AN EVENING AT HOME.

Mr. Merritt was seated by the centre-table in the back-parlor, as was his custom of an evening after the tea things had been cleared away, and around it were clustered his little family. His wife and daughter Emma, a blooming maiden of sixteen, were busy with their needles, and George, his only son, was diligently conning a lesson for the morrow, while a little cherub slept quietly in a willow cradle at the feet of the mother. Mr. Merritt was a home man, and he loved the quiet happiness which always dwelt there far better than the noisy revels of the club or the bar-room. Ah! were there more home husbands, how many firesides that have never known a smile would be lit up in brightness and sunshine! How many hearts now lone and desolate, would be made glad!

It was a winter evening, and the fire burned cheerily in the back parlor of the snug dwelling where lived Mr. Merritt. It was a New England home, and when we have said this, as much of comfort hath been conveyed as if a page had been devoted to the description.

Mr. Merritt was reading from the last Gazette one of those glowing paragraphs, in which the West was painted as a land flowing with milk and honey; the El Dorado where struggling poverty might riot in exhaustless riches; where broad acres of wealth could be purchased for a song; and, in short, where all the romantic visions of the most ardent adventurer would be eclipsed by the surpassing reality. Mr. Merritt had read articles of a similar tenor before; first, with indifference, but latterly with strong interest. He was becoming a little infected with the epidemic, which had already carried off several of his acquaintances, and being now suddenly involved in pecuniary difficulties, was almost persuaded to follow. As he laid down the newspaper he turned to his wife.

“Well, wife, what say you to going West in the spring? You know that my payments for Warden will oblige me to sell a part of my little property to meet them; would it not be better to dispose of the whole, and purchase a farm in Illinois, where, if the half that is told be true, we would be able to live comfortably and provide something handsome for our children.”

Mrs. Merritt glanced around the little group, and a tear trembled in her eye as it rested on the cradle. She was thinking of the tales she had heard, how sickness and death had smitten the hopes of fond parents who had emigrated to new countries, and how, before they had accumulated with much toil and privation, wherewithal to satisfy their desires, the climate had left for their children no wants, save a coffin and a grave. But she brushed the tear secretly away.

“Are you really serious,” said Mrs. Merritt, at length, “in wishing to give up New England forever?”

“Not exactly in wishing it, my dear,” returned Mr. Merritt, “but what is now a matter of choice may, ere long, be necessity. True, it would cost a severe trial to separate from the friends whom we have so long known and loved, and to exchange the delights of their society for a wilderness, but we would be together still.”

“And we are all the world to each other,” exclaimed his wife, forgetting her sadness for a moment, in the devotion which, twenty years after marriage, was rather strengthened than subdued.

“You leave Emma and me out of the question altogether, mother,” said little George, who, though apparently absorbed in his book, had been listening all the while.

“No, my love, you are both very dear to your parents;” and she bent over him and kissed his brow, the very image of his father’s.

“Forgive me, mother, I was only jesting,” returned George, quite grieved, yet wondering why his mother should have taken it so seriously.

“Are we surely going to live in Illinois, mother?” continued George, after a pause, “among the prairies and all? O how glad I shall be; I do want to see a prairie.”

“Why, George, don’t you care about leaving your schoolmates and playfellows?” asked his sister reproachfully.

“Oh, yes! I forgot, I shall be very sorry. I shall be sorrier though for poor William Warden. He will be so grieved when he hears that Emma is going away, and he will never see her any more.”

“Hush! young chatterbox,” retorted his sister, at the same time administering him a gentle admonition with her thimbled finger, and blushing scarlet.

The infant sleeper happened to wake up at this juncture, and made sundry noisy intimations from the cradle; otherwise Mrs. Merritt might have noticed the sudden expression of pain that passed over her husband’s features, at what George had said concerning William Warden.

As for Miss Emma, she hurried to the cradle on the first demonstration, and became completely wrapt in a lullaby, which she sung as earnestly as though George had made no revelation, and William Warden was all a fable.

Mr. Merritt resumed his newspaper, and George his lesson.

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