he was shocked—astounded.

“I am surprised to hear you speak thus lightly, Mrs. Humphreys—a professor of some kind! Is it not better that she should yet rest in her sins, than to be walking in the footsteps of error—a professor of some kind! Wife—wife—you forget yourself!” exclaimed the deacon.

“I spoke thoughtlessly, I acknowledge,” answered Mrs. Humphreys, much confused by the stern rebuke of her husband. “I meant to say, I hoped she had found a pardon for her sins.”

“Have you forgotten that you are a parent?” continued the deacon, solemnly. “Can you suffer the ears of your daughter to drink in such poison! A professor of some kind! Naomi, my child,” placing his hand on the sunny head before him, “beware how you listen to such doctrine; there is but one true faith—there is but one way by which you can be saved. Go to your chamber, and pray you may not be led into error through your mother’s words of folly!”

But there were others at Grassmere most anxiously wondering, like good Mrs. Humphreys, “what they were,” ere they so far committed themselves as to call upon the strangers. Sunday, however, was close at hand; Mrs. Norton’s choice of a church was to determine them the choice of her acquaintance.

Does the reader think the inhabitants of Grassmere peculiar? I think not. There are very many just such people not a hundred rods from our own doors.

Unfortunately, on Sunday the rain poured down in torrents. Nothing less impervious than strong cowhide boots—India-rubber overcoats, and thick cotton umbrellas, could go to meeting, consequently, Mrs. Norton staid at home, and on Monday afternoon, after the washing was done, and the deacon had turned his well saturated hay, Mrs. Humphreys put on her best black silk gown and mantilla, her plain straw bonnet, with white trimmings, and walked over with her husband to Silver-Fall cottage. As the widow rented her house of them, they could not in decency, they reasoned, longer defer calling upon her.

A glance within the cottage would convince any one that Mrs. Norton and Grace were at least persons of refinement—for there is as much character displayed in the arrangement of a room as in the choice of a book.

Cream colored mattings, and window-curtains of transparent lace, relieved by hangings of pale sea-green silk, imparted a look of delicious coolness to the apartments. There was no display of gaudy furniture, as if a cabinet warehouse had been taken on speculation—yet there was enough for comfort and even elegance; nor was there an over exhibition of paintings—one of Cole’s beautiful landscapes, and a few other gems of native talent were all; nor were the tables freighted as the counter of a toy-shop; the only ornament of each was a beautiful vase of Bohemian glass, filled with fresh garden flowers, whose tasteful arrangement even fairy hands could not have rivaled.

The few moments they were awaiting the entrance of Mrs. Norton were employed by Mrs. Humphreys in taking a rapid survey of all these surroundings, the result of which was to impress her with a sort of awe for the mistress of this little realm.

“My stars!” said she, casting her eyes to the right and left, half rising from the luxurious couch to peep into one corner, and almost breaking her neck to dive into another, “my stars, deacon, if this don’t beat all I ever did see!”

But the deacon, with an air worthy of a funeral, shook his head, closed his eyes, and muttered,

“Vanity—vanity!”

The door opened, and Grace gliding in, sweetly apologized for her mother, whom a violent headache detained in her apartment.

“Well, I do wish I knew what they were!” again exclaimed Mrs. Humphreys, as she took the deacon’s arm and plodded thoughtfully homeward.

Then going to a dark cupboard under the stairs, she rummaged for some time among the jars and gallipots, and finally producing one marked “Raspberry Jam,” she told Naomi to put on her Sunday bonnet, and carry it to the cottage, and⁠—

“Naomi, you may just as well ask Grace Norton what meeting she goes to.”

Delighted to make the acquaintance of Grace, Naomi threw on her bonnet and tripped lightly to the cottage, thinking little, we fear, of her mother’s last charge. At any rate it was omitted, and so the night-cap of Mrs. Humphreys again threw its broad frilling over an unsatisfied brow.

In the morning the deacon received a very neat note from Mrs. Norton, requesting to see him up on business.

“And now, my dear sir,” said she, after the common courtesies of the day were passed, “I have taken the liberty to send for you to transact a little business for me. If not too great a tax upon your time, will you purchase a pew for me?”

The deacon grimly smiled, and rubbing his knee, replied,

“Why, yes, Mrs. Norton, I shall be glad to attend to the matter. True, it is a busy season with us farmers, but the Lord forbid I should therefore neglect his business.”

“Do you think you can procure me one?” asked Mrs. Norton.

“O, I reckon so, for I am certain there are several pews now to be let or sold either.”

“And what price, Mr. Humphreys?”

“Well, I guess about sixty dollars; and now I recollect, Squire Bryce wants to sell his—it is right alongside of mine, and I reckon my pew is as good for hearing the word as any in the meeting-house. I am glad, really I do rejoice to find you a true believer.”

“You mistake my church, I see,” said Mrs. Norton, smiling, “I belong to a different denomination from the one of which as I am aware you are a professor.”

“Then,” cried the deacon, rising hastily and making for the door, “excuse me—I—I know nothing of any other church or its pews. I cannot be the instrument of seating you where false doctrines are preached! I—good morning, ma’am.”

The widow sighed as the gate slammed after her visiter, but Grace burst into a merry fit of laughter.

“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed; “was there ever such absurdity!”

“Hush, hush my dear child,” said Mrs. Norton, “Mr. Humphreys is without doubt perfectly conscientious in this matter—we may pity, but not condemn such zeal in the cause of religion.”

“Do you call bigotry religion, mamma?” asked Grace.

“A person may be a very good Christian, Grace, and yet be very much of a bigot,” answered her mother. “That such a spirit as Mr. Humphreys has just now shown may often be productive of more evil than good, I allow. His aim is to do good, but he adopts the wrong measures.”

“Why, mamma, one would have judged from his manner that we were infidels!” said Grace.

“O no, my child, he did not really think that,” replied Mrs. Norton, smiling at her earnestness. “He only felt shocked at what he deems our error—for he sacredly believes there can be no safety in any other creed than his own. Without the charity therefore to think there may be good in all sects, and lacking the desire to study the subject, or rather so much wedded to his belief that he would deem it almost a sin to do so, like an unjust judge, he condemns without a hearing. There are too many such mistaken zealots in every creed of worship. O, my dear child,” continued Mrs. Norton, her fine eyes bathed in tears, “would that members of every sect might unite in love and charity to one another! They are all aiming alike to love and serve Christ, and yet take no heed to his commandment, ‘Love ye one another!’ ”

“Well, mamma, for the sake of his sweet daughter, Naomi, I can forgive the good deacon. I have never seen a more interesting face than hers, and her manners are as graceful and lady-like as if she had never seen the country,” said Grace.

“And most probably a great deal more so, my love,” replied Mrs. Norton, “for nature can add a grace which courts cannot give. But I agree with you in thinking Miss Humphreys interesting; she is, indeed, so, and if her countenance prove an index of her mind, I think you may promise yourself a pleasing companion.”

But the deacon, it seems, was of a different way of thinking, and no sooner did he enter under his own roof, place his oak stick in the corner, and hang up his hat on the peg behind the door, than going into the kitchen where the good wife was busily employed preparing the noonday meal, assisted by Naomi, he made known with serious countenance, that he had discovered what they were at Silver-Fall cottage!

Of course, Miss Norton was not such a companion as they would choose for Naomi. True, she was a pretty girl, and Mrs. Norton a lady of faultless manners; but then so much the more danger, and therefore Naomi, though not forbidden, was admonished to beware of their new acquaintances.

——

CHAPTER IV.

Love Passages.

The summer passed, and in the bright month of September, came Hubert Fairlie, to pass a few weeks beneath the glad roof of his parents, whose only and beloved child he was.

Their warm welcome given, the first visit of Hubert was to Naomi. They met as such young and ardent friends meet after an absence of months, and Naomi soon confided to him her regret that her parents would not allow her to cultivate the friendship of Grace Norton, whom she extolled in such warm and earnest language, that Hubert found his curiosity greatly excited to behold one calling forth such high eulogium from the gentle Naomi.

An evening walk was accordingly planned which would lead them near the cottage, hoping by that means to obtain a glimpse of its fair inmate. Fortune favored them. As they came within view of the cottage, a sweet voice was heard chanting the Evening Hymn to the Virgin, and Hubert and Naomi paused to listen to as heavenly sounds as ever floated on the calm twilight air. Then as the song concluded, Grace herself still sweeping her fairy fingers over the strings to a lively waltz, sprang out from the little arbor, and with her hair floating around her like stray sunbeams, her beautiful blue eyes lifted upward, her white arms embracing the guitar, and her graceful figure swaying to the gay measure like a bird upon the tree-top, tripped over the greensward.

Among other amusements which the deacon held in great abhorrence was dancing, and Naomi had been taught to look upon all such exhibitions as vain and sinful. Yet never, I may venture to say, did any pair of little feet so long to be set at liberty as did Naomi’s—pat—pat—pat-ing the gravel-walk where they stood, urging their young mistress to bound through the gate and trip it with those other little feet twinkling so fleetly to the merry music.

The cheeks of Grace rivaled the hue of June roses, as she suddenly encountered the gaze of a stranger; but seeing Naomi, she hastened to greet her, and thereby hide her embarrassment. Naomi introduced her companion, and then Grace invited them to walk in the garden, and look at her fine show of autumn flowers. Minutes flew imperceptibly, and ere they were aware, Hubert and Naomi found themselves seated in the tasteful parlor of the cottage listening to another sweet song from the lips of Grace.

As this is not precisely a love tale, I may as well admit at once, that Hubert became deeply enamored of the bewitching Grace, and from that evening was a frequent and not unwelcome visiter—a fact which was soon discovered by the deacon, for noting that Hubert came not so often as was his wont to the farm, he set about to find out what could have so suddenly turned the footsteps of the young man from his door.

Alas, for his hopes of a son-in-law in Hubert! He found those footsteps very closely on the track of as dainty a pair of slippers as ever graced the foot of a Cinderella.

Nothing could exceed his disappointment, save the pity he felt for his minister, whose son he considered rushing blindly into the snares of the Evil One. Nay, so far did he carry his pity as to warn Mr. Fairlie of the dereliction of Hubert. But when that worthy man reproved his uncharitableness, and acknowledged that he could hope for no greater earthly happiness for his son, than to see him the husband of so charming and amiable a girl as Grace Norton, the deacon was perfectly thunderstruck! It was dreadful—what would the world come to! In short almost believing in the apostacy of the minister himself, the deacon went home groaning in spirit, as much perhaps for the frustration of his own schemes, as for the “falling off,” as he termed it of the reverend clergyman!

The swift term of vacation expired, and Hubert returned to college. His collegiate course would end with the next term, and then it was his wish to commence the study of the law. Mr. Fairlie was, perhaps, somewhat disappointed that his son did not adopt his own sacred profession; but he was a man of too much sense to force the decision of Hubert or thwart his wishes. He hoped to see him a good man whatever might be his calling; and if ever youth gave promise to make glad the heart of a parent, that youth was Hubert Fairlie.

The intercourse between Grace and Naomi from this time almost wholly ceased, much to the regret of both. Yet such were the orders of Deacon Humphreys, whose good-will toward the widow and her daughter was by no means strengthened by the events of the last four weeks.

——

CHAPTER V.

The Practical and Theoretical Christian.

“Why what have you done with Nelly to-day?” asked Mrs. Humphreys, of her washerwoman, who came every Monday morning, regularly attended by a little ragged, half-starved girl of four years old, whose province it was to pick up the clothes-pins, drive the hens off the bleach, and keep the kittens from scalding their frisky tails—receiving for her reward a thin slice of bread and butter, or maybe, if all things went right, and no thunder-squalls brewed, or sudden hurricanes swept over the clothes-fold, a piece of gingerbread or a cookey. “What, I say, have you done with Nelly?”

“O, ma’am, she has gone to school—only think of it, my poor little Nelly has gone to school! It does seem,” continued Mrs. White, resting her arms on the tub, and holding suspended by her two hands a well-patched shirt of the deacon’s, “it does seem as if the Lord had sent that Mrs. Norton here to be a blessing to the poor!”

“Humph!” ejaculated Mrs. Humphreys, spitefully rattling the dishes.

“Only think,” continued Mrs. White, “she has given up one whole room in her house to Miss Grace, who has been round and got all the children that can’t go to school because their parents are too poor to send them, and just teaches them herself for nothing! God bless her, I say!” exclaimed the washerwoman, strenuously, her tears mingling with the soap-suds into which she now plunged her two arms so vigorously as to dash the creaming foam to the ceiling.

Mrs. Humphreys was at once surprised and angry. She could not conceive why a lady like Mrs. Norton should do such a thing as to keep a ragged school, and that, too, without pay or profit. She had forgotten the words of our blessed Lord, “Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me,” or, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” Charity alone, she argued in her selfish nature, could not have influenced Mrs. Norton to put herself to so much trouble for a troop of noisy, dirty, half-clothed children! No, there must be some deeper motive—some sectarian object, perhaps, to be gained; and, impressed with this idea, she said tartly,

“I think it is a pretty piece of presumption in Mrs. Norton to come here and set herself up in this way, telling us as it were of our duty. She is a stranger, and what business is it of hers, I should like to know, whether the children go to school or not!”

“O, Mrs. Humphreys, indeed, I think the spirit of the Lord guides her!” said Mrs. White. “Miss Grace came and asked me so humbly like, if I would let her teach my Nelly, and then kissed the little fatherless child so, so—that—that—O, I could have worshiped her!” and fresh tears streamed down the cheeks of the washerwoman.

“Worship a fiddle-stick!” exclaimed Mrs. Humphreys, out of all patience, “I know what she wants—an artful creature; yes, she wants to make Nelly go to her meeting!”

Poor Mrs. White could not help smiling at the idea of attempting to form the religious creed of a child scarce four years old.

“Well, if she will only make her as good as she is, I don’t care!” she answered, “for the Bible says, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them!’ ”

Mrs. Humphreys was more and more shocked at this. She whispered it to Mrs. Smith, who whispered it to Mrs. Jones, who told Mrs. Brown, who told all the society, that the Nortons were wicked, designing people, come into the village to stir up schism in the church! Yet all sensible persons applauded the good deed of the widow, and cheerfully aided her efforts. The little school prospered even more than she had dared to hope; the children were cheerful and happy, and those whose parents could not afford them decent clothing, were generously supplied by Mrs. Norton—and many a heart blessed the hour which brought her among them.

As the thunder which suddenly rends the heavens, when not a cloud on the blue expanse has heralded the coming storm, was the calamity which now as suddenly burst over the head of Mrs. Norton.

She retired at night to her peaceful slumbers, supposing herself the mistress of thousands. With the early dawn there came letters to the cottage, telling her that all her worldly possessions were swept from her. The man to whose care her fortune was entrusted, had basely defrauded her of every cent, and now a bankrupt, had fled to a foreign land.

The stroke was a severe one. She must have been divine to have resisted the first shock which the tidings caused her. But that over, like a brave and noble spirit she rose to meet it. Her treasures were not all of earth—in heaven her hopes were garnered; and, although henceforth her path in life might be in rougher spots, and through darker scenes than it had yet traversed, to that heaven she trusted to arrive at last.

It happened, unfortunately, that the half-yearly rent of the cottage became due that very week; and Mrs. Norton, thus suddenly deprived of her expected funds, had no means to meet it. Where should she raise two hundred dollars! Her courage, however, rose with her trials. A little time to look into her affairs—a little time to form her plans for the future, and she doubted not she should be able to liquidate the debt. Unused to asking favors, she yet courageously went to Mr. Humphreys, and stating candidly her inability to meet the rent, requested a few weeks indulgence.

The deacon was not caught napping. Evil news always travels with seven-league boots—and long ere Mrs. Norton knocked at the door of the farm-house, it was known throughout the village that her fortune was gone.

Now the deacon, good man that he was, was “given to idols,” and Mammon was one. Moreover, he owed the widow a grudge, as we already know, and the old leaven of sin was at work beneath the crust of piety.

He was accordingly well prepared to receive her. And sorry, very sorry was the worthy deacon, but he had just then a most pressing necessity for the rent—he really must have it, if not in cash, perhaps Mrs. Norton might have some plate to dispose of; he would be happy to oblige her in that way, for the Lord forbid he should deal hard with any one—but, the amount must be paid when due. Wait he could not—and if the rent was not forthcoming on the day stipulated in the contract—why—why—he was very sorry—but he should be obliged to take other measures, that was all!

Mrs. Norton soiled not her lips by making any reply to this Christian Shylock—no expostulation or entreaty—but coldly bowing, she took her leave.

As soon as she reached home she sent for a silver-smith, brought out her valuable tea-set—doubly so from having been the marriage gift of her father, requested its appraisal, and then duly attested as to its weight and purity, it was forwarded to the clutches of the deacon.

Mrs. Norton met with a great deal of sympathy in her misfortunes. During the few months she had resided among them, the villagers had all learned to love and respect her. Even the poor came from their humble homes, and with looks of sympathy and out-stretched hands tendered their offerings—their hard-earned wages to the kind lady who had taught their little ones; they would work for her—they would do any thing to serve her. With a sweet smile Mrs. Norton put back their grateful gifts, and thanked them in gentle tones for their love—to her a far more acceptable boon than gold could buy.

Again Silver-Fall cottage fell back on the hands of its owner.

Dismissing her attendants, Mrs. Norton took a smaller and cheaper house. Her choice and beautiful furniture she sold, only retaining sufficient to render her now humble residence comfortable. The avails of the sale amounted to several hundred dollars—enough at any rate, she deemed, for present necessities, while she trusted in the meantime to find some means of subsistence by which she and Grace might support themselves.

What more noble spectacle, than an elegant, refined woman thus meeting, uncomplaining and cheerfully, the storm of adversity.

And Grace, too—sweet Grace—sang like a skylark, and made her little white hands wonderfully busy in household matters. Hubert Fairlie was yet absent, though his long and frequent letters brought joy to the heart of his beloved.

And had Naomi forgotten her friend in this season of trial! Not so; yet forbidden as we have seen from the society of Grace, all she could do was to sympathize deeply in spirit, happy when a chance opportunity brought them together; and those meetings although rare, only served to strengthen the friendship which united these two lovely girls.

——

CHAPTER VI.

The Pestilence. The Curtain wholly lifted.

It was now the middle of October.

“Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light, and the landscape

Lay as if new created, in all the freshness of childhood:

All sounds were in harmony blended.

Voices of children at play—the crowing of cocks in the farm-yard,

Whirr of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons,

All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love.”

When suddenly the Angel of Death folded his dark wings, and sat brooding over the peaceful, pleasant village of Grassmere.

A terrible and malignant fever swept through the town, spreading from house to house, like the fire which consumes alike the dry grass and the bright, fresh flowers of the prairies. Old and young, husband, wife and child, were alike brought low. There were not left in all the village those able to attend upon the sick. From the churches solemnly tolled the funeral bells, as one by one, youth and age, blooming childhood and lovely infancy, were borne to the grave-yard—no longer solitary—for the foot of the mourner pressed heavily over its grass-grown paths.

Still the contagion raged, until the selfishness of poor human nature triumphed over the promptings of kindness and charity. People grew jealous of each other; neighbor shunned neighbor;

“Silence reigned in the streets—

Rose no smoke from the roofs—gleamed no lights from the windows.”

save the dim midnight lamp which from almost every house betokened the plague within.

None had shut themselves up closer from fear of infection than Deacon Humphreys. His gates grew rusty, and the grass sprang up in the paths about his dwelling. And yet the Destroyer found him out, and like a hound long scenting its prey, sprang upon the household with terrible violence.

First the pure and gentle Naomi sank beneath the stroke, and ere the setting of the same day’s sun, Mrs. Humphreys herself was brought nigh the grave.

Like one demented, pale with agony and terror, the deacon rushed forth into the deserted streets to seek for aid. His dear ones—his wife and child were perhaps dying; where, where should he look for relief—where find some kind hand to administer to their necessities.

At every house he learned a tale of wo equal to his own. Some wept while they told of dear ones now languishing upon the bed of pain, or bade him look upon the marble brow of their dead. Others grown callous, and worn-out with sorrow and fatigue, refused all aid, while some, through excess of fear, hurriedly closed their doors against him.

Thus he reached the end of the village, and then the small, neat cottage of Mrs. Norton met his view, nestling down amid the overshadowing branches of two venerable elm. From the day he had almost thrust her from his gate, with cold looks and unflinching extortion, Mrs. Norton and the deacon had not met, and now the time had come when he was about to ask from her a favor upon which perhaps his whole earthly happiness might rest—a favor from her, whom in his strength and her dependence he had scorned. Would she grant it? He hesitated; would she not rather, rejoicing in her power now, revenge the slights he felt he had so often and so undeservedly cast upon her. But he remembered the sweet, calm look which beamed from her eyes, and his courage grew with the thought.

Putting away the luxuriant creeper which wound itself from the still green turf to the roof of the cottage, hanging in graceful festoons, and tinged with the brilliant dyes of autumn, seemed like wreaths of magnificent flowers thus suspended, the deacon knocked hesitatingly at the door.

It opened, and Mrs. Norton stood before him, pale with watching—for, like an angel of mercy had she passed from house to house, since the first breaking out of the scourge. In faltering accents he told his errand; and, O, how like a dagger did it pierce his heart, when, with a countenance beaming with pity and kindness, and speaking words of comfort, the widow put on her bonnet and followed him with fleet footsteps to his stricken home.

All night, like a ministering angel, did she pass from one sick couch to the other, tenderly soothing the ravings of fever, moistening their parched lips with cool, refreshing drinks, fanning their fevered brows, and smoothing the couch made uneasy by their restless motions.

Unable to bear the scene, the deacon betook him in his hour of sorrow to his closet, where all through the dreary watches of the night he prayed this cup of affliction might pass from him. His heart was subdued. He saw that like the proud Pharisee he had exalted himself, thanking God he was not as other men.

At early dawn came Grace also to inquire after her suffering Naomi, and finding her so very ill, earnestly besought her mother that she might be allowed to share the task of nursing her. Mrs. Norton had no fears for herself, yet when she looked at her only and beautiful child, she trembled; but her eyes fell upon the bed where poor Naomi lay moaning in all the delirium of high fever, and her heart reproached her for her momentary selfishness. Removing the bonnet of Grace, she tenderly kissed her pure brow, and then kneeling down, with folded hands she prayed, “Thy will, O Lord, not mine be done! Take her in thy holy keeping, and do with her as thou seest best!”

From that day Grace left not the bedside of her friend.

On the third day Mrs. Humphreys died. Her last sigh was breathed out on the bosom of the woman whom she had taught her daughter to shun. For many days it seemed as if Death would claim another victim; yet God mercifully spared Naomi to her bereaved father; very slowly she recovered, but neither Mrs. Norton nor Grace left her until she was able to quit her bed.

With the death of Mrs. Humphreys, the pestilence staid its ravages, while, as a winding-sheet, the snows of winter now enshrouded the fresh-turned clods in the late busy grave-yard.

The eyes of Deacon Humphreys were opened. He became an altered man. He saw how mistaken had been his views, and that it is not the profession of any sect or creed which makes the true Christian, and that if all are alike sincere in love to God, all may be alike received.

I have said this was no love tale, therefore, by merely stating that in the course of a twelvemonth Hubert Fairlie and Grace were united, I close my simple story.

WATOUSKA.

A LEGEND OF THE ONEIDAS.

———

BY KATE ST. CLAIR.

———

Away, in a forest’s gloom,

Where the shadowy branches wave

O’er a rude and moss-grown tomb,

Is an Indian maiden’s grave:

None knoweth that music-haunted spot⁠—

Save a far-off one, who forgets it not.

He dreams of that silent shore⁠—

’Tis a holy spot to him,

A solemn stillness broodeth o’er

Those forest-aisles so dim;

Bird-music, and wave-melody,

Blend with the murmurings of the bee.

He knows when the wild-rose showers

Its blossoms o’er her breast;

When the summer-winds, ’mid flowers,

Whisper above her rest:

And he deems he hears, on his far-off shore,

The music of the cataract’s roar

From that Island of the Blest!

She passed from earth away⁠—

The young, the beautiful,

In the long dreamy day

When golden shadows fell

O’er wave and vine, and moons had sped,

Yet there, while that brief season fled,

He’d kept Love’s vigil well.

He comes, that warrior-chief,

Once more, in the pale moon’s wane,

When the dews weep o’er each leaf,

To that haunted spot again⁠—

But morn with its glorious beauty woke

Him not—the warrior’s heart had broke.

INDIAN LEGEND OF THE STAR AND LILY.

———

BY KAH-GE-GA-GAH-BOWH.

———

In the wigwam of the Indian during the evenings of spring, that season when nature, loosed from the bondage of winter, awakes to new life, and begins to deck itself with beauties, the old sage gathers around him the young men of the tribe, and relates the stories of days long since departed.

I have seen these youths sit in breathless silence, listening to the old man’s narrative. Now and then the tear-drops would course down their cheeks, and fall to the ground, witnesses of the interest they felt in the words of their teacher.

To induce the sire to narrate a tradition, the Indian boys would contrive some ingenious plan by which to get some tobacco, which, when offered with a request for a story, would be sure of a favorable answer. Frequently it happens that from sunset to its rise these clubs are entertained, and they do not separate till daylight calls them to the chase.

One of the most interesting traditionary stories I ever heard related, was told by an elderly Indian, one evening in spring. The winter was just leaving, the snow and ice were fast disappearing, and the streams were swollen with the unusual quantity of water from the mountains.

“There was once a time,” said he, “when this world was filled with happy people, when all nations were as one, and the crimson tide of war had not begun to roll. Plenty of game were in the forests and on the plains. None were in want, for a full supply was at hand. Sickness was unknown. The beasts of the field were tame, and came and went at the bidding of man. One unending spring gave no place for winter, for its cold blasts or its chills. Every tree and bush yielded fruit. Flowers carpeted the earth; the air was filled with their fragrance, and redolent with the songs of myriad warblers that flew from branch to branch, fearing none, for there were none to harm them. There were birds then of more beautiful plumage than now.

“It was then, when earth was a paradise, and man worthy to be its possessor, that Indians were the lone inhabitants of the American wilderness. They numbered millions, and living as nature designed them to live, enjoyed its many blessings. Instead of amusement in close rooms the sports of the fields were theirs.

“At night they met on the wide, green fields. They watched the stars; they loved to gaze at them, for they believed them to be the residences of the good who had been taken home by the Great Spirit. One night they saw one star that shone brighter than all others. Its location was far away in the south, near a mountain peak. For many nights it was seen, till at length it was doubted by many that this star was as far off in the southern skies as it seemed to be. This doubt led to an examination, which proved the star to be only a short distance, and near the tops of some trees. A number of warriors were deputed to go and see what it was. They went and returned, saying that it appeared strange and somewhat like a bird. A council of the wise men was called to inquire into and, if possible, ascertain the meaning of the phenomenon.

“They feared that it was an omen of some disaster. Some thought it a precursor of good, others of evil. Some supposed it to be the star spoken of by their forefathers, as a forerunner of a dreadful war.

“One moon had nearly gone by, and yet the mystery remained unsolved.

“One night a young warrior had a dream, in which a beautiful maiden came and stood at his side, and thus addressed him:

“ ‘Young brave! charmed with the land of thy forefathers, its flowers, its birds, its rivers, its beautiful lakes and its mountains clothed with green, I have left my sister in yonder world to dwell among you.

“ ‘Young brave! ask your wise and your great men where I can live and see the happy race continually; ask them what form I shall assume, in order to be loved and cherished among the people.’

“Thus discoursed the bright stranger. The young man awoke. On stepping out of his lodge, he saw the star yet blazing in its accustomed place.

“At early dawn the chief’s crier was sent round the camp to call every warrior to the Council Lodge. When they had met, the young warrior related his dream. They concluded that the star they had seen in the south had fallen in love with mankind and that it was desirous to dwell with them.

“The next night five tall, noble-looking adventurous braves were sent to welcome the stranger to earth.

“They went and presenting to it a pipe of peace, filled with sweet-scented herbs, were rejoiced to find that it took it from them. As they returned to the village, the star, with expanded wings followed, and hovered over their homes till the dawn of day.

“Again it came to the young man in a dream and desired to know where it should live, and what form it should take. Places were named. On the tops of giant trees or in flowers. At length it was told to choose a place itself—and it did so. At first it dwelt in the wild rose of the mountains, but there it was so buried it could not be seen. It went to the prairie, but it feared the hoof of the buffaloe. It next went to the rocky cliff, but it was there so high that the children, whom it loved most, could not see it.

“ ‘I know where I shall live,’ said the bright fugitive, ‘where I can see the gliding canoe of the race I most admire. Children, yes, they shall be my playmates, and I will kiss their brows when they slumber at the side of the cool lakes. The nations shall love me wherever I am.’

“These words having been uttered, she alighted on the waters where she saw herself reflected.

“The next morning thousands of white flowers were seen on the surface of all the lakes and the Indians gave them this name; Wah-be-gwon-nee—(White Lily.)

“Now,” continued the old man, “this star lived in the southern skies. Its brethren can be seen far off in the cold north, hunting the great bear, while its sisters watch her in the east and west.

“Children, when you see the lily on the waters, take it in your hands and hold it to the skies, that it may be happy on earth, as its two sisters (the morning and evening stars) are happy in heaven.”

While tears fell fast from the eyes of all, the old man lay him down and was soon silent in sleep.

Since then I have often plucked the white lily and garlanded around my head; have dipped it in its watery bed, but never have I seen it without remembering the Legend of the Descending Star.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

THE IMPROVISATRICE.

———

BY MRS. MARY G. HORSFORD.

———

Go bear the voiceless harp away!

Its latest note is spoken,

And like the heart that beats within,

Its last frail chord is broken.

This soul of mine was never made

For glad or peaceful life,

But cast in rude, imperfect mould,

For bitterness and strife.

I never was a careless child,

For in my early years

The founts within were gathering,

Of anguish and of tears:

And when I looked upon the stars

In all their golden sheen,

The presage of a broken heart—

It always came between.

And then the Voice of Song awoke

Within my wayward soul,

And bade the wearing tide of thought

Forever o’er it roll.

And dreams of words that should go forth

To bless and elevate,

Ambition’s charmed and serpent lure,

The passion to create;

Were mingled in my spirit’s depths,

Till with displacing power

Came Love with gorgeous diadem,

The phantom of an hour!

And soon the mockeries of Hope

Fled smiling from my breast,

And left a dark and fearful curse,

The cravings of unrest.

And Life became a weary load,

And Nature’s face a pall,

And each red drop that passed my heart

Was turned to seething gall.

From day to day the lyre within

Waxed passionate and frail;

It trembled at the zephyr’s breath,

How could it brook the gale?

Now Death has o’er my pillow bent,

I’ve seen his glancing eye,

And watched the silvery gleaming of

His pinion passing by.

Go bring me back my harp again!

I feel a strength for prayer,

And o’er the shattered chords within

Creeps an unearthly air.

Go bring me back my harp again,

I may not now restore

The sounding strings I loved so well,

Or tune it as before;

But I would lay my hand upon

The trembling chords and riven;

I feel mine own are healing fast

Beneath the eye of Heaven.

THE EIGHTEENTH SONNET OF PETRARCA.

———

BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.

———

Had I but waited patient in the cell

Where great Apollo erst became divine,

One bard might call himself a Florentine,

Like those who once in other lands did dwell.

But here the holy ichor doth not swell,

And fate hath willed another lot be mine.

’Tis meet that I relinquish high design

And drink the waters of life’s turbid well.

Sear are the olive branches now, the stream

Near which they grew and looked toward the sky

Hath sunken deep beneath the rock again.

Fate or my fault hath aye dispelled the dream

That made me fix my early hopes so high,

Unless God will their height I should attain.

JASPER ST. AUBYN;

OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.

———

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.

———

(Continued from page 15.)

CHAPTER II.

The Wakening.

He saw her, at a nearer view,

A spirit, yet a woman too.

Wordsworth.

When Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, dim with the struggle of returning consciousness and life, they met a pair of eyes fixed with an expression of the most earnest anxiety on his own—a pair of eyes, the loveliest into which he ever had yet gazed, large, dark, unfathomably deep, and soft withal and tender, as the day-dream of a love-sick poet. He could not mark their color; he scarce knew whether they were mortal eyes, whether they were realities at all, so sickly did his brain reel, and so confused and wandering were his fancies.

Then a sweet low voice fell upon his ear, in tones the gentlest, yet the gladdest, that ever he had heard, exclaiming⁠—

“Oh! father, father, he lives—he is saved!”

But he heard, saw, no more; for again he relapsed into unconsciousness, and felt nothing further, until he became sensible of a balmy coolness on his brow, a pleasant flavor on his parched lips, and a kindly glow creeping as it were through all his limbs, and gradually expanding into life.

Again his eyes were unclosed, and again they met the earnest, hopeful gaze of those other eyes, which he now might perceive belonging to a face so exquisite, and a form so lovely, as to be worthy of those great glorious wells of lustrous tenderness.

It was a young girl who bent over him, perhaps a few months older than himself, so beautiful that had she appeared suddenly, even in her simple garb, which seemed to announce her but one degree above the peasants of the neighborhood, in the midst of the noblest and most aristocratical assembly, she would have become on the instant the cynosure of all eyes, and the magnet of all hearts.

Of that age when the heart, yet unsunned by passion, and unused to strong emotion, thrills sensibly to every feeling awakened for the first time within it, and bounds at every appeal to its sympathies; when the ingenuous countenance, unhardened by the sad knowledge of the world, and untaught to conceal one emotion, reflects like a perfect mirror every gleam of sunshine that illuminates, every passing cloud that over-shadows its pure and spotless surface, the maiden sought not to hide her delight, as she witnessed the hue of life return to his pale cheeks, and the spark of intelligence relume his handsome features.

A bright mirthful glance, which told how radiant they might be in moments of unmingled bliss, laughed for an instant in those deep blue eyes, and a soft, sunny smile played over her warm lips; but the next minute, she dropped the young man’s hand, which she had been chafing between both her own, buried her face in her palms, and wept those sweet and happy tears which flow only from innocent hearts, at the call of gratitude and sympathy.

“Bless God, young sir,” said a deep, solemn voice at the other side of the bed on which he was lying, “that your life is spared. May it be unto good ends! Yours was a daring venture, and for a trivial object against which to stake an immortal soul. But, thanks to Him! you are preserved, snatched as it were from the gates of death; and, though you feel faint now, I doubt not, and your soul trembles as if on the verge of another world, you will be well anon, and in a little while as strong as ever in that youthful strength on which you have so prided you. Drink this, and sleep awhile, and you shall wake refreshed, and as a new man, from the dreamless slumber which the draught shall give you. And you, silly child,” he continued, turning toward the lovely girl, who had sunk forward on the bed, so that her fair tresses rested on the same pillow which supported Jasper’s head, with the big tears trickling silently between her slender fingers, “dry up your tears; for the youth shall live, and not die.”

The boy’s eyes had turned immediately to the sound of the speaker’s accents, and in his weak state remained fixed on his face so long as the sound continued, although his senses followed the meaning but imperfectly.

It was a tall, venerable looking old man who spoke, with long locks, as white as snow, falling down over the straight cut collar of his plain black doublet, and an expression of the highest intellect, combined with something which was not melancholy, much less sadness, but which told volumes of hardships borne, and sorrows endured, the fruits of which were piety, and gentleness, and that wisdom which cometh not of this world.

He smiled thoughtfully, as he saw that his words were hardly comprehended, and his mild glance wandered from the pale face of the handsome boy to the fair head of the young girl bending over him, like a white lily overcharged with rain.

“Poor things,” he whispered softly, as if speaking to himself, “to both it is the first experience of the mixed pain and pleasure of this world’s daily trials. God save them scathless to the end!”

Then, recovering himself, as if by a little effort, from his brief fit of musing, he held forth a large glass goblet, which was in his right hand, full of some bright ruby-colored liquid, to the lips of Jasper, saying—

“Drink, youth, it will give thee strength. Drink, and fear nothing.”

The young man grasped the bright bowl with both hands, but even then he had lacked strength to guide it to his lips, had not his host still supported it.

The flavor was agreeable, and the coolness of the draught was so delicious to the feverish palate and parched tongue of Jasper, that he drained it to the very bottom, and then, as if exhausted by the effort, relaxed his hold, and sunk back on his pillow in a state of conscious languor, exquisitely soft and entrancing.

More and more that voluptuous dream-like trance overcame him, and though his eyes were still open he saw not the things that were around him, but a multitude of radiant and lovely visions, which came and went, and returned again, in mystic evolutions.

With a last effort of his failing senses, half conscious of the interest which she took in him, yet wholly ignorant who or what was that gentle she, he stretched out his hand and mastered one of hers with gentle violence, and holding it imprisoned in his burning fingers, closed his swimming eyes, and sunk into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The old man, who had watched every symptom that appeared in succession on his expressive face, saw that the potion had taken the desired effect, and drawing a short sigh, which seemed to indicate a sense of relief from apprehension, looked toward the maiden, and addressed her in a low voice, not so much from fear of wakening the sleeper, as that the voice of affection is ever low and gentle.

“He sleeps, Theresa, and will sleep until the sun has sunk far toward the west, and then he will waken restored to all his youthful power and spirits. Come, my child, we may leave him to his slumbers, he shall no longer need a watcher. I will go to my study, and would have you turn to your household duties. Scenes such as this which you have passed will call up soft and pitiful fancies in the mind, but it behooves us not overmuch to yield to them. This life has too much of stern and dark reality, that we should give the reins to truant imagination. Come, Theresa.”

The young girl raised her head from the pillows, and shook away the long fair curls from her smooth forehead. Her tears had ceased to flow, and there was a smile on her lip, as she replied, pointing to her hand which he held fast grasped, in his unconscious slumber.

“See, father, I am a prisoner. I fear me I cannot withdraw my hand without arousing him.”

“Do not so, then, Theresa; to arouse him now, ere the effects of the potion have passed away, would be dangerous, might be fatal. Perchance, however, he will release you when he sleeps quite soundly. If he do so, I pray you, come to me. Meantime, I leave you to your own good thoughts, my own little girl.”

And with the words, he leaned across the narrow bed, over the form of the sleeping youth, and kissed her fair white brow.

“Bless thee, my gentle child. May God in his goodness bless and be about thee.”

“Amen! dear father,” said the little girl, as he ended; and in her turn she pressed her soft and balmy lips to his withered cheek.

A tear, rare visitant, rose all unbidden to the parent’s eye as he turned to leave her, but ere he reached the door her low tones arrested him, and he came back to her.

“Will you not put my books within reach of me, dear father?” she said. “I cannot work, since the poor youth has made my left hand his sure captive, but I would not be altogether idle, and I can read while I watch him. Pardon my troubling you, who should wait on you, not be waited on.”

“And do you not wait on me ever, and most neat-handedly, dear child?” returned her father, moving toward a small round table, on which were scattered a few books, and many implements of feminine industry. “Which of these will you have, Theresa?”

“All of them, if you please, dear father. The table is not heavy, for I can carry it about where I will myself, and if you will lift it to me, I can help myself, and cull the gems of each in turn. I am a poor student, I fear, and love better, like a little bee, to flit from flower to flower, drinking from every chalice its particular honey, than to sit down, like the sloth, and surfeit me on one tree, how green soever.”

“There is but little industry, I am afraid, Theresa, if there be little sloth in your mode of reading. Such desultory studies are wont to leave small traces on the memory. I doubt me much if you long keep these gems you speak of, which you cull so lightly.”

“Oh! but you are mistaken, father dear, for all you are so wise,” she replied, laughing softly. “Every thing grand or noble, of which I read, every thing high or holy, finds a sort of echo in my little heart, and lies there forever. Your grave, heavy, moral teachings speak to my reason, it is true, but when I read of brave deeds done, of noble self-sacrifices made, of great sufferings endured, in high causes, those things teach my heart, those things speak to my soul, father. Then I reason no longer, but feel—feel how much virtue there is, after all, and generosity, and nobleness, and charity, and love, in poor frail human nature. Then I learn, not to judge mildly of myself, nor harshly of my brothers. Then I feel happy, father, yet in my happiness I wish to weep. For I think noble sentiments and generous emotions sooner bring tears to the eye than mere pity, or mere sorrow.”

And, even as she spoke, her own bright orbs were suffused with drops, like dew in the violet’s cups, and she shook her head with its profusion of long fair ringlets archly, as if she would have made light of her own sentiment, and gazed up into his face with a tearful smile.

“You are a good child, Theresa, and good children are very dear to the Lord,” said the old man. “But of a truth I would I could see you more practically minded; less given to these singular romantic dreamings. I say not that they are hurtful, or unwise, or untrue, but in a mere child, as you are, Theresa, they are strange and out of place, if not unnatural. I would I could see you more merry, my little girl, and more given to the company of your equals in age, even if I were to be loser thereby of something of your gentle company. But you love not, I think, the young girls of the village.”

“Oh! yes, I love them—I love them dearly, father. I would do any thing for any one of them; I would give up any thing I have got to make them happy. Oh yes, I love Anna Harlande, and Rose Merrivale, and Mary Mitford, dearly, but—but⁠—”

“But you love not their company, you would say, would you not, my child?”

“That is not what I was about to say; but I know not how it is, their merriment is so loud, and their glee so very joyous, that it seems to me that I cannot sympathize with them in their joy, as I can in their sorrow; and they view things with eyes so different from mine, and laugh at thoughts that go nigh to make me weep, and see or feel so little of the loveliness of Nature, and care so little for what I care most of all, soft, sad poetry, or heart-stirring romance, or inspired music, that when I am among them, I do almost long to be away from them all, in the calm of this pleasant chamber, or in the fragrance of my bower beside the stream. And I do feel my spirit jangled and perplexed by their light-hearted, thoughtless mirth, as one feels at hearing a false note struck in the midst of a sweet symphony. What is this? what means this, my father?”

“It is a gift, Theresa,” replied the old man, half mournfully. “It means that you are endowed rarely, by God himself, with powers the most unusual, the most wondrous, the most beautiful, most high and godlike of any which are allowed to mortals. I have seen this long, long ago—I have mused over it; hoped, prayed, that it might not be so; nay, striven to repress the germs of it in your young spirit, yet never have I spoken of it until now; for I knew not that you were conscious, and would not be he that should awaken you to the consciousness of the grand but perilous possession which you hold, delegated to you direct from Omnipotence.”

He paused, and she gazed at him with lips apart, and eyes wide in wonder. The color died away in a sort of mysterious awe from her warm cheek. The blood rushed tumultuously to her heart. She listened breathless and amazed. Never had she heard him speak thus, never imagined that he felt thus, before—yet now that she did hear, she felt as though she were but listening again to that which she had heard many times before; and though she understood not his words altogether, they had struck a kindred chord in her inmost soul, and while its vibration was almost too much for her powers of endurance, it yet told her that his words were true.

She could not for her life have bid him go on, but for worlds she would not have failed to hear him out.

He watched the changed expression of her features, and half struck with a feeling of self-reproach that he should have created doubts, perhaps fears, in that ingenuous soul, smiled on her kindly, and asked in a confident tone⁠—

“You have felt this already, have you not, my child?”

“Not as you put it to me, father; no, I have never dreamed or hoped that I had any such particular gift of God, such glorious and preëminent possession as this of which you speak. I may, indeed, have fancied at times that there was something within me, in which I differed from others around me—something which made me feel more joy, deeper, and fuller, and more soul-fraught joy, than they feel; and sorrow, softer, and moved more easily, if not more piercing or more permanent—which made me love the world, and its inhabitants, and above all its Maker, with a far different love from theirs—something which evermore seems struggling within me, as if it would forth and find tongue, but cannot. But now, that you have spoken, I know that it indeed must be as you say, and that this unknown something is a gift, is a possession from on high. What is this thing, my father?”

“My child, this thing is genius,” replied the old man solemnly.

The bright blood rushed back to her cheeks in a flood of crimson glory; a strange, clear light, which never had enkindled them before, sprang from her soft dark eyes; she leaned forward eagerly⁠—

“Genius!” she cried. “Genius, and I! Father, you dream, dear father.”

“Would that I did; but I do not, Theresa.”

“And wherefore, if it be so, indeed, that I am so gifted, wherefore would you alter it, my father?”

“I would not alter it,” he replied, “my little girl. Far be it from my thoughts, weak worm that I am, to alter, even if I could alter, the least of the gifts of the great Giver. And this, whether it be for good, or unto evil, is one of the greatest and most glorious. I would not alter it, Theresa. But I would guide, would direct, would moderate it. I would accustom you to know and comprehend the vast power of which you, all unconsciously, are the possessor. For, as I said, it is a fearful and a perilous power. God forbid that I should pronounce the most marvelous and godlike of the gifts which he vouchsafes to man, a curse and not a blessing; God forbid that, even while I see how oft it is turned into bitterness and blight by the coldness of the world, and the check of its heaven-soaring aspirations, I should doubt that it has within itself a sovereign balm against its own diseases, a rapture mightier than any of its woes, an inborn and eternal consciousness which bears it up, as on immortal pinions, above the cares of the world and the poor consciousness of self. Nevertheless it is a perilous gift, and too often, to your sex, a fatal one. Yet I would not alarm you, my own child, for you have gentleness of soul, which may well temper the coruscations of a spirit which waxes oftentimes too strong to be womanly, and piety which shall, I trust, preserve you, should any aspiration of your heart wax over vigorous and daring to be contented with the limitations of humanity. In the meantime, my child, fear nothing, follow the dictates of your own pure heart, and pray for His aid, who neither giveth aught, nor taketh away, without reason. Hark!” he interrupted himself, starting slightly, “there is a sound of horses’ hoofs without; your brother has returned, and it may be Sir Miles is with him. We will speak more of this hereafter.”

And with the word he turned and left the room.

When he was gone she raised her eyes to heaven, and with a strange rapt expression on her fair features rose to her feet, exclaiming⁠—

“Genius! Genius! Great God, Great God, I thank thee.”

Then, in the fervor of the moment, which led her naturally to clasp her hands together, she made a movement to withdraw her fingers from Jasper’s deathlike grasp, unconscious, for the time, of every thing around her.

But, as she did so, a tightened pressure of his hand, and some inarticulate sounds which proceeded from his lips, recalled her with a start to herself.

She dropped into her seat, as if conscience-stricken, gazed fixedly in his face, then stooped and pressed her lips on his inanimate brow; started again, looked about the room with a half guilty glance, bowed her head on his pillow, and wept bitterly.

——

CHAPTER III.

The Recognition.

They had been friends in youth.

Byron.

The evening had advanced far into night before the effects of the potion he had swallowed passed away, and left the mind of Jasper clear, and his pulse regular and steady. When he awoke from his long stupor, and turned his eyes around him, it seemed as if he had dreamed of what he saw before him; for the inanimate objects of the room, nay, the very faces which met his eye, had something in them that was not altogether unfamiliar, yet for his life he could not have recalled when, or if ever he had seen them before.

The old dark-wainscoted walls of the irregular, many-recessed apartment, adorned with a few watercolor drawings, and specimens of needle-work, the huge black and gold Indian cabinet in one corner, the tall clock-stand of some foreign wood in another, the slab above the yawning hearth covered with tropical shells and rare foreign curiosities, the quaint and grotesque chairs and tables, with strangely contorted legs and arms, and wild satyr-like faces grinning from their bosses, the very bed on which he lay, with its carved head-board, and groined canopy of oak, and dark green damask curtains, were all things which he felt he must have seen, though where and how he knew not.

So was the face of the slight fair-haired girl who sat a little way removed from his bed’s head, by a small round work-table, on which stood a waxen taper, bending over some one of those light tasks of embroidery or knitting which women love, and are wont to dignify by the name of work.

On her he fixed his eyes long and wistfully, gazing at her, as he would have done at a fair picture, without any desire to address her, or to do aught that should induce her to move from the graceful attitude in which she sat, giving no sign of life save in the twinkling of her long, downcast eyelashes, in the calm rise and fall of her gentle bosom, and the quick motion of her busy fingers.

Jasper St. Aubyn was still weak, but he was unconscious of any pain or ailment, though he now began gradually to remember all that had passed before he lost his consciousness in the deep pool above the fords of Widecomb.

So weak was he, indeed, that it was almost too great an effort for him to consider where he was, or how he had been saved, much more to move his body, or ask any question of that fair watcher. He felt indeed that he should be perfectly contented to lie there all his life, in that painless tranquil mood, gazing upon that fair picture.

But while he lay there, with his large eyes wide open and fixed upon her, as if by their influence he would have charmed her soul out of its graceful habitation, a word or two spoken in a louder voice than had yet struck his ear, for persons had been speaking in the room all the time, although he had not observed them, attracted his notice to the other side of his bed.

It was not so much the words, for he scarce heard, and did not heed their import, as the tone of voice which struck him; for though well-known and most familiar, he could in no wise connect it with the other things around him.

With the desire to ascertain what this might mean, there came into his mind, he knew not wherefore, a wish to do so unobserved; and he proceeded forthwith to turn himself over on his pillow so noiselessly as to excite no attention in the watchers, whoever they might be.

He had not made two efforts, however, to do this, before he became aware of what, while he lay still, he did not suspect, that several of his limbs had received severe contusions, and could not as yet be moved with impunity.

He was a singular youth, however, and an almost Spartan endurance of physical pain, with a strange persistence in whatever he undertook, had been from very early boyhood two of his strongest characteristics.

In spite, therefore, of his weakness, in spite of the pain every motion gave him, he persevered, and turning himself inch by inch, at length gained a position which enabled him clearly to discern the speakers.

They were two in number, the one facing him, the other having his back turned so completely that all he could see was a head covered with long-curled locks of snow-white hair, a dark velvet cloak, and the velvet scabbard of a long rapier protruding far beyond the legs of the oak chair on which he sat. The lower limbs of this person were almost lost in darkness as they lay carelessly crossed under the table, so that he divined rather than saw that they were cased in heavy riding-boots, on the heels of which a faint golden glimmer gave token of the wearer’s rank, by the knightly spurs he wore.

The lamp which stood upon the table by which they were conversing was set between the two, so that it was quite invisible to Jasper, and its light, which to his eyes barely touched the edges of the figure he had first observed, fell full upon the pale high brow and serene lineaments of the other person, who was in fact no other than the old man who had spoken to the youth in the intervals of his trance, and administered the potion from the effects of which he was but now recovering.

Of this, however, Jasper had no recollection, although he wondered, as he had done concerning the girl, where he had before seen that fine countenance and benevolent expression, and how once seen he ever should have forgotten it.

There was yet a third person in the group, though he took no part in the conversation, and appeared to be, like Jasper, rather an interested and observant witness of what was going on, than an actor in the scene.

He was a tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed man, in the first years of manhood, not perhaps above five or six years Jasper’s senior; but his bronzed and sunburnt cheeks curiously contrasted with the fairness of his forehead, where it had not been exposed to the sun, and an indescribable blending of boldness, it might have almost been called audacity, with calm self-confidence and cold composure, which made up the expression of his face, seemed to indicate that he had seen much of the world, and learned many of its secrets, perhaps by the stern lessoning of the great teachers, suffering and sorrow.

The figure of this young man was but imperfectly visible, as he stood behind the high-backed chair, on which the old man, whom from the similarity in their features, if not in their expression, Jasper took to be his father, was seated. But his face, his muscular neck, his well-developed chest and broad shoulders, displayed by a close-fitting jerkin of some dark stuff, were all in strong light; and as the features and expression of the countenance gave token of a powerful character and energetic will, so did the frame give promise of ability to carry out the workings of the mind.

The dialogue, which had been interrupted by a silence of some seconds following on the words that had attracted Jasper’s notice, was now continued by the old man who sat facing him.

“That question,” he said, in a firm yet somewhat mournful tone, “is not an easy one to answer. The difficulty of subduing prejudices on my own part, the fear of wounding pride on yours—these might have had their share in influencing my conduct. Beside, you must remember that years have elapsed—the very years which most form the character of men—since we parted; that they have elapsed under circumstances the most widely different for you and for me; that we are not, in short, in any thing the same men we then were—that the gnarled, weather-beaten, earth-fast oak of centuries differs not so much from the green pliant sapling of half a dozen summers, as the old man, with his heart chilled and hardened into living steel by contact with the world, from the youth full of generous impulses and lofty aspirations, loving all men, and doubting naught either in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. You must remember, moreover, that although, as you have truly said, we were friends in youth, our swords, our purses, and our hearts in common, we had even then many points of serious difference; and lastly, and most of all, you must remember that if we had been friends, we were not friends when we last parted⁠—”

“What! what!” exclaimed a voice, which Jasper instantly recognized for his father’s, though for years he had not heard him speak in tones of the like animation. “What, William Allan, do you mean to say that you imagined that any enmity could have dwelt in my mind, for so slight a cause⁠—”

“Slight a cause!” interrupted the other. “Do you call that slight which made my heart drop blood, and my brain boil with agony for years—which changed my course of life, altered my fortunes, character, heart, soul, forever; which made me, in a word, what I now am? Do you call that a slight cause, Miles St. Aubyn? Show me, then, what you call a grave one.”

“I had forgotten, William, I had forgotten,” replied Sir Miles, gently, and perhaps self-reproachfully. “I mean, I had forgotten that the rivaling in a strife which to the winner seems a little thing, may to the loser be death, or worse than death! Forgive me, William Allan, I had forgotten in my selfish thoughtlessness, and galled you unawares. But let us say no more of this—let the past be forgotten—let wrongs done, if wrongs were done, be buried in her grave, who was the most innocent cause of them; and let us now remember only that we were friends in youth, and that after long years of separation, we are thus wonderfully brought together in old age; let me hope to be friends henceforth unto the grave.”

“Amen, I say to that. Miles St. Aubyn, amen!”

And the two old men clasped their withered hands across the table, and Jasper might see the big drops trickling slowly down the face of him who was called William Allan, while from the agitation of his father’s frame he judged that he was not free from the like agitation.

There was a little pause, during which, as he fancied the young man looked somewhat frowningly on the scene of reconciliation; but the frown, if frown it were, passed speedily away, and left the bold, dark face as calm and impassive as the surface of a deep unruffled water.

A moment or two afterward, Sir Miles raised his head, which he had bowed a little, perhaps to conceal the feelings which might have agitated it, and again clasping the hand of the other, said eagerly,

“It is you, William, who have saved my boy, my Jasper; and this is not the first time that a scion of your house has preserved one of mine from death, or yet worse, ruin!”

William Allan started, as if a sharp weapon had pierced him,

“And how,” he cried, “Miles St. Aubyn, how was the debt repaid? I tell you it is written in the books that cannot err, that our houses were ordained for mutual destruction!”

“What, man,” exclaimed Sir Miles, half jestingly, “do you still cling to the black art? Do you still read the dark book of fate? Methought that fancy would have taken wing with other youthful follies.”

The old man shook his head sadly, but made no reply.

“And what has it taught thee, William, unless it be that this life is short, and this world’s treasures worthless; and that I have learned from a better book, a book of wider margin. What, I say, has it taught thee, William Allan?”

“All things,” replied the old man, sorrowfully. “Even unto this meeting—every action, every event of my own life, past or to come, happy or miserable, virtuous or evil, it has taught me.”

“But has it taught thee, William, whereby to win the good and eschew the evil; whereby to hold fast to the virtuous, and say unto the evil, ‘get behind me?’ Has it taught thee, I say not to be wiser, but to be happier or better?”

“What is, is! What shall be, shall be! What is written, shall be done! We may flap, or flutter, or even fight, like fish or birds, or, if you will, like lions in the toil; but we are netted, and may not escape, from the beginning! The man may learn the workings of the God, but how shall he control them?”

“And this is thy philosophy—this all that thine art teaches?”

“It is. No more.”

“A sad philosophy—a vain art,” replied the other. “I’ll none of them.”

“I tell thee, Miles St. Aubyn, that years ago, years ere I had heard of Widecomb or its water, I saw yon deep, red-whirling pool; I saw that drowning youth; I saw the ready rescue, and the gentle nursing; and now,” he cried, stretching his hands out widely, and gazing into vacancy, “I see a wilder and a sadder sight—a deeper pool, a stronger cataract, a fierce storm thundering on the hills, and torrents thundering down every gorge and gully to swell the flooded rivers. A young man and a maiden—yet no! no! not a maiden! mounted on gallant horses, are struggling in the whelming eddies. Great God! avert—hold! hold! He lifts his arm, he smites her with his loaded whip—smites her between the eyes that smile upon him; she falls, she is down, down in the whirling waters—rider and horse swept over the mad cataract; but who—who?—ha!” and with a wild shriek he started to his feet, and fell back into the arms of the young man, who from the beginning of the paroxysm evidently had expected its catastrophe, and who, with the assistance of the girl, supported him, now quite inanimate and powerless, from the room, merely saying to Sir Miles, “Be not alarmed, I will return forthwith.”

“My father!” exclaimed Jasper, in a faint voice, as the door closed upon them.

The old man turned hastily to the well-known accents, and hurried to the bed-side. “My boy, my own boy, Jasper. Now, may God’s name be praised forever!”

And falling into a chair by his pillow, the same chair on which that sweet girl had sat a few hours before, he bent over him, and asked him a thousand questions, waiting for no reply, but bathing his face with his tears, and covering his brow with kisses.

When he had at length satisfied the old man that he was well and free from pain, except a few slight bruises, he asked his father eagerly where he was, and who was that strange old man.

“You are in the cottage, my dear boy,” replied the old knight, “above Widecomb pool, tended by those who, by the grace of God and his exceeding mercy, saved you from the consequences of the frantic act which so nearly left me childless. Oh! Jasper, Jasper, ’twas a fearful risk, and had well-nigh been fatal.”

“It was but one misstep, father,” replied the youth, who, as he rapidly recovered his strength, recovered also his bold speech and daring courage. “Had there been but foot-hold at the tunnel’s end, I had landed my fish bravely; and, on my honor, I believe had I such another on my line’s end, I should risk it again. Why, father, he was at least a thirty pounder.”

“Never do so—never do so again, Jasper. Remember that to risk life heedlessly, and for no purpose save an empty gratification, a mere momentary pleasure, is a great crime toward God, and a gross act of selfishness toward men, as much so as to peril or to lose it in a high cause, or for a noble object, is great and good, and self-devoted. Think! had you perished here, all for a paltry fish, which you might purchase for a silver crown, you had left to me years—nay, a life of misery.”

“Nay, father, I never thought of that,” answered the young man, not unmoved by the remonstrance of his father, “but it was not the value of the fish. I should have given him away ten to one, had I taken him. It was that I do not like to be beaten.”

“A good feeling, Jasper; and one that leads to many good things, and without which nothing great can be attained; but to do good, like all other feelings, it must be moderated and controled by reason. But you must learn to think ever before acting, Jasper.”

“I will—I will, indeed, sir; but you have not told me who is this strange old man?”

“An old friend of mine, Jasper—an old friend whom I have not seen for years, and who is now doubly a friend, since he has saved your life.”

At this moment the door opened, and the young man entered bearing a candle.

“He is at ease now,” he said. “It is a painful and a searching malady to which at seasons he is subject. We know well how to treat him; when he awakes tomorrow, he will remember nothing of what passed to-day, though at the next attack he will remember every circumstance of this. I pray you, therefore, Sir Miles, take no note in the morning, nor appear to observe it, if he be somewhat silent and reserved. Ha! young sir,” he continued, seeing that Jasper was awake, and taking him kindly by the hand, “I am glad to see that you have recovered.”

“And I am glad to have an opportunity to thank you, that you have saved my life, which I know you must have done right gallantly, seeing the peril of the deed.”

“About as gallantly as you did, when you came so near losing it,” he answered. “But come, Sir Miles, night wears apace, and if you will allow me to show you to your humble chamber, the best our lowly house can offer, I will wish you good repose, and return to watch over my young friend here.”

“My age must excuse me, that I accept your offer, whose place it should be to watch over him myself.”

“I need no watcher, sir,” replied Jasper, boldly. “I am quite well now, and shall sleep, I warrant you, unto cock-crow without awakening.”

“Good-night, then, boy!” cried Sir Miles, stooping over him and again kissing his brow, “and God send thee better in health and wiser in condition.”

“Good-night, sir; and God send me stronger and braver, and more like my father,” said the youth, with a light laugh.

“I will return anon, young friend—for friends, I hope, we shall be,” said the other, as he left the room lighting Sir Miles respectfully across the threshold.

“I hope we shall—and I thank you. But I shall be fast asleep ere then.”

And so he was; but not the less for that did the stalwart young man watch over him, sitting erect in one of the high-backed chairs, until the first pale light of dawn came stealing in through the latticed casement, and the shrill cry of the early cock announced the morning of another day.

——

CHAPTER IV.

The Lovesuit.

He either fears too much,

Or his deserts are small,

Who would not put it to the touch,

To win or lose it all.

Montrose.

The earliest cock had barely crowed his first salutation to the awakening day, and the first warblers had not yet begun to make their morning music in the thick shrubberies around the cottage, when aroused betimes by his anxiety for Jasper, Sir Miles made his appearance, already full dressed, at the door of the room in which his son was sleeping.

For he was still asleep, with that hardy young man still watching over him, apparently unmoved by the loss of his own rest, and wholly indifferent to what are usually deemed the indispensable requirements of nature.

“You are afoot betimes, sir,” said the youth, rising from his seat as the old cavalier entered the room; “pity that you should have arisen so early, for I could have watched him twice as long, had it been needful, but in truth it was not so. Your son has scarce moved, Sir Miles, since you left the chamber last night. You see how pleasantly and soundly he is sleeping.”

“It was not that, young sir,” replied the old man, cordially. “It was not that I doubted your good will, or your good watching either; but he is my son, my only son, and how should I but be anxious. But as you say, he sleeps pleasantly and well. God be thanked therefore. He will be none the worse for this.”

“Better, perhaps, Sir Miles,” replied the other, with a slight smile. “Wiser, at least, I doubt not he will be; for in good truth, it was a very boyish, and a very foolish risk to run.”

The old man, for the first time, looked at the speaker steadfastly, and was struck by the singular expression of his countenance—that strange mixture of impassive self-confident composure, and half-scornful audacity, which I have mentioned as being his most striking characteristics. On the preceding evening, Sir Miles had been so much engrossed by the anxiety he felt about his son, and subsequently by the feelings called forth in his inmost heart by the discovery of an old comrade in the person of William Allan, that in fact he had paid little attention to either of the other personages present.

He had observed, indeed, that there were a fair young girl and a powerfully framed youth present; he had even addressed a few words casually to both of them, but they had left no impression on his mind, and he had not even considered who or what they were likely to be.

Now, however, when he was composed and relieved of fear for his son’s life, he was struck, as I have said, by the expression and features of the young man, and began to consider who he could be; for there was no such similarity, whether of feature, expression, voice, air or gesture, between him and William Allan, as is wont to exist between son and sire.

After a moment’s pause, however, the old cavalier replied, not altogether pleased apparently by the tone of the last remark.

“It was a very bold and manly risk, it appears to me,” he said, “and if rash, can hardly be called boyish; and you, I should think,” he added, “would be the last to blame bold actions. You look like any thing but one who should recommend cold counsels, or be slack either to dare or do. I fancy you have seen stirring times somewhere, and been among daring deeds yourself.”

“So many times, Sir Miles,” replied the young man, modestly, “that I have learned how absurd it is to seek such occasions without cause. There be necessary risks enough in life, and man has calls enough, and those unavoidable, on his courage, without going out of his way to seek them, or throwing any energy or boldness unprofitably to the winds. At least so I have found it in the little I have seen of human life and action.”

“Ha! you speak well,” said Sir Miles, looking even more thoughtfully than before at the marked and somewhat weatherbeaten features of the young man. “And where have you met with perils so rife, and learned so truly the need of disciplining natural energies and valor.”

“On the high seas, Sir Miles, of which I have been a follower from a boy.”

“Indeed! are you such a voyager! and where, I pray you, have you served?”

“I cannot say that I have exactly served. But I have visited both the Indias, East and West; and have seen some smart fighting—where they say peace never comes—beyond the Line, I mean, with the Dons, both in Darien and Peru.”

“Ha! but you have indeed seen the world, for one so young as you; and yet I think you have not sailed in the king’s ships, nor held rank in the service.”

“No, Sir Miles, I am but a poor free-trader; and yet sometimes I think that we have carried the English flag farther, and made the English name both better known, and more widely feared, than the cruisers of any king who has sat on our throne, since the good old days of Queen Bess.”

“His present majesty did good service against the Dutch, young man. And what say you to Blake? Who ever did more gloriously at sea, than rough old Blake?”

“Ay, sir, but that was in Noll’s days, and we may not call him a king of England, though of a certainty he was her wise and valiant ruler. And for his present majesty, God bless him! that Opdam business was when he was the Duke of York; and he has forgotten all his glory, I think, now that he has become king, and lets the Frenchman and the Don do as they please with our colonists and traders, and the Dutchman, too, for that matter.”

The old man paused, and shook his head gravely for a moment, but then resumed with a smile,

“So, so, my young friend, you are one of those bold spirits who claim to judge for yourselves, and make peace or war, as you think well, without waiting the slow action of senates or kings, who hold that hemispheres, not treaties, are the measure of hostility or amity.”

“Not so, exactly, noble sir. But where we find peace or war, there we take them; and if the Dons wont be quiet on the other side the Line, and our good king wont keep them quiet, why we must either take them as we find them, or give up the great field to them altogether.”

“Which you hold to be unEnglish and unmanly?”

“Even so, sir.”

“Well, I, for one, will not gainsay you. But do not you fear, sometimes that while you are thus stretching a commission—that is the term, I believe, among you liberal gentlemen—you may chance to get your own neck stretched some sultry morning in the Floridas or in Darien.”

“One of the very risks I spoke of but now, Sir Miles,” replied the young man, laughing. “My life were not worth five minutes’ purchase if the Governor of St. Augustine, or of Panama either, for that matter, could once lay hold on me.”

“I marvel,” said the old cavalier, again shaking his head solemnly, “I marvel much—” and then interrupting himself suddenly in the middle of his sentence, he lapsed into a fit of meditative silence.

“At what, if I may be so bold—at what do you so much marvel?”

“That William Allan should consent,” replied the cavalier, “that son of his should embark in so wild and stormy a career, in a career which, I should have judged, with his strict principles and somewhat puritanical feeling, he would deem the reverse of gracious or godfearing.”

“He knows not what career I follow,” answered the young man, bluntly. “But you are in error altogether, sir. I am no son of William Allan.”

“No son of William Allan! Ha! now that I think of it, your features are not his, nor your voice either.”

“Nor my body, nor my soul!” replied the other, hastily and hotly, “no more than the free falcon’s are those of the caged linnet! Sometimes I even marvel how it can be that any drop of mutual or common blood should run in our veins; and yet it is so—and I—I—yet no—I do not repent it!”

“And wherefore should you? there is no worthier or better man, I do believe, than William Allan living; and, in his younger days at least, I know there was no braver.”

“No braver?—indeed! indeed!” exclaimed the young man, eagerly—“was he, indeed, brave?”

“Ay, was he, youth! brave both to do and to suffer. Brave, both with the quick and dauntless courage to act, and with the rarer and more elevated courage to resolve and hold fast to resolution. But who are you, who, living with him, know both so little and so much of William Allan? If you be not his son, who are you?”

“His sister’s son, Sir Miles—his only sister’s son, to whom, since that sister’s death, he has been—God forgive me for that I said but now—more than a father; for surely I have tried him more than ever son tried a father, and he has borne with me still with a most absolute indulgence and unwearied love.”

“What—what!” exclaimed Sir Miles, much moved and even agitated by what he heard, “are you the child of that innocent and beautiful Alicia Allan, whom—whom—” The old man faltered and stopped short, for he was in fact on the point of bursting into tears.

But the youth finished the sentence which he had left unconcluded, in a stern, slow voice, and with a lowering brow.

“Whom your friend, Durzil Olifaunt, betrayed by a mock marriage, and afterward deserted with her infants. Yes, Sir Miles, I am one of those infants, the son of Alicia Allan’s shame! And my uncle did not slay him—therefore it is I asked you, was he brave.”

“And yet he was slain—and for that very deed!” replied the old man, gloomily, with his eyes fixed upon the ground.

“He was slain,” repeated the young sailor, whose curiosity and interest were now greatly excited. “But how can you tell wherefore? No one has ever known who slew him—how, then, can you name the cause of his slaying?”

“There is One who knows all things!”

“But He imparts not his knowledge,” answered the other, not irreverently. “And unless you slew him, I see not how you can know this. Yet, hold, hold!” he continued impetuously, as he saw that Sir Miles was about to speak, “if you did slay him, tell it not; for if he did betray my mother, if he did abandon me to disgrace and ruin—still, still he was my father.”

“I slew him not, young man,” replied the cavalier, gravely, “but he was slain for the cause that I have named, and I saw him die—repentant.”

“Repentant!” exclaimed the youth, grasping the withered hand of the old knight, in the intensity of his emotions, “did he repent the wrong he had done my mother?”

“As surely as he died.”

“May God forgive him, then,” said the seaman, clasping his hands together and bursting into tears, “as I forgive him.”

“Amen! amen!” cried the knight, “for he was mine ancient friend, the comrade of my boyhood, before he did that thing; and I, too, have something to forgive to him.”

“You, Sir Miles, you!—what can you have to forgive?”

“Tell me first, tell me—how are you named?”

“Durzil,” answered the youth, “Durzil, Nothing!” he added, very bitterly, “my country, and my country’s law give me no other name, but only Durzil—its enemies have named me Bras-de-fer!”

“Then mark me, Durzil; as he of whom you are sprung, of whom you are named, was my first friend, so was your mother my first love; and she returned my love, till he, my sometime confidant, did steal her from me, and made his paramour, whom I had made my wife.”

“Great God!” exclaimed the young man, struck with consternation; “then it must, it must have been so—it was you who slew my—my father!”

“Young man, I never lied.”

“Pardon me, Sir Miles. Pardon me, I am half distraught. And you loved my mother, and—and—he repented. Why was not I told of this before? And yet,” he added, again pausing, as if some fresh suspicion struck him, “and yet how is this? I heard you speak yester even to my uncle, of wrongs done—done by yourself to him, and of a woman’s death—that woman, therefore, was not, could not have been my mother. Who, then, was she?”

“His mother,” replied Sir Miles St. Aubyn, calmly, but sadly, pointing to the bed on which Jasper lay sleeping tranquilly and all unconsciously of the strange revelations which were going on around him. “If my friend robbed me of William Allan’s sister, so I won from William Allan, in after days, her who owned his affection; but with this difference, that she I won never returned your uncle’s love from the beginning, and that I never betrayed his confidence. If I were the winner, it was in fair and loyal strife, and though it has been, as I learned for the first time last night, a sore burthen on your uncle’s heart, it has been none on my conscience; my withers are unwrung.”

“I believe it, sir; from my soul, I believe it,” cried the young man, enthusiastically, “for, on my life, I think you are all honor and nobility. But tell me, tell me now, if you love, if you pity me—as you should do for my mother’s sake—who slew my father?”

“I have sworn,” answered the cavalier, “I have sworn never to reveal that to mortal man; and if I had not sworn, to you I could not reveal it; for, if I judge aright, you would hold yourself bound to⁠—”

“Avenge it!” exclaimed the youth, fiercely, interrupting him; “ay, were it at my soul’s purchase—since he repented.”

“He did repent, Durzil; nay, more, he died, desiring only that he could repair the wrong he had done you, regretting only that he could not give you his name and his inheritance, as he did give you his dying blessing, and your mother his last thought, his last word in this world.”

“Did she know this?”

“Durzil, I cannot answer you; for within a few days after your father’s death, I left England for the Low Countries, and returned not until many a year had passed into the bygone eternity. When I did return, the sorrows of Alicia Allan were at an end forever; and though I then made all inquiries in all quarters, I could learn nothing of your uncle or yourself, nor ever have heard of you any more until last night, when we were all so singularly brought together.”

“I ought to have known this; I would, I would to God that I had known it. My life had been less wild, then, less turbulent, less stormy. My spirit had not then burned with so rash a recklessness. It was the sense of wrong, of bitter and unmerited wrong done in past times, of cold and undeserved scorn heaped on me in the present, as the bastard—the child of infamy and shame! that goaded me into so hot action. But it is done now, it is done, and cannot be amended. The world it is which has made me what I am—let the world look to it—let the world enjoy the work of its hands.”

“There is nothing, Durzil,” said the old man, solemnly, “nothing but death that cannot be amended. Undone things may not be, but all may be amended, by God’s good grace to aid us.”

“Hast thou not seen a sapling in the forest, which, overcrowded by trees of stronger growth, or warped from its true direction by some unnoted accident, hath grown up vigorous indeed and strong, but deformed and distorted in its yearly progress, until arrived at its full maturity, not all the art or all the strength of man or man’s machinery can force it from its bias, or make it straight and comely? So is it with the mind of man, Sir Miles. While it is young and plastic, you shall direct it as you will—once ripened, hardened in its growth, whether that growth be tortuous or true, as soon shall you remodel the stature of the earth-fast oak, as change its intellectual bias. But I am wearying you, I fancy, and wasting words in unavailing disquisition. I hear my uncle’s step without, moreover; permit me, I will join him.”

“Hold yet a moment,” replied the old man, kindly, “and let me say this to you now, while we are alone, which I may perchance lack opportunity to say hereafter. Your mother’s son, Durzil Olifaunt—for so I shall ever call you, and so by his last words you are entitled to be called—can never weary me. Your welfare will concern me ever—what interests you will interest me always, and next to my own son I shall hold you nearest and dearest to this old heart at all times. Now leave me if you will—yet hold! tell me before you go, what I am fain to learn concerning your good uncle—the knowledge shall perchance save painful explanation, perchance grave misunderstanding.”

“All that I know is at your service,” answered the young man, in a calmer and milder tone than he had used heretofore—for he was, in truth, much moved and softened by the evident feeling of the old cavalier; “but let me thank you first for your kindly offers, which, should occasion offer, believe me, I will test as frankly as you have made them nobly.”

To his latter words Miles St. Aubyn made no answer, except a grave inclination of his head, for his mind was preoccupied now by thoughts of very different import—was fixed, indeed, on days long passed, and on old painful memories.

“This girl,” he said at length, “this fair young girl whom I saw here last night, is she—is she your sister? I think you had a sister—yet this fair child hath not Alicia’s hair, nor her eyes—who is she?”

“God was most good in that,” answered the seaman, with much feeling, “he took my sister to himself, even before my mother pined away. A man’s lot is hard enough who is the son of shame—a woman’s is intolerable anguish. Theresa is my uncle’s child—his only child. His love for her is almost idolatry, and were it altogether so, she deserves it all. Lo! there she passes by the casement—was ever fairer face or lovelier figure? and yet her soul, her innocent and artless soul, has beauties that as far surpass those personal charms, as they exceed all other earthly loveliness.”

“You love her,” said the cavalier, looking quickly upward, for he had been musing with downcast eyes, while Durzil spoke, and had not even raised his lids to gaze upon Theresa as she passed through the garden. “You love this innocent and gentle child.”

The young man’s cheek burned crimson, ashamed that he should have revealed himself so completely to one who was almost a stranger. But he was not one to deny or disguise a single feeling of his heart, whether for good or for evil, and he replied, after a moment’s pause, with an unfaltering and steady voice, “I do love her, more than my own soul!”

“And she,” asked the old knight, “does she know, does she return your affection?”

Again the sailor hesitated, “Women, they say,” he replied, at length, “know always by a natural instinct when they are beloved, and therefore I believe she knows it. For the rest, she is always most affectionate, most gentle, nay, even tender. Further than this, I may not judge.”

“Father,” exclaimed a faint voice from the bed, at this moment. “Is that you, father?” and Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, languid yet from the heavy slumber into which the opiate had cast him, and raised himself up a little on his pillow, though with a slow and painful motion.

“My son,” cried the old man, hurrying to the side of the bed, “my own boy, Jasper, how fare you now? You have slept well.”

“So well,” answered the bold boy, “that I feel strong enough, and clear enough in the head, to be up and about; but that whenever I would move a limb, there comes an accursed twinge to put me in mind that limestone rock is harder than bone and muscle.”

Meanwhile, as soon as the old cavalier’s attention was diverted by the awakening of his own son from his trance-like slumber, Durzil Bras-de-fer, as he called himself, and as I shall therefore call him, left the room quietly, and a few minutes afterward might have been seen, had not the eyes of those within the chamber been otherwise directed, to pass the casement, following the same path which had been taken by Theresa Allan a little while before.

[To be continued.

ELIM.

———

BY VIRGINIA.

———

And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm-trees, and they encamped there by the waters.

Exodus xv. 27.

Noon on the burning desert!

Unutterable noon!

On the wandering band, from Goshen’s land,

Shod in the wondrous shoon!

Blasting the man of might,

Blighting the infant flower,

And quenching the light to the mother’s sight

As it droops in the fearful hour!

Look out o’er the blinding heaven!

Look out o’er the searèd ground!

Is naught in view save the torturing blue

And the maddening sand around?

Behold a speck afar!

It seemeth a cloud like a hand,

And it beck’neth us on through the raging sun

Away to the Promised Land!

Is it the Angel of Death,

Sent forth as a mocking guide?

Is it the trace of the warrior race

As they scour the trackless wide?

No! by the Cloudy Pillar!

No! by our Fiery Friend!

From the bush of flame the great I AM

Hath bidden us onward wend!

On to the Seventy Palm Trees!

On to the water’s brink!

Where the wayfaring rest on the green earth’s breast,

And the fainting pilgrims drink!

Drink! and forget their misery,

And remember their toil no more;

Rest! while the breeze sways the stately trees

Those dark, cool waters o’er!

Drink! parched and panting Israel!

In those draughts of mercy deep

There mingles no tide of the Marah wide

Where thy innermost soul shall steep!

Rest! worn and weary Israel!

In the dream of thy sleeping eyes

There dwelleth no thought of the ruin wrought

By coming centuries!

Oh, Elim! loveliest Elim!

Gem of the desert old!

Green be thy mighty shadows,

Pure be thy waters cold!

How often, ’mid life’s vast desert,

My heart within me swells,

As I sigh for thy Seventy Palm Trees,

And for thy Twelve Deep Wells!

FAITH’S WARNING.

———

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

———

The vital elements of all things gifted

With promise or with truth,

By God’s own hand benignantly are lifted

Into perennial youth.

O then, with gentle reverence, surrender

The wish to interfere,

Behold the miracle, devout and tender,

But enter not its sphere!

Childhood, with meek intelligence, appealing,

When guardians annoy,

As gush the sympathies its life revealing,

Asks freedom to enjoy.

Genius, by graceful waywardness, achieving

Its claim the boon to share,

A narrow doom in Fancy’s world retrieving,

Expands untrammeled there.

The throes of nations plead that right be tested⁠—

The Present grapple fairly with the Past,

For Liberty’s pure zeal if unmolested,

Will triumph at the last!

Profane not Love in its divine seclusion,

If true, its hope is sure,

Born in weak hearts it is a chance illusion,

That vainly would endure.

For all things destined to survive, engender

Their own progressive life,

And Truth, forsaken by her last defender,

Yet conquers in the strife.

In its dim crypt of mould the seed implanted

Will germinate and spring,

Poised in her azure realm the lark undaunted

Exultingly will sing!

The prayer of wisdom in these later ages

Is for unchartered right

To turn, at will, her own elected pages,

With unimpeded sight.

To their own law abandon all things real,

Nor, with incessant care,

Strive to conform to thy perverse ideal

What God created fair.

LAMENT OF THE GOLD-DIGGER.

———

BY E. CURTISS HINE, U. S. N.

———

’Tis the grief for their fate gives me mystical lore,

And coming events cast their shadows before.

Campbell.

’Tis evening, and I stand alone

On San Francisco’s desert shore,

The wandering night-winds sadly moan,

And shrieking sea-birds round me soar.

The weary sun hath sunk to sleep

Beyond the great Pacific’s wave,

While here I stand and idly weep

That I have been to gold a slave!

O, curses on the maddening cry

That echoed through my own green land,

And sent me forth, unwept to die,

Upon this lonely desert strand!

With spirits fresh the hills I trod,

And in the eager strife for gain

Forgot my country and my God,

And fevered fancies flushed my brain!

It came at last, the bitter thought,

That I was linked with toiling slaves,

Whose very life-blood had been bought

By selfish and designing knaves.

But all too late conviction came,

And with a down-cast, tearful eye.

I thought with anguish and with shame

I’d chased an echo here—to die!

O, vain was all our strife for wealth,

We ploughed the bed of many a stream,

All idly, and with ruined health,

Heaped curses on our fevered dream,

That drove us from our homes away,

Athwart the ocean’s furrowed breast,

To find with terror and dismay

That we were houseless Famine’s guests!

My heart grows sick—my eye grows dim,

As o’er the watery waste I gaze,

And powerless droops each nerveless limb,

And manhood’s pride and strength decays.

Adieu, my childhood’s home, for fate

Hath dimmed the brightness of my sky,

I’ve “dug” my grave, and found too late

I’ve chased an echo here—to die!

SKETCHES OF LIFE IN OUR VILLAGE.

NO. I.—WHAT THERE WAS TO LIKE IN HATTIE ATHERTON.

———

BY GIFTIE.

———

“You seem to have a great deal to say lately about this Miss Hattie Atherton,” said my brother, looking up from his book as I entered the parlor, after escorting to the door a friend who had been making me a morning call.

“Well,” said I, “I hope you have no objection.”

“Objection—no indeed. But what is there in Miss Hattie, that you all like so much? Your friends have been perfectly absorbed in admiration of her for the last three days.”

“If you knew her you would not wonder that we are all glad to have her at home again. She has been absent four years at a boarding-school, and as she is reported to be wonderfully accomplished her return makes quite a sensation in our quiet circle. That is the reason you have heard her name so frequently mentioned.”

“A regular paragon of boarding-school accomplishments, I suppose,” said Fred, with his most scornful sneer. “She doesn’t know a cow from a sheep—works worsted dogs—paints in colors excessively watery—considers her father and mother quite countrified and vulgar—and knows enough of the languages to Frenchify her name into Harriette, or into the more unmeaning diminutive of H-a-t-t-i-e.”

“You are really savage,” replied I, laughing, “but, my good sir, you are quite mistaken in your enumeration, for though she had adopted the diminutive of her somewhat stately name, she is innocent of working worsted dogs, and she rejoices in the knowledge that of the two animals, the cow is the largest. Really, Fred, she is a very lovely girl, perfectly unaffected, and exulting like a freed bird to visit again her old haunts,

“ ‘In the grove and by the river.’ ”

“Ah, she is one of that sort, is she? Raves of nature and falls on her knees to a pigweed. For my part, I could never imagine why a boy wasn’t just as natural as an alder bush.”

“You are really impertinent, Fred, to talk so about my friends,” said I, a little vexed.

“Beg your pardon, sis; but you may depend upon it, all boarding-school girls belong to one of two classes—the smart and affected, or the soft and sentimental. You, my dear Mary, are the only one I ever knew to pass the ordeal without being spoiled.”

“Which escape, I presume, you impute entirely to liberal share of advice bestowed by my wise brother. I am quite provoked with you, for your unsparing sarcasms on women.”

“Ah, if they were only all like you,” replied Fred, rising to come to me, and then falling back on the sofa with a growl at the pain the attempt had caused his sprained ankle. Gentle reader, that sprain, which had confined him four days to the sofa, was the sole reason why my good-natured, sensible brother was so “uncommon” cross.

There was a pause, during which Fred cut his nails and I sewed most industriously. “I think,” said he at length—but what he thought was lost forever to the world, for at that moment the door opened and Hattie entered.

“Speak of angels and one sees their wings,” said I, as I rose to welcome her. “You have come just in time to verify the proverb, for we have been speaking of you.” Fred gave me a beseeching glance. He did not know of a plan I had formed, which was quite inconsistent with any attempt to prejudice Miss Atherton against him.

“I hope angels don’t tear their wings as badly as I have torn my shawl. I have come to you for aid, and you see I carry a flag of distress,” replied Hattie, holding out her shawl that had one corner nearly torn off.

“How did you get such a rent in it?” exclaimed I.

“I have been paying a visit to your friend, Murray, and caught it on a nail in his door,” said she laughing.

“What in the world were you doing at Murray’s?”

“I went down to see his child. When I looked out of my window this morning, I was horrified to see that hop pole, whose graceful clusters we were admiring yesterday, lying on the ground, and shorn of its glories. On inquiring the cause of this outrage, I found that Murray went to our house last evening for some hops to make a tea for a sick child, and mother told him to get some from this pole. In doing so, he managed, with Irish dexterity, to throw it down directly across the bed of Dahlias.”

“Your beautiful Dahlias—what a pity!”

“I was very sorry, but fortunately they are not all destroyed. I thought the poor man must have been in desperate haste to do such a thing, and so I went to see if the child were dangerously sick.”

“Those Murrays are protegés of mine, but I didn’t know that any of them were sick.”

“The child seems to be threatened with a fever, but I made them give it a warm bath, and put baths of hops on its head and feet, and before I left, it was quite relieved. I staid to superintend the operations, lest they should not do it properly, for I fancy they are not accustomed to the use of water. To be sure, dirt is the native element of that class—but aren’t they uncommonly dirty?”

“I think they are,” replied I. “Last winter I asked Mrs. Murray why she didn’t wash the children before she put on some new clothes I had provided for them, and she opened her eyes in astonishment. ‘Sure ma’am,’ said she, ‘sure and the dirt keeps ’em warm when they’ve nothin’ else to kiver ’em.’

“I suppose she thinks the same reason applies in summer by the rule of contraries, for they were none of them very clean, and I thought they were rather alarmed at the sight of a tubfull of water. Murray asked if I “wasn’t afeard the child ’ud cotch cold,” but he says he thinks “hops is werry good things,” and she imitated the deep guttural tones of our gardener with a perfection that was perfectly startling.

“You are quite a doctress,” said Fred, when he had done laughing—“can’t you prescribe for me?”

“I should think patience and resignation—an ounce each, thoroughly compounded—would be the most necessary remedy for a sprain,” replied Harriet—and the conversation turned on other subjects.

We examined the shawl, and pronounced it unmendable and I offered to lend her my mantilla. “I will accept it,” said she, “if you will yourself accompany it and assist me in making some purchases this morning. Sally Murphy, who has lived with us so long, is about being married, and father intends furnishing her house for her. It is a small tenement with only four rooms, but it will be all her own, and she would not be more delighted with a palace.”

I was soon ready, and we walked to the cabinet-makers, who was delighted to furnish what we wanted, and then to that “omnium gatherum,” yclept, “the dry goods store,” where we found every thing necessary for our purpose, from the lace for the bride’s dress to the carpet that was to adorn her “keeping-room.” “These are my part of the wedding presents,” said Hattie. “I earned the money—you know how?”

I have said that I had a plan in view, in which my brother and Hattie were to be the principal actors, and you will readily perceive that though not much given to meddling with the affairs of other people, I was sufficiently feminine in my tastes to be something of a matchmaker. Notwithstanding his fine intellectual powers and considerable knowledge derived from men and books, Fred had always been exceedingly deficient in the ability to say and do those graceful nothings that are the usual stepping-stones to an acquaintance between ladies and gentlemen, and this, added to a certain bashfulness that frequently attends a proud, sensitive nature, had kept him from finding any intimate friends among the ladies he had met in his college life, and in his subsequent wanderings over the world. Unfortunately, too, for my matrimonial schemes in his behalf, he was provokingly contented with the prospect of being an old bachelor; and since his establishment in our village, had confined his visits to a few married ladies who were vastly superior in cultivation of mind to any of the unmarried ones of our acquaintance. Thus with a handsome person, and more than ordinary powers of pleasing, had he chosen to exert them, my brother had passed to the shady side of thirty, without having his large, warm heart stirred by a deeper emotion than the quiet love excited by the home circle. I was determined this state of things should not endure much longer, and to Harriet I looked for aid in breaking the spell of indifference that was consigning him to the lonely and selfish existence of a confirmed old bachelor.

Some weeks after the morning on which my story opens, Fred invited me to walk with him to one of his favorite places of resort—a grove that was situated about a mile from the village. The purple light of sunset was thrown like a glory over the surrounding hills, and fell upon the bosom of the river which, foaming in successive rapids through most of its course, here spread out in a broad, deep current, as it swept with graceful curve between its steep wooded banks. Following the path that led down the bank, we came out from the shadow of the trees into a point of land that, jutting out into the river, was covered with a soft greensward. A willow grew on its extremest verge, and on a flat rock under its overhanging branches Hattie Atherton was seated, with her sketch-book on her knee. Her hat lay beside her on the grass, and the wind sweeping back the long, shining curls that usually hung over her face, revealed her broad, intellectual brow, and the perfect contour of her features, while her slight, delicate figure was relieved against the dark trunk of the tree. So absorbed was she in her occupation that she did not know of our approach till we were beside her, and I had taken her book to show Fred her accurate drawing of the view before us. She started up with a slight blush, and turning to my brother said, with a low silvery laugh,

“You ridicule romantic school girls, Mr. Stanley; and as I presume you think I look very much like one at this moment, I must tell you how I happened to be here. Father told me to-day that the course of the M—— railroad has been altered, and it will pass directly along this bank, so that our beautiful grove will be spoiled.”

Great was our indignation at the idea of this invasion, and when we had exhausted almost every expression in the language, Fred declared he would get up a remonstrance and defeat their sacrilegious purposes.

“It will be of no use,” said Hattie. “It is the march of improvement, and we must submit.”

“Worse than the march of the Goths and Vandals,” exclaimed Fred, wrathfully; “the idea of sacrificing these grand old trees to the whims of a few railroad contractors—it is too bad, for the other route will be more convenient for everybody else.”

“I felt sorry enough, as you may imagine,” replied Hattie. “I have spent so many happy hours here that I determined to sketch the view from this point before the measuring-rod or the steam-engine should disturb its quiet beauty.”

“And your pencil has immortalized it; how perfectly you have copied the flickering light that falls on the smooth, dark waters, through those overhanging trees. Really, Miss Atherton, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you for a copy of this picture.”

“You shall have one,” said Hattie, frankly. “I intended making a picture from this, and giving the drawing to Mary, for I know she loves this scene as much as I do. I have so many pleasant associations connected with it, that I feel as if I were to part with an old friend.”

“I can realize your feelings,” replied Fred, “for I, too, have loved to listen on this spot to the many voices of nature. How often have I sat beneath these trees to watch the daylight fade from the hills, and the twilight throw its shadows over the landscape, seeming to descend lower and lower till they rested on the bosom of the river, and I could see nothing but the white foam gleaming through the dark, where it falls over the rocks away yonder. Then the low, thrilling, whispering of the wind among the pines, and the melancholy scream of the night-hawk—I declare they have made me quite poetical, as you see,” he added, smiling, and slightly embarrassed at having been thus betrayed out of his usual composure, which embarrassment was not at all relieved by meeting Hattie’s large dark eyes fixed on him with an expression of wonder and gratification. Perhaps it was this mauvais honte—perhaps it was the argumentative spirit which had occasioned us to give him in the family the soubriquet of “the opposing member”—that gave so singular a turn to this sentimental conversation, when at this moment, in turning over the leaves of her book, Fred found a slip of paper covered with verses of Harriet’s composition.

“So you write poetry, too!” said he, looking up at her with a smile.

“Oh, give it to me—I wouldn’t have you read it for the world,” exclaimed she, springing forward with such evident distress that he reluctantly relinquished the manuscript.

“You needn’t be afraid of his criticism, for he writes poetry sometimes,” said I.

“Do you?” said Hattie, incredulously.

“Certainly,” answered my brother; “everybody does now-a-days. In the class from which I graduated at college, there were forty-five, of which forty wrote poetry.”

“Wrote verses, you mean,” said Hattie, demurringly.

“There is very little difference. The Horatian maxim, ‘Poeta nascitur non fit,’ which has so long been thought to countenance a distinction, simply means that men and women who write poetry, like other men and women, are ‘born.’ ”

“I suppose, then,” replied Hattie, humoring the idea, “that the doctrine that poets were obliged to gallop up the sides of a steep mountain in Greece, on a vicious nondescript called Pegasus, is to be considered wholly metaphorical.”

“Just so,” said Fred. “Pegasus is now a mere omnibus horse, and timid people need no longer be afraid of entering the coach lest they should get a kick from the rampant animal, or be thrown into the depths of Helicon.”

“The doctrine of inspiration is also exploded,” said I, laughing. “Burns used to compose some of his nice little sonnets while engaged in the groveling occupation of ploughing, and if any thing more elaborate than usual was wanting, he took a glass of Scotch whisky.”

“Byron, too,” continued Fred, “wrote under the influence of gin; and it is said of Wordsworth, considered by the Lake school the greatest of modern poets, that he had an assistant feeding him with bread and butter while he was writing the ‘Excursion.’ Whoever, then, can drink whisky and gin, or as coming within the circle of the ‘pledge,’ can eat bread and butter, need fear no lack of inspiration.”

“How ridiculous!” exclaimed Hattie. “What would these great immortals think, could they hear your nonsense.”

“Immortals! there is another false idea that should be given up by all sensible men. Every thing else that is made is made for some object, and its excellence is determined by its fitness for that object—why shouldn’t it be so with poetry. Cheese, for instance, in Connecticut, is made with especial reference to the time of its consumption, and one kind is labeled ‘to be eaten immediately,’ another, ‘in one year,’ ‘two years,’ and so on. So with poetry. Some of it is better to be kept some years and go down to posterity like ‘Paradise Lost’ and Shakspeare, that were not much esteemed at first, you know; other kinds, more fit for present consumption, may be read by moonlight, cried over, and applied to other purposes of poetry.”

“You remind me,” said I, “of a definition I heard the other day, which said, ‘poetry is only pleasant, metrical, musical, writing which amuses and astonishes one’s friends, makes one’s enemies bite their lips for envy, and may be counted on the fingers.’ ”

“That’s very good,” replied my brother, “but the easiest way to make poetry is to take prose and turn it. I was quite surprised, at an instance of this, I found yesterday, in reading Napier’s History of the Peninsula War. He had been describing the battle of Corunna, and in speaking of the death of Sir John More, he says, very nearly in these words: ‘it was thought best to retreat without waiting for the break of day. The body of Sir John was hurriedly deposited in the earth, near the rampart, without music or even a farewell shot being fired over his grave.’ Mr. Wolfe has immortalized himself, as it is called, by turning this account into verse; and just notice how closely he has followed the prose original:

“ ‘Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,

As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,

O’er the grave where our hero was buried.’ ”

“It is strikingly like,” said Hattie, “not even the usual descriptive adjectives, and very little amplification. That shows how easily pieces of poetry of great celebrity may have been written. Perhaps you and I may one day be famous. I have often thought how a pensive man, looking at the water in this river during a mild fall of snow, might say very naturally, in thinking of the transitoriness of the pleasures of this world,

‘Like snow falls in a river,

A moment white, then melts forever,’

and yet be unconscious that he had uttered a beautiful comparison.”

“So, too,” said Fred, “any one who has ever cooked a certain kind of shell-fish before sunrise, could not help saying, as the light broke upon him,

“ ‘Like lobsters boiled—the moon

From black to red begins to turn.’ ”

“Come,” said Hattie, when our laugh had subsided, “it is getting dark, and as I promised to be at home in time to see Sally dressed for her bridal, I fear if we don’t go now, she will remind me of the pouting dame who sits at home,

“ ‘Gathering her brows like gathering storm,

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.’ ”

After we had left Hattie at her own door, and were proceeding homeward, Fred broke out in his most earnest tone. “That Miss Atherton is a very nice girl; what an intellectual face she has—have you seen any of her poetry—does she write much?”

“Oh, yes—you have read some of it, which she has published anonymously, (but this is a great secret, remember,) and her motive in doing so is as honorable to her heart as the verses are to her poetical powers. You know Mr. Atherton lavishes his wealth upon his children without bounds, and Hattie says it does not seem very benevolent for her to give away her father’s money, so she devotes the proceeds of her literary labors to purposes of charity. She is very kind to the poor; I wish you could see how their faces brighten at her approach.”

“Well done! that is what I like in a woman. She is really a very sensible girl,” replied my brother.

“Even if she does write her name H-a-t-t-i-e,” said I, with a sly glance. Fred pinched my arm, but said nothing.

Time passed on, and I was satisfied that my brother had found out “what there was to like in Hattie Atherton;” but a proud man deeply in love is the most timid of mortals, and he sped but slowly in his wooing. His favorite books were offered for her perusal; and long evenings were spent in arguments upon questions of metaphysics and philosophy, and though Hattie had sufficient strength of intellect to sustain her share of the conversation creditably, she was too much impressed with awe of Fred’s menial abilities to feel perfectly at ease while he was thus drawing forth the powers of her mind; and, mistaking her dignity and slight reserve of manner for indifference or aversion, he dared not betray the strong affection with which she inspired him.

One evening, late in the summer, as I was sitting alone in the twilight, Fred entered hastily, and throwing himself into a chair, exclaimed, “I have just heard very bad news—do you know—have you seen Harriet to-day?”

“No—what has happened? Tell me, for mercy’s sake,” said I, half frightened out of my wits at the sight of his pale face.

“Mr. Atherton has failed.”

“Oh, is that all,” replied I, with a feeling of relief on knowing that nothing dreadful had befallen my friend.

“All!” retorted Fred. “I should think that was enough. It will nearly kill the old man, he has such an overwhelming horror of debt.”

“How did it happen?” said I, rising and putting on my bonnet as I spoke.

“Are you going over there? I will go with you, and tell you about it on the way,” replied Fred, throwing my shawl around me, and giving me his arm. The story was soon told. The loss of a ship which was wrecked without insurance some months before, had somewhat embarrassed him, and the sudden failure of two large mercantile firms in Boston, with whom he was connected had completed the ruin.

As we approached the house through the garden, I proposed that we should go in through one of the parlor windows, which opened upon a grass-plot, and formed a convenient entrance in that direction, of which we had frequently availed ourselves. Never shall I forget the sight which presented itself as we stood before the window. Mrs. Atherton was reclining on the sofa, sobbing bitterly. Mr. Atherton was seated in an arm-chair, his face buried in his hands, and his whole frame shrunk and collapsed, as if beneath a weight of shame and agony. Harriet stood beside him, bathing his head and raising with her smooth, white fingers, the gray locks he had pulled over his brow. The light which fell full on her face, showed that she had been weeping violently; but now there was a faint smile on her trembling lips, and she was talking earnestly. We could not hear what she said, but the tones were full of encouragement, and her attitude and expression betokened firmness and hope. As we gazed, the old man suddenly uncovered his face, and throwing his arms around her neck, drew her mouth down to his, and kissed her fervently.

“We will not intrude here,” said my brother. There was a strange huskiness in his voice, and I felt his whole frame tremble as it did when he was strongly moved.

We walked slowly home again and talked sadly of the misfortune that had befallen our friends—of their plans of quiet happiness that must be given up—of their munificent charities that must be now contracted, and of the anxieties and embarrassments which would harass that honorable old man, but when I said that Lizzy must come home from school, and George must discontinue his studies, Fred replied resolutely that “It must not be;” and when we entered the house, he seated himself before the writing-desk and commenced a letter. Having occasion to cross the room as he was closing it, I took a sister’s liberty to peep over his shoulder, and saw—“So, my dear fellow, do not think of leaving, but draw on me for whatever funds you may require.”

A fortnight elapsed, during which I saw little of Harriet. In his professional capacity, as a lawyer, Fred was busy most of the time with Mr. Atherton, canvassing the business—settling accounts and making assignments; and it was a season of mental torture to the ruined father which could hardly have been borne had it not been for the gentle ministrations of his daughter. She it was who nerved her invalid mother to meet calmly their change of circumstances, and to aid her in consoling the care-worn, haggard man, whose sorrow they so deeply shared. The sight of her lovely face beaming with cheerfulness and affection, the sound of her low musical voice, as she sung the songs he loved, or repeated to him words of religious faith and consolation, seemed to operate like a charm in driving away the cares that haunted him, and gradually her firmness and courage were imparted to him, and he was enabled to lift up his head once more and hope for better days.

Early one morning Hattie entered the room where we were sitting at breakfast, with a face so much more joyful than she had for some time worn, that I knew she must have some good news to communicate.

“It is, indeed, so,” said she, in reply to my inquiry. “I came to tell some news, and also to beg your assistance for to-day.”

“I am at your service,” I answered; “but first tell me what has happened to please you so much?”

“I must premise,” replied she, “what you already know, that on settling up his affairs, father has found that he can pay every cent he owes, and we shall have our dear old house and garden left; and as father has a thousand dollars a year from his land agency, we shall be able to get along quite comfortably. But in order to do so, Lizzy must leave school and George must help support himself for the next eighteen months which elapse before his studies are finished. Now you know he inherits mother’s delicate constitution, and his health is too feeble to allow him to apply himself as closely as will be necessary if he is to earn his own support. Father has a sort of nervous horror of his getting into debt, (and George is as particular as father is on that point,) so, to make my story short,” she added, hesitating a little, while a bright blush suddenly suffused her face, “I am going to support them, and father can keep the old homestead⁠—”

“You support them—how?” we both exclaimed.

“Through the kindness of my old teacher, Miss W——. Lizzy mentioned in her last letter that Miss Foster, who has so long taught drawing and music at the Seminary, had left to be married, and their present teacher was not considered competent. So I wrote the day after our misfortune came, without saying any thing to father, and applied for the situation, and this morning I received an answer, filled with the most flattering expressions of kindness, and offering very liberal terms.”

“You do not seriously mean that you intend teaching?” said my brother, in a tone that deepened the flush on Hattie’s cheek.

“Certainly I do. Why should I not make my acquirements available. I intend to ‘improve my talents,’ and as that old-fashioned Jewish coin is not current in this country, I must exchange it for something that will pass more readily. I am quite delighted, too, with the terms Miss W—— offers me, though I fear I shall not be worth so much money. She says, if I will let part of the salary go to pay Lizzy’s school-bills, she will give me five hundred dollars a year, on condition that I engage to remain two years.”

“That will be about four hundred dollars in money,” said I, musingly; “yes, that is quite good pay, to be sure; but, then, what will your father and mother do without you for two years—have they consented to your plans?”

“They have, after some opposition. They will be very much alone, but I shall depend upon your kindness to cheer their lonely hours, and your brother will perhaps spend an evening with father occasionally,” added she, glancing timidly at Fred, who was drumming on the table with a very dissatisfied air.

“When do you leave?” asked my mother.

“To-morrow,” she answered, rising; “and that reminds me that I have not yet told you, Mary, that I came to request your assistance to-day in making my final preparations. I did not expect to go so soon, and have many little things to arrange before I leave.”

“Why do you go to-morrow?”

“In order to be there at the commencement of the next term—you will come, wont you?”

I promised to be with her in a short time, and she departed; and Fred, after putting salt into his coffee, and mustard on his bread, in a vain attempt to finish his breakfast, took his hat in desperation, and went out after her.

“Miss Atherton,” said he earnestly, as he overtook her, “let me persuade you to give up this scheme—we can’t spare you for two years.”

“I am quite astonished at opposition from you, Mr. Stanley,” said Hattie, in some confusion at his earnest manner. “It is but a few weeks since we had that long talk about woman’s duties and powers of usefulness. You remember what you said then?”

“Yes; but with you,” replied Fred, in a low tone, “with you it is ‘to gild refined gold, to paint the lily.’ ”

A long silence followed, for both were too much agitated to speak, when Fred repeated, “Do give up this plan—there is no need of it. I have written your brother to draw on me for any amount he may need to complete his education.”

“You are very kind,” said Hattie, tremulously, and her soft eyes were filled with a dewy light, as for a moment they met his impassioned gaze. Just then they reached the garden-gate, and in attempting to unlatch it at the same time, their hands met. The touch thrilled through each frame like an electric shock. Fred took her hand and drew it within his arm as they proceeded up the walk.

“If I could only persuade you,” said he, “how gratified I am to be of service to you. If you could have the faintest adequate idea how necessary is your presence to my happiness—how I have lived for weeks, months, only in the hope that I might one day tell you how fervently my whole soul loves you. Oh, dear Miss Atherton, is it all in vain?”

There was no reply, but the small, trembling hand that rested on his arm, placed itself in the hand that lay near it, and nestled there, as if it would cling forever. A glad, hopeful smile sprung to his lips. “Harriet—dear Harriet, you will let me love you?”

Again those expressive eyes were raised to his, and her heart spoke through them, as her low dear tones answered, “I will love you.”

“And you will not leave me—you will be my wife—you will give me the right to assist your brother?”

“Some time hence, but not now. You must not strive to break my resolution. I trust in you fully, and the words you have just spoken, are to me like sunshine breaking through the clouds that have enveloped my life; but for Lizzy’s sake, and for George’s, it is best that I should not relinquish my purpose.”

They entered the house and sat down together. All the barriers of doubt and distrust that had separated them were removed, and these two full, strong hearts, were revealed to each other. With all the eloquence of affection, Fred endeavored to convince her that it was not her duty to leave the home that was now more than ever dear to her; but the gentle girl was firm in her noble resolve, and at length her pleadings won from him a reluctant consent to its fulfillment.

The two years, which had seemed so long in the prospective, passed rapidly away, as time always does when one is in the steady performance of duty. Hattie’s visits at home were short and unfrequent, but she won the admiration of her pupils. Lizzy was at school with her, and Fred found so much business to compel him to visit the city, that he was considered quite a public benefactor by certain postage-saving acquaintances, who besieged our door with inquiries when Mr. Stanley would go to B——, and would he take a package?

It was the evening before the wedding-day. The sisters had returned three months before, and George had been some time at home, and was soon to be ordained as pastor over the church where for generations his fathers had worshiped. Having assisted Lizzy in arranging the bridal paraphernalia for to-morrow morning’s ceremony, I went down stairs to bid Hattie good-night before I went home. She was standing by the window, with her head leaning on Fred’s shoulder. One of his arms was around her, and with the other he was holding back the curtain that the brilliant moonlight might fall full on the beautiful face that was raised to his with an expression of confiding affection. A sudden recollection flashed upon my mind, and crossing the room, I threw my arms around them as they stood together, and said to my brother, “Fred, have you found out what there is to like in Hattie Atherton?”

“I have found,” replied Fred, drawing her fondly to his heart, “that there is every thing in her to like except her name; she will change that to-morrow, and then she will be perfect.”

TO MARY.

———

BY LUCY CABELL.

———

’Twere vain, dear Mary, to attempt

To sound your praise in rhyme;

Though oft I’ve gazed upon your face,

You’re fairer every time.

The stars are bright—but your sweet eyes,

Are lovelier far than they,

And diamonds, were they half as sweet,

Have scarce a brighter ray.

And, oh, such winning fondness lies,

In your gay, gladsome smile,

I scarce can look on you, and think

I do not dream the while.

And then your form—light as the air,

And perfect as a fairy;

Though many strive for beauty’s prize,

None can compare with Mary.

Oh, Mary, may thy future life,

Be bright, as thou art now,

And not a shade of sorrow rest,

Upon thy snow-white brow.

And when thy gentle spirit soars,

From its abode of love,

Oh, may it leave this world of cares,

To dwell with God above.

LITTLE WILLIE.

———

BY MRS. H. MARION STEPHENS.

———

My beautiful—my beautiful,

Upon thy baby brow,

The stern, relentless hand of death

Has placed his signet now!

The golden threads that span thy life,

Are breaking, one by one;

Let me not hold his spirit back⁠—

Oh, God! thy will be done!

My beautiful—my beautiful!

Thy life has been a dream;

A moment more, and it has passed,

Like sunshine on a stream;

Or like a bud, whose perfumed leaves

Unfolded for an hour,

To gaze with rapture on its God⁠—

Then droop beneath his power.

My beautiful—my beautiful!

I would not call thee back;

I joy that thou hast fled the storms

That beat upon life’s track;

I love to know thy sinless soul

Has burst its bonds of clay,

And watch thy spirit as it glides

So pleasantly away.

And when I gather up the folds

Around thy pale, cold face,

And when I weep to see thee laid

In thy last resting-place,

I’ll mind me that the fearful storm

By which my soul is riven,

Has borne my dove an olive branch,

And wafted him to Heaven.

MARY WILSON.

———

BY D. W. BELISLE.

———

CHAPTER I.

“She never told her love, but deep

Within her heart concealed there lay

The worm that prey’d upon her cheek,

And stole her bloom away.”

Mary Wilson was an only child. Her parents were exceedingly wealthy; and, though possessing extended landed estates, they were as parsimonious in hoarding up riches as though they were only in moderate circumstances. Mr. Wilson was rather aristocratic in his manners, yet, in many respects, he was quite liberal to those of his neighbors who were not as fortunate as himself in accumulating property. He was a gentleman of great influence, around whom gathered the elite of Cincinnati—whose favor was courted and sought by the wealthy and great. In his earlier days Mr. Wilson had laid out the rules which were to govern him through the world, and, in whatever circumstance in life, he fully resolved to abide by the course he had adopted for his guidance. He had retired from the active capacity of a business man; and yet, whenever he found an opportunity for speculating, he was just the man to engage in it.

About the time our story commences, the fever of speculation in the Western States raged to a marvelous extent. The excitement was great, and many had invested their whole patrimony in the speculation, with the ardent assurance that they would become immensely wealthy. But, alas! their expectations were but “castles in the air;” for the excitement soon subsided, and those who had invested their all in purchasing land, now found, to their great astonishment, that they had lost all they possessed. Many who were independent one day, and had the brightest anticipations of the future, the next were penniless and destitute, not knowing where or how to procure a sustenance for their families.

Among the most unfortunate in this respect was Mr. Wilson. He had invested all—even to the last dollar—of his immense possessions; he had bought lands at an exorbitant price; but he was perfectly satisfied that in the speculation he would make his thousands. His wife and daughter remonstrated against his entering so largely into the meshes of the excitement, and of involving himself to so great an extent; but he was too deeply resolved upon making money to pay the least regard to their remonstrances. He endorsed largely for others, and appeared lost in the agitation which existed. Speculation was the all-absorbing topic—with him it was a sort of magic, which usurped his entire thoughts, and, to a great degree, restrained his manly virtues. But soon his dreams and anticipations received a relapse, the effect of which had a serious impression upon his feelings. The day of speculation had passed, and the entire capital which Mr. Wilson had invested, was gone! He had lost all! he was reduced to poverty! Many others shared the same fate. Wealthy citizens were stripped of all their property; many of whom, who had not lost all in speculating, were sufferers from the evil consequences of endorsing for others. In short, a depression of business ensued seldom witnessed in a commercial city.

Reduced to want, Mr. Wilson’s ambition was gone! his pride preventing him from engaging in any ordinary business; and his constitution too feeble for manual labor, he felt keenly sensible of the unpleasantness of his situation. He knew not what to do! His splendid mansion—the home of his childhood, whose hallowed associations filled his heart with happiness—had been given up, to satisfy the demands of the law; his furniture was sold; and still unliquidated claims pressed daily and heavily upon him for payment. Friends who, in the days of his prosperity, flocked to his hospitable board, now shunned him, as one whom they regarded as their inferior, both in point of wealth and respectability. Mr. Wilson observed the change with the keenest sense of injustice, and now felt how painful it was to be thought inferior to his fellow-man.

Mary was a girl of uncommon pretensions, whose amiable disposition and beauty attracted to her side a host of admirers, who, in their prosperous days, sought to rival each other for her hand—among whom was Charles Tomlinson, the son of a wealthy merchant of Cincinnati. Charles was a young man of rare talents, prepossessing deportment, and affable disposition. He possessed all the qualities of a noble, generous-hearted man; but, notwithstanding the purity of his daily “walk and conversation,” he had imbibed many vague sentiments in regard to the Bible and the precepts taught in that holy book. Mary observed this, and felt pained to see so much talent wasted in useless attempts to prove the Bible false; but yet she loved him. Their attachment daily grew stronger, until they were betrothed, and the day appointed for the consummation of their vows. Before, however, the time for their marriage arrived, Mr. Wilson’s misfortune came, the tendency of which was an entire revolution in the feelings of Mr. Tomlinson. He now resolved that he would not marry her, because her father had failed, and, in all probability, would never be worth a dollar again. With this resolution on his mind, he was at a loss in what way to acquaint her of his determination, or how he could honorably release himself from his engagement. He had too little fortitude to unmask his change of sentiment to her, personally; and to do so by letter would betray a want of manliness, which he had the reputation of possessing. In the midst of this trying situation, he called to his assistance a friend, in whom he had placed the utmost confidence, and to whom he had entrusted the transaction of much important business. To this friend Mr. Tomlinson gave instructions how to proceed, directing him at the same time to use the utmost caution in the information he wished to convey. His name was Samuel Gordon.

——

CHAPTER II.

“She seldom smiled—and when she did,

It was so sad, subdued, and brief,

As though her mourning heart she’d chide,

And strove to smile away its grief.”

The attachment between Tomlinson and Miss Wilson, thus far, had been secretly kept from her parents, they preferring to make it known but a few weeks previously to their marriage-day. But Mrs. Wilson, with the watchfulness of a mother, perceived their intimacy, and, in a gentle manner, addressed her thus:

“Mary, for some time past I have noticed rather more than a friendly intimacy between you and Mr. Tomlinson, and, as a mother, I feel it my duty to give you advice on the subject. I would not do aught to give you pain; but I am not favorable to the addresses of Mr. Tomlinson.”

Miss Wilson, deeming it no longer prudent to keep the truth of the matter concealed from her mother, replied:

“Dear mother, I hope you will forgive my rashness, for we have long since been engaged. I hope you will overlook my disobedience.”

Their conversation was broken off by a quick ring of the bell, and Mary hastened to the door to respond to the call.

“I have a message from Mr. Tomlinson, and wish to see Miss Wilson alone for a few moments,” said the stranger.

“I am Miss Wilson. What is your business with me, sir?” she asked.

“I have,” he continued, “unfortunately to announce to you that Mr. Tomlinson, since he has lost so much in the misfortunes which have fallen on so many of the citizens of this city, deems it, at present, a rash undertaking to marry, while circumstances of such an aggravating character continue. I think it would be better for you to be as calm as possible, and wait with due patience until a more favorable turn of fortune, which I anticipate will not be very long.”

Had an ice-bolt entered the heart of that young girl, it could not have had a much greater effect. His words fell upon her ears like the solemn knell of all her hopes; for, since their misfortunes, she had fondly supposed that her marriage with Mr. Tomlinson would, in a great measure, retrieve the reputation of her father. She could not believe that Mr. Tomlinson would be guilty of such duplicity, and thought a stranger had imposed upon her. But how he, stranger as he was, knew any thing in regard to their engagement, was something more than she could solve—an enigma which cost her much anxiety and thought; for even her parents, until that moment, had not known it. Her mother saw the hectic flush mantle the cheek of her child, and felt conscious that something serious would be the consequence. That Mary loved Tomlinson was unmistakable. She read it in the deep blue of her eyes; she saw it in every lineament of her features; she discovered it in all her actions; and, with the sympathy of a mother’s own feelings, she endeavored to console her in that, her “hour of need.” But the effect was too much for her delicate constitution to bear. She “loved not wisely, but too well;” and, day after day, she sat pensively surveying the beautiful scenery before her, and silently reflecting on her own unhappy condition.

“Her silvery voice was heard no more⁠—

She sang not, and her breathing late,

Which never knew neglect before,

Now lies alone—forgotten, mute!

Or, if a passing strain she rang,

So mournfully its numbers rose,

That those who heard might deem she sang

A lorn soul’s requiem to repose!”

On a lovely autumn evening, just as the sun was shedding its last rosy beams on the tops of the surrounding hills, Mary looked from her chamber window, and drank in, at a glance, the golden glories of expiring day, and thought how calm it would be for her to die as sweetly as the sun was sinking to rest behind the hills, so that her memory might live, like the beauteous twilight, long after her frail body had mouldered again to dust. She called her mother to her side, and told her that she was dying! At such a beautiful hour, when the day began to close, and shadows were no longer broad-cast from the clouds, but were stretched along the surface of the earth by the interception of a tree, or hill-side, Mary breathed her last!

As these precious but fleeting scenes pass like sober thoughts across the face of earth, or intermingle side by side with gay and brilliant passages of light of equal evanescence, making all tender and beautiful, which otherwise had been lustrous and sparkling, they call up within the heart the memory of the past; and by an association we can scarcely trace, characters reappear of friends who have passed away before us.

Thus ended the life of Mary Wilson. Struck down in the vigor and bloom of youth, this young maiden has left many friends to mourn her loss. She was much esteemed; so much so, that every personal defect was forgotten in the charms of her spirit, with which she imparted to her friends a look of kindness and a blessing.

“Yon willow shades a marble stone,

On which the curious eye can tell

That underneath there lieth one

Who loved not wisely—but too well.”

WORDS OF WAYWARDNESS.

———

BY PROFESSOR CAMPBELL.

———

Hah! for the tide of the blood’s hot gush—

Hah! for the throng or proud thoughts that rush,

Reckless and riotous—why should they be

Iced by thy frown, Reality?

Give, give me back the early joy

Of youth’s warm hopes, of vows believed⁠—

Again, again a dreaming boy

Let me be happy—though deceived.

Friendship,

they say, is but a name,

And woman’s love a meteor flame,

That feedeth upon fancy’s breath

A little while, then perisheth.

Out, out upon thee—out on thee!

Thou hideous hag, Reality.

Hah! tears again! dost ask me why

The tear upon this burning cheek,

The half repressed, yet bursting sigh?

The tear, the sigh, themselves must speak;

Must tell a tale of by-gone hours,

A vision of all fair and bright⁠—

When my young path was strewn with flowers,

And every throb was of delight.

When joys were of each moment’s birth,

Nor care, nor doubt, an instant stole

From days of ever-changeful mirth,

That changeless shone upon the soul.

When hopes, that in mist-distance gleaming,

In promise e’en outvied the past,

Came ever, halcyon heralds seeming,

Of peace and bliss for aye to last.

But where is now the sportive wile

Of youth—so guileless and so gay⁠—

The soul of love, of fire—the smile,

That spoke that soul—oh! where are they?

Of days that could such joys impart

What now remains? Their memory⁠—

A cheerless, blasted youth—a heart

That breaketh fast, though silently.

And those proud hopes so fondly cherished,

Have they too proved, like Friendship, breath?

Ay, one by one, they all have perished⁠—

Yet no—not all—there yet is death!

There yet remains to choose some spot,

Where, far from man and scorn, to lie⁠—

And there, unheeded and forgot,

Alone—oh! God—alone to die.

Who talks of dying, while around

The earth’s so fair, the sky so bright?

With Folly’s wreath let day be crowned,

And Mirth and Music rule the night.

Another chord—the purple hills

Are bowing to the yellow vales⁠—

The vales are smiling to the rills⁠—

The rills make music for the gales,

That with the sunbeams twining hands,

Through groves and meads and streams are glancing

Adown the lanes, and on the sands

Of brave old Ocean madly dancing.

And brave old Ocean roareth so

His honest laugh, to see those Misses,

The pretty flow’rets bending low,

As though to shun the wired-god’s kisses.

Kisses—hah! hah!—around this string

Of other days what memories twine⁠—

Bring, merry comrades, quickly bring

Youth-giving and song-making wine.

Fill, fill—on the faithful brim

Pile up the sparkling flood⁠—

Drink, drink, till the living stream

Run conqueror through the blood.

Drink to the hill, the vale,

The stream and its jeweled brink,

To the warming ray and the cooling gale,

To earth and to ocean drink.

Drink to each thing that seems

Or loving or glad to be—

Nor wait to ask if those joyous beams

Be nature’s hypocrisy.

I’ve quaffed the brimming bowl

In mirth’s and madness’ hours⁠—