One of the most remarkable epochs of a man’s life is when he first begins to think. Philosophers suppose—at least many have supposed—that what is called thinking, goes on from birth, or very nearly so; but either this is a mistake, or they and I are talking of different things. What I mean by thinking is not the process of putting two or three ideas together, which commences with a child as soon as it has two or three ideas to put, but an operation of the mind, in which all the mind’s servants are called upon to bear a part—where imagination comes to aid reason, and memory and observation bring the materials, and judgment measures the work. We all must have felt, in looking back upon our past life, that there has been a certain period at which flood-gates, as it were, have been opened suddenly, and a torrent of thought has flowed in upon us. The period itself will generally be somewhat indefinite to remembrance; for we none of us mark this new thing at the time that it occurs. We feel—we know—we enjoy; but we do not sit down to chronicle the moment when the new world of thought burst upon our sight. All any man can say, is, “About such and such a time, I began to think”—he generally adds, “deeply”—to contrast that period, with the period of impression gone before, which he confounds with thought. In fact it may be very difficult—for I do not wish to dogmatize—to say where thought exactly begins, and mere reception of idea, in either a simplex or a complex form, ends. It may be that thought is as a mighty stream, beginning in a very minute rill; but there certainly is one place where the river suddenly swells tremendously. I cannot say that I thought much, if at all, on any subject till I was more than ten years old. In conversing with Father Bonneville, who tried hard to teach me to think without appearing to do so, my answers were more pictures of my impressions than of my thoughts; but about twelve years old, thought began to come upon me fast and strong. I can remember quite well many a time, on the Tuesday and Thursday evenings, in the spring time of the year, sitting by that little lake, or wandering by the banks of the river, and falling into deep and even sombre reveries, in the course of which I tried every thing that I had learned or knew, by faculties which seemed to have sprung up suddenly within me. The world seemed full of wonders that I had never seen before, and I began to take interest in things which before had been to me flat and unprofitable enough. It was not alone the aspect of nature, the lake, the stream, the wood, the field, the rock, the mountain, the blue sky, the passing cloud, the rising and setting sun, the wandering moon, or the bright eyes of the twinkling stars, nor the flowers and shrubs, nor the birds of the bough and sky, nor the beasts of the field and plain, that gave me matter for thought, but man came in for his share, and man’s doings—and I am afraid woman’s, too. I would listen to the political talk of the day, which, God help me, I had cared naught about before, although there were events passing which influenced the fate of even children. I would hear of the strife of parties, and of the rise of new opinions, which shook the world to its foundation, and I would marvel and wonder at all I heard, and meditate over it in my solitary seat by the lake. If I could not understand, it mattered not; the subject was all the more a plea for revery.

I could not help remarking likewise, that Father Bonneville was a good deal affected by the tidings which arrived from time to time. He became very thoughtful, too—nay, very sad. There was a look of anxiety—of apprehension—about him. His cheerful moments were few, and he would often shake his head slowly in melancholy guise, and sigh profoundly.

One little circumstance, which occurred at this time, gave me cause to think that the good Father, besides his general regret for various violent scenes which were occurring at the time, had some cause for personal dread. I have mentioned that he was well acquainted with several languages, and from the earliest period I can recollect he had read with me at least one page of English every day. It was our custom, too, to frequently talk in English. How I first learned the language I do not know, but it seemed to me then, as I am now well aware is the case, that I spoke it with more ease and fluency than he did, though, perhaps, with not so much accuracy. At the period I am speaking of, however, he discontinued our English readings, and I could perceive that all the English books had been put away out of sight. Moreover, he gave me a hint that it might be better not to converse in English any more, for a little time at least; and though I sometimes forgot myself, I obeyed his injunctions tolerably well.

All this gave me matter for thought, and now the stream and the tank were not sufficient for me. I must walk far away into the woods: and I fancy that my long absence, even in my play hours, gave some uneasiness to the good priest. He was fond of taking me with him through the streets of the town, and thus detaining me from my solitary walks, when at length he began to doubt whether the town or the country was the best school for my leisure hours. I remember on one occasion, when he went to visit a man of the parish, who was lying sick, though not mortally ill, he made me go with him, and after keeping me some ten minutes in the house, we took our way back again, passing across the market-square. A number of men with bare arms were busily engaged in the middle of the open space erecting a curious-looking instrument, consisting of a little platform, and some raised pieces of timber, the use of which I could not conceive. A little crowd of men, women, and boys were gathered together round—and I would fain have stood and gazed likewise. But Father Bonneville hurried silently on, with his eyes bent upon the ground. It was not till I plucked him by the soutane, and pointing to the spot, asked what that could mean, that he took any notice of what was going on. I could see his face turn a shade paler, and he gave a slight shudder as he replied, “mean, my son?—that is the guillotine.” Without another word he pursued his way, and I accompanied him. On the following day I heard from good Jeanette, that a man was to be executed at noon; and I confess I had the strongest inclination in the world to go and see. The desire arose from no cruelty of disposition—no taste for blood—but it arose in mere curiosity. Youth very seldom attaches any definite idea to death. It is an acquired dread that death inspires. Others tell us about its being terrible, till we become convinced it is so; and the sight of the dying or the dead fixes the gloomy terror forever in our minds. No one had ever talked to me about death at this time; and in wishing to go to the execution, it was with no desire to see a man die, and still less suffer. I only looked upon him as a person about to exhibit himself in new and strange circumstances, and a rope-dancer or a conjuror would have answered my purpose quite as well—perhaps better. However, I was not destined that day to see one or the other. Long before noon, Father Bonneville ordered the windows to be shut up, as if there were a death in the house. He staid at home himself, and passed the time in prayer, in which Jeanette and I joined him; after which he read two penitential sermons as soon as he thought the execution was over, and then ordered the windows to be opened again, after a new rush of feet past the house had announced to us that the blood-loving populace were going down to the suburbs at the foot of the hill.

If good Father Bonneville had kept up the same practice, his house would have been shut up, before long, five days out of seven in the week, and his domestic prayers would have occupied at least one-quarter of his whole time. Executions became numerous, agitation of the public mind, disquietude, tumult, violence, followed rapidly. No man felt himself safe: every one dreaded his neighbor; each hour had its peril; the meanest act of life became of consequence. There was no free-hearted easiness, no social cheerfulness; all the amenities of life were banished, till despair supplied a gayety of a chilly and a death-like sort, to cast an unwholesome blaze upon the darkening times like the lights that flit about the graves of the dead. The spirits and the energies of Father Bonneville fell completely for a time. He a good deal neglected my instruction during a couple of months—strove to give it, but could not fix his attention. At other times when I was not sitting with him, I was left to do much as I pleased, and my wanderings were now prolonged. Sometimes I would extend them five or six miles beyond the foot of the hill, especially toward the north and west, where a number of objects of great interest, as they seemed to me, lay concealed in the depths of a country, not fully populated and very little explored by the traveler. There was a curious old house there, completely in ruins—nothing in fact but the shell—with the doors gaping like dead men’s jaws, and the windows mere eyeless sockets. The outside, however, had once been very beautiful, richly arabesque, and ornamented with small pillars of a dark-gray marble, in a style which, I believe, belonged to the early part of the fifteenth century. The interior was crowded with young trees, rooted amongst fragments of decaying joists and roofing, while the windows were all trailed over with brambles and self-sown climbers. The jackdaws nested in the tall towers, and the owls slept till nightfall in the undisturbed chimney; but the social swallows built no habitations beneath those eves.

Farther on, there was an older building still, mounted on its little rock, with a small, but deep tank on one side, a river on the other, and a foss once traversed by a drawbridge, running round the rest of the base, and joining the river at the pond. I once waded through the stream, for the drawbridge had long returned to dust, to see what was in the house above. I was ill repaid for my pains. All was vacant and in ruin. There was a large, tall, square building, two lesser towers and a wall, but not a vestige of wood-work remaining. It must have been long completely dilapidated; for in the great-court, with one of its gnarled roots knotted round a fragment of masonry, was an oak which must have taken more than two centuries to grow. The two buildings were strangely contrasted in style: the gay, airy lightness of the one: the stern, heavy simplicity of the other, were the records of two past ages; but they, the ages which brought them forth, the people which had built them, and the feelings which lent them their characteristics, had all passed away. The epitaph for the grave-yard of all terrestrial things should have been written on both their fronts—“Fuimus.”

It was one day in the autumn time, when the leaves were brown, and the light mellow, and the birds had ceased their song, but the grasshopper still prolonged his chirping, that I had wandered out in this direction an hour or two after noon. It is a very pleasant land that Antoumois—for I am certain that it was there, although I have no proof of it—with its vineyards and its corn-fields, and its woods interspersed, and here and there wild, ill-shapen rocks starting up in one’s way, and presenting strange, unusual forms and clefts and caverns innumerable. There had been a good deal of rioting in the town in the morning. In fact the regular municipal government might have been considered as almost at an end, and anarchy was advancing with rapid strides. I no longer wanted to see executions: the turbulence of the people did not amuse and did not frighten me, but it annoyed me. My ears were tired of shouts and screams, and I was sick of the Marseillaise to my very heart. I longed to see the old town in its clear, calm, sober light again, with the streets uncrowded by victims, and unpolluted by the disorderly rabble of the suburb. Gladly I escaped out into the country, and I believe good Father Bonneville was glad to see me go. I had walked on past the first house I have mentioned, and was about mid-way between it and the second. I was wandering on along a little foot-path, not sufficiently frequented to prevent the velvet moss from growing quickly upon it, and had very nearly arrived at a spot where one of those bold, rugged and fissured rocks which I have mentioned, rose up in the midst of the wood, and forced the path to take a turn. Suddenly, when near the angle, a woman and a child turned the corner advancing with wild and rapid steps. The child, a beautiful little girl, of some seven years old, dressed in a costume of the higher classes, but with nothing but her own beautiful curly hair upon her head, was crying bitterly. The woman—evidently a lady of some rank and station—shed no tears; but there was a look of wild, anxious terror, almost amounting to frenzy, on her face. The moment she beheld me she started back, dragging the child with her, and uttering a low scream. But an instant’s thought made her pause again; and she fixed her deep, inquiring eyes upon me when she saw that I was but a boy and alone. She was very beautiful, though very pale, and her face was in some way familiar to me. As I gazed at her with some surprise, and not untouched by the fear which she evidently felt herself, I saw that various parts of her dress were dyed and dabbled with blood. I had stopped when she stopped, and remained somewhat bewildered while she fixed upon me that earnest, penetrating look. Suddenly, some thought or remembrance seemed to strike her, and letting go the child’s hand, she darted forth and grasped my arm.

“Are not you the boy whom I saw some months ago at Father Bonneville’s?” she asked in a low and hurried voice.

“I live with him, madam,” I replied; “but what blood is that upon your dress?”

“My husband’s,” replied the lady, in a tone so low, so icy, so full of deep despair that it seemed to freeze my very heart. “They have just murdered him before my very face, because he would not give them powder when he had none to give.”

Then she put her hand to her head for a few moments, and the little girl, still weeping bitterly, crept up to her side, and took hold of her gown.

“Here,” said the lady, disengaging the child’s hand and putting it in mine, “take her to Father Bonneville—tell him what has happened—beseech him to keep her in safety for two or three months. I will come and claim her if I live so long. If not, let him send her to England and think me dead. You will take care of her—you will be kind to her—you will guide her safely?” and she fixed her large, dark eyes full upon me, seeming to look into my soul.

She had taken little notice of the child, who was now crying more bitterly than ever, and murmuring that she would not go. For my part, I promised all that she desired, but she hardly listened to me, exclaiming, almost immediately I began to speak—

“Stay! she must have some means. Here, here,” and she took from her pocket two rolls of coin, wrapped up in paper as was much the custom in France in those days. One of these she gave to me, enveloped and sealed as it was. The other, she broke as one would break a stick, and I perceived it contained louis-d’ors, by one of them falling out upon the ground. I stooped to pick it up, but she said in the same hurried tone—

“Never mind, never mind. Speed is worth all the gold in the world. Here, take this half and go.”

Then stooping down, she kissed the little girl a hundred times, pressed her to her heart, laid her hand upon her head and looked up to heaven; and now the tears fell plentifully. From time to time, however, she whispered a few words in the child’s ear, and they seemed to have a great effect. She wept still, and somewhat clung to her mother; but when, at length, the lady replaced the child’s hand in mine, saying, “Now go, go, and God Almighty be your God and Protector,” she made no further resistance; but with bent head, and eyes dropping fast, ran on beside me.

Suddenly I heard a voice cry, “Stop, stop!” and turning round, saw the lady running fast after us. She caught the child’s hand and mine with a quick, eager grasp, and looked up on high, seeming to consider something deeply, and I could see the pulse beating in her beautiful neck with fearful force. At length, however, she dropped our hands with a deep, heavy sigh, and murmured, “They will never hurt two children—surely, they will not hurt two children. Go on—go on—”

She turned sadly away, and walking on, I was there in the forest leading the little girl by the hand, and with a walk of more than four miles before us.

[To be continued.

---

———

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

———

---

———

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

———

---

———

BY JAMES M’CARROLL.

———

---

———

BY T. S. ARTHUR.

———

“That’s a smart little fellow of yours,” said a gentleman named Winslow to a laboring man, who was called in, occasionally, to do work about his store. “Does he go to school?”

“Not now, sir,” replied the poor man.

“Why not, Davis? He looks like a bright lad.”

“He’s got good parts, sir,” returned the father, “but—”

“But what?” asked the gentleman, seeing that the man hesitated.

“Times are rather hard now, sir, and I have a large family. It’s about as much as I can do to keep hunger and cold away. Ned reads very well, writes a tolerable fair hand, considering all things, and can figure a little. And that’s about all I can do for him. The other children are coming forward, and I reckon he will have to go to a trade middling soon.”

“How old is Ned?” inquired Mr. Winslow.

“He’s turned of eleven.”

“You wont put him to a trade before he’s thirteen or fourteen?”

“Can’t keep him home idling about all that time, Mr. Winslow. It would be his ruination. It’s young to go out from home, I know, to rough it and tough it among strangers”—there was a slight unsteadiness in the poor man’s voice—“but it’s better than doing nothing.”

“Ned ought to go to school a year or two longer, Davis,” said Mr. Winslow, with some interest in his manner. “And as you are not able to pay the quarter-bills, I guess I will have to do it. What say you? If I pay for Ned’s schooling can you keep him at home some two or three years longer?”

“I didn’t expect that of you, Mr. Winslow,” said the poor man, and his voice now trembled. He uncovered his head as he spoke, almost reverently. “You aint bound to pay for schooling my boy. Ah, sir!”

“But you havn’t answered my question, Davis. What say you?”

“Oh, sir, if you are really in earnest?”

“I am in earnest. Ned ought to go to school. If you can keep him home a few years longer I will pay for his education during the time. Ned”—Mr. Winslow spoke to the boy—“what say you? Would you like to go to school again?”

“Yes, indeed, sir,” quickly answered the boy, while his bright young face was lit up with a gleam of intelligence.

“Then you shall go, my fine fellow. There’s the right kind of stuff in you, or I’m mistaken. We’ll give you a trial at any rate.”

Mr. Winslow was as good as his word. Ned was immediately entered at an excellent school. The boy, young as he was, appreciated the kind act of his benefactor, and resolved to profit by it to the full extent.

“I made an investment of ten dollars to-day,” said Mr. Winslow, jestingly to a mercantile friend, some three months after the occurrence just related took place, “and here’s the certificate.”

He held up a small slip of paper as he spoke.

“Ten dollars! A large operation. In what fund?”

“A charity fund.”

“Oh!” And the friend shrugged his shoulders “Don’t do much in that way myself. No great faith in the security. What dividend do you expect to receive?”

“Don’t know. Rather think it will be large.”

“Better take some more of the stock if you think it so good. There is plenty in market to be bought at less than par.”

Mr. Winslow smiled, and said that, in all probability he would invest a few more small sums in the same way and see how it would turn out. The little piece of paper which he called a certificate of stock, was the first quarter-bill he had paid for Ned’s schooling. For four years these bills were regularly paid, and then Ned, who had well improved the opportunities so generously afforded him, was taken, on the recommendation of Mr. Winslow, into a large importing house. He was at the time in his sixteenth year. Before the lad could enter upon this employment, however, Mr. Winslow had to make another investment in his charity fund. Ned’s father was too poor to give him an outfit of clothing such as was required in the new position to which he was to be elevated; knowing this, the generous merchant came forward again and furnished the needful supply.

As no wages were received by Ned for the first two years, Mr. Winslow continued to buy his clothing, while his father still gave him his board. On reaching the age of eighteen, Ned’s employers, who were much pleased with his industry, intelligence, and attention to business, put him on a salary of three hundred dollars. This made him at once independent. He could pay his own boarding and find his own clothes, and proud did he feel on the day when advanced to so desirable a position.

“How comes on your investment?” asked Mr. Winslow’s mercantile friend about this time. He spoke jestingly.

“It promises very well,” was the smiling reply.

“It is rising in the market, then?”

“Yes.”

“Any dividends yet?”

“Oh, certainly. Large dividends.”

“Ah! You surprise me. What kind of dividends?”

“More than a hundred per cent.”

“Indeed! Not in money?”

“Oh no. But in something better than money. The satisfaction that flows from an act of benevolence wisely done.”

“Oh, that’s all.” The friend spoke with ill-concealed contempt.

“Don’t you call that something?” asked Mr. Winslow.

“It’s entirely too unsubstantial for me,” replied the other. “I go in for returns of a more tangible character. Those you speak of wont pay my notes.”

Mr. Winslow smiled, and bade his friend good-morning.

“He knows nothing,” said he to himself, as he mused on the subject, “of the pleasure of doing good; and the loss is all on his side. If we have the ability to secure investments of this kind, they are among the best we can make, and all are able to put at least some money in the fund of good works, let it be ever so small an amount. Have I suffered the abridgment of a single comfort by what I have done? No. Have I gained in pleasant thoughts and feelings by the act? Largely. It has been a source of perennial enjoyment. I would not have believed that, at so small a cost I could have secured so much pleasure. And how great the good that may flow from what I have done! Instead of a mere day-laborer, whose work in the world goes not beyond the handling of boxes, bales and barrels, or the manufacture of some article in common use, Edward Davis, advanced by education, takes a position of more extended usefulness, and by his higher ability and more intelligent action in society, will be able, if he rightly use the power in his hands, to advance the world’s onward movement in a most important degree.”

Thus thought Mr. Winslow and his heart grew warm within him. Time proved that he had not erred in affording the lad an opportunity for obtaining a good education. His quick mind acquired, in the position in which he was placed, accurate ideas of business, and industry and force of character made these ideas thoroughly practical. Every year his employers advanced his salary, and, on attaining his majority, it was further advanced to the sum of one thousand dollars per annum. With every increase the young man had devoted a larger and larger proportion of his income to improving the condition of his father’s family, and when it was raised to the sum last mentioned, he took a neat, comfortable new house, much larger than the family had before lived in, and paid the whole rent himself. Moreover, through his acquaintance and influence, he was able to get a place for his father at lighter employment than he had heretofore been engaged in, and at a higher rate of compensation.

“Any more dividends on your charity investment?” said Mr. Winslow’s friend, about this time. He spoke with the old manner, and from the old feelings.

“Yes. Got a dividend to-day. The largest yet received,” replied the merchant, smiling.

“Did you? Hope it does you a great deal of good.”

“I realize your wish, my friend. It is doing me a great deal of good,” returned Mr. Winslow.

“No cash, I presume?”

“Something far better. Let me explain.”

“Do so, if you please.”

“You know the particulars of this investment?” said Mr. Winslow.

His friend shook his head, and replied,

“No. The fact is, I never felt interest enough in the matter to inquire particulars.”

“Oh, well. Then I must give you a little history.”

“You know old Davis, who has been working about our stores for the last ten or fifteen years?”

“Yes.”

“My investment was in the education of his son.”

“Indeed!”

“His father took him from school when he was only eleven years old, because he could not afford to send him any longer, and was about putting the little fellow out to learn a trade. Something interested me in the child, who was a bright lad, and acting from a good impulse that came over me at the moment, I proposed to his father to send him to school for three or four years, if he would board and clothe him during the time. To this he readily agreed. So I paid for Ned’s schooling until he was in his sixteenth year, and then got him into Webb & Waldron’s store, where he has been ever since.”

“Webb & Waldron’s!” said the friend, evincing some surprise. “I know all their clerks very well, for we do a great deal of business with them. Which is the son of old Mr. Davis?”

“The one they call Edward.”

“Not that tall, fine-looking young man—their leading salesman?”

“The same.”

“Is it possible! Why he is worth any two clerks in the store.”

“I know he is.”

“For his age, there is not a better salesman in the city.”

“So I believe,” said Mr. Winslow, “nor,” he added, “a better man.”

“I know little of his personal character; but, unless his face deceives me, it cannot but be good.”

“It is good. Let me say a word about him. The moment his salary increased beyond what was absolutely required to pay his board and find such clothing as his position made it necessary for him to wear, he devoted the entire surplus to rendering his father’s family more comfortable.”

“Highly praiseworthy,” said the friend.

“I had received, already, many dividends on my investment,” continued Mr. Winslow; “but when that fact came to my knowledge, my dividend exceeded all the other dividends put together.”

The mercantile friend was silent. If ever in his life he had envied the reward of a good deed, it was at that moment.

“To-day,” went on Mr. Winslow, “I have received a still larger dividend. I was passing along Buttonwood street, when I met old Mr. Davis coming out of a house, the rent of which, from its appearance, was not less than two hundred and twenty-five dollars. ‘You don’t live here, of course,’ said I, for I knew the old man’s income to be small—not over six or seven dollars a week. ‘O, yes I do,’ he made answer, with a smile. I turned and looked at the house again. ‘How comes this?’ I asked. ‘You must be getting better off in the world.’ ‘So I am,’ was his reply. ‘Has anybody left you a little fortune?’ I inquired. ‘No, but you have helped me to one,’ said he. ‘I don’t understand you, Mr. Davis,’ I made answer. ‘Edward rents the house for us,’ said the old man. ‘Do you understand now?’

“I understood him perfectly. It was then that I received the largest dividend on my investment which has yet come into my hands. If they go on increasing at this rate, I shall soon be rich.”

“Rather unsubstantial kind of riches,” was remarked by the friend.

“That which elevates and delights the mind can hardly be called unsubstantial,” replied Mr. Winslow. “Gold will not always do this.”

The friend sighed involuntarily. The remarks of Mr. Winslow caused thoughts to flit over his mind that were far from being agreeable.

A year or two more went by, and then an addition was made to the firm of Webb & Waldron. Edward Davis received the offer of an interest in the business, which he unhesitatingly accepted. From that day he was in the road to fortune. Three years afterward one of the partners died, when his interest was increased.

Twenty-five years from the time Mr. Winslow, acting from a benevolent impulse, proposed to send young Davis to school, have passed.

One day, about this period, Mr. Winslow, who had met with a number of reverses in business, was sitting in his counting-room, with a troubled look on his face, when the mercantile friend before-mentioned came in. His countenance was pale and disturbed.

“We are ruined! ruined!” said he, with much agitation.

Mr. Winslow started to his feet.

“Speak!” he exclaimed. “What new disaster is about to sweep over me?”

“The house of Toledo & Co., in Rio, has suspended.”

Mr. Winslow struck his hands together, and sunk down into the chair from which he had arisen.

“Then it is all over,” he murmured. “All over!”

“It is all over with me,” said the other. “A longer struggle would be fruitless. But for this I might have weathered the storm. Twenty thousand dollars of drafts drawn against my last shipment are back protested, and will be presented to-morrow. I cannot lift them. So ends this matter. So closes a business life of nearly forty years, in commercial dishonor and personal ruin!”

“Are you certain that they have failed?” asked Mr. Winslow, with something like hope in his tone of voice.

“It is too true,” was answered. “The Celeste arrived this morning, and her letter-bag was delivered at the post-office half an hour ago. Have you received nothing by her?”

“I was not aware of her arrival. But I will send immediately for my letters.”

Too true was the information communicated by the friend. The large commission-house of Toledo & Co. had failed, and protested drafts had been returned to a very heavy amount. Mr. Winslow was among the sufferers, and to an extent that was equivalent to ruin; because it threw back upon him the necessity of lifting over fifteen thousand dollars of protested paper, when his line of payments was already fully up to his utmost ability.

For nearly five years, every thing had seemed to go against Mr. Winslow. At the beginning of that period, a son, whom he had set up in business, failed, involving him in a heavy loss. Then, one disaster after another followed, until he found himself in imminent danger of failure. From this time he turned his mind to the consideration of his affairs with more earnestness than ever, and made every transaction with a degree of prudence and foresight that seemed to guarantee success in whatever he attempted. A deficient supply of flour caused him to venture a large shipment to Rio. The sale was at a handsomely remunerative profit, but the failure of his consignees, before the payment of his drafts for the proceeds, entirely prostrated him.

So hopeless did the merchant consider his case, that he did not even make an effort to get temporary aid in his extremity.

When the friend of Mr. Winslow came with the information that the house of Toledo & Co. had failed, the latter was searching about in his mind for the means of lifting about five thousand dollars worth of paper, which fell due on that day. He had two thousand dollars in bank; the balance of the sum would have to be raised by borrowing. He had partly fixed upon the resources from which this was to come, when the news of his ill-fortune arrived.

Yes, it was ruin. Mr. Winslow saw that in a moment, and his hands fell powerless by his side. He made no further effort to lift his notes, but, after his mind had a little recovered from its first shock, he left his store and retired to his home, to seek in its quiet the calmness and fortitude, of which he stood so greatly in need. In this home were his wife and two daughters, who all their lives had enjoyed the many external comforts and elegancies that wealth can procure. The heart of the father ached as his eyes rested upon his children, and he thought of the sad reverses that awaited them.

On entering his dwelling, Mr. Winslow sought the partner of his life, and communicated to her without reserve, the painful intelligence of his approaching failure.

“Is it indeed so hopeless?” she asked, tears filling her eyes.

“I am utterly prostrate!” was the reply, in a voice that was full of anguish. And in the bitterness of the moment, the unfortunate merchant wrung his hands.

To Mrs. Winslow, the shock, so unexpected, was very severe; and it was some time before her mind, after her husband’s announcement, acquired any degree of calmness.

About half an hour after Mr. Winslow’s return home, and while both his own heart and that of his wife were quivering with pain, a servant came and said that a gentleman had called and wished to see him.

“Who is it?” asked the merchant.

“I did not understand his name,” replied the servant.

Mr. Winslow forced as much external composure as was possible, and then descended to the parlor.

“Mr. Davis,” he said on entering.

“Mr. Winslow,” returned the visitor, taking the merchant’s hand and grasping it warmly.

As the two men sat down together, the one addressed as Mr. Davis, said—

“I was sorry to learn a little while ago, that you will lose by this failure in Rio.”

“Heavily. It has ruined me!” replied Mr. Winslow.

“Not so bad as that I hope!” said Mr. Davis.

“Yes. It has removed the last prop that I leaned on, Mr. Davis. The very last one, and now the worst must come to the worst. It is impossible for me to take up fifteen thousand dollars worth of returned drafts.”

“Fifteen thousand is the amount?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Davis smiled encouragingly.

“If that is all,” said he, “there is no difficulty in the way. I can easily get you the money.”

Mr. Winslow started, and a warm flush went over his face.

“Why didn’t you come to me,” asked Mr. Davis, “the moment you found yourself in such a difficulty? Surely!” and his voice slightly trembled, “surely you did not think it possible for me to forget the past! Do not I owe you every thing?—and would I not be one of the basest of men, if I forgot my obligation? If your need were twice fifteen thousand, and it required the division of my last dollar with you, not a hair of your head should be injured. I did not know that it was possible for you to get into an extremity like this, until I heard it whispered a little while ago.”

So unexpected a turn in his affairs completely unmanned Mr. Winslow. He covered his face and wept for some time, with the uncontrollable passion of a child.

“Ah! sir,” he said at last, in a broken voice, “I did not expect this, Mr. Davis.”

“You had a right to expect it,” replied the young man. “Were I to do less than sustain you in any extremity not too great for my ability, I would be unworthy the name of a man. And now, Mr. Winslow, let your heart be at rest. You need not fall under this blow. Your drafts will probably come back to you to-morrow?”

“Yes. To-morrow at the latest.”

“Very well. I will see that you are provided with the means to lift them. In the meantime, if you are in want of any sums toward your payments of to-day, just let me know.”

“I can probably get through to-day by my own efforts,” said Mr. Winslow.

“Probably? How much do you want?” asked Mr. Davis.

“In the neighborhood of three thousand dollars.”

“I will send you round a check for that sum immediately,” promptly returned the young man, rising as he spoke and drawing forth his watch.

“It is nearly two o’clock now,” he added, “so I will bid you good day. In fifteen minutes you will find a check at your store.”

And with this Davis retired.

All this, which passed in a brief space of time, seemed like a dream to Mr. Winslow. He could hardly realize its truth. But it was a reality, and he comprehended it more fully, when on reaching his store, he found there the promised check for three thousand dollars.

On the next day the protested drafts came in; but, thanks to the grateful kindness of Mr. Davis, now a merchant with the command of large money facilities, he was able to take them up. The friend, before introduced was less fortunate. There was no one to step forward and save him from ruin, and he sunk under the sudden pressure that came upon him.

A few days after his failure he met Mr. Winslow.

“How is this?” said he. “How did you weather the storm that drove me under? I thought your condition as hopeless as mine!”

“So did I,” answered Mr. Winslow. “But, I had forgotten a small investment made years ago. I have spoken of it to you before.”

The other looked slightly puzzled.

“Have you forgotten that investment in the charity fund? which you thought money thrown away.”

“Oh!” Light broke in upon his mind. “You educated Davis. I remember now!”

“And Davis, hearing of my extremity, stepped forward and saved me. That was the best investment I ever made!”

The friend dropped his eyes to the pavement, stood for a moment or two without speaking, sighed and then moved on. How many opportunities for making similar investments had he not neglected!

---

A LEGEND OF OLD SALEM.

———

BY E. D. ELIOT.

———

Last summer I visited, for a few weeks, a romantic inland town, in the northern part of New England. While there, some old papers accidentally fell into my hands, and among them I found the following story; which appeared to have been thrown into the form of a legend, and thus handed down through several generations.

The family it relates to were originally among the principal families residing in the good old town of Salem, toward the close of the old French war. No branch of the family remained in the place at the time of the Revolution of ’76; and their name even is now forgotten in the vicinity, or only to be found on some old tomb-stone. This legend served me to shorten a weary, sultry, mid-summer hour, and, courteous reader, with the hope that it may do you the same kind service, I give it to you without further comment.

---

The Fayerweather estate was purchased by the first of that family who appeared in Salem, of a person of the name of Boynton. The estate was situated in that part of Essex street since called “Old Paved street,” from its having been the first, and for many years the only one, in the town which afforded its passengers the convenience of a substantial stone pavement.

The man Boynton, of whom Mr. Fayerweather purchased the land, was not much respected in the town; he had but little reputation for honesty; but Mr. Fayerweather having secured the title deeds, when he paid down the purchase money, saw but little reason to fear his title being called in question; therefore immediately on coming into possession, he built on it a fine mansion. It was a large and respectable looking edifice, built in the best style of the day; its date was the same with that of the noted one in which the witches were tried, and which can yet be seen standing in a green old age, at the corner of North and Essex streets, having survived the decay and downfall of all its cotemporaries. The solid beams and rafters of the Fayerweather mansion might have held together equally as long, but not many years ago they were ruthlessly torn down to make room for a more showy house of bright red brick, built in the modern style.

Mr. Fayerweather lived in quiet possession of his land long enough to see it nearly doubled in value, by his improvements and the increase of dwellings in that part of the town. At his decease his only son took possession of the homestead. Boynton’s death took place shortly after. And now an unexpected claim was set up by his son and daughter, Jemmy and Nanny, to an undivided moiety of the land, in right of their mother; and a deed was produced by them, proving their title to this moiety by purchase in her maiden name, with a date prior to her marriage. The second Mr. Fayerweather perceived at once the knavery which had been practiced upon his father, by the old sinner Boynton; but he not being able to bring himself to contest the point by a recourse to law—of which he entertained a horror—Jemmy and Nanny proceeded to establish their claim by taking possession. They removed the little ill-conditioned building which served for their dwelling, so near the line which separated the garden and grounds immediately about the mansion, from the rest of the land, that the hedge of shrubbery marking the division might conveniently serve them equally well as an inclosure.

Their injured neighbor had no means of redress, however annoyed; and being of a Christian spirit, still further subdued by affliction—having lost his wife and several children in succession—he thought more of securing possessions in another and better world, than of resisting encroachments on those remaining to him in this. Few, however, are the evils in this life which are found to be wholly unattended with benefit. Even the fraud of old Boynton, the aggressions of Jemmy and Nanny, their continual warfare with the kitchen division of his household, resulting not seldom in a pitched battle with broomsticks—even these served a good purpose to the sorrowing invalid. Like a perpetual blister, their irritation sometimes aroused his spirit, in danger of sinking into apathy or dejection; and by quickening the flow of his blood, and giving it a more lively action, perhaps produced a favorable effect upon his health. It is certain that his life was prolonged to a much greater age than was prophesied when he took possession of his disputed inheritance. At his death his estate fell to his son, also an only one, who in turn became the occupant of the homestead, and whose family furnishes the principal subject of the pages which follow.

Mr. Fayerweather, the third of the name in Salem, removed from Boston, where he had married and had resided for several years. He was a man of great worth, and of good sense, though with some eccentricities. The handsome property which he inherited, together with that which fell into his hands by his marriage, constituted him a wealthy man without any addition; he, however, engaged in commerce for a few years, but not finding it to his taste, he retired from business soon after his removal to Salem, and led a quiet though useful life; one of the most beloved and respected among the heads of the town. His good lady was distinguished, principally, for kindness of heart, and an almost laughable simplicity; though in her youth she had possessed much beauty, and of a kind on which Time can scarce find it in his heart to lay his withering fingers; spiteful as the old wretch usually is to lilies and roses and lovely features. This well-matched pair had but two children—both sons; a niece, however, left an orphan in infancy was adopted by madam, (this title, in those days, was always borne by matrons in the higher station,) and she became equally beloved by Mr. Fayerweather.

Jemmy Boynton never married; despairing, probably, of finding a helpmate equally as saving and lynx-eyed, as to the main chance as his amiable sister. Nanny Boynton’s reasons for leading a single life were never fully known. Perhaps she never received an offer; though being for many years reputed the richest heiress in Salem, this does not seem probable, even had her personal charms not been quite irresistible.

However the case may be, the brother and sister lived together in much harmony; the fraternal tie being strengthened by bonds of principal and interest. Still they were far from being agreeable neighbors to the family at the larger house, whose quiet they succeeded in disturbing almost daily. Madam kept herself as much aloof from them as she could, consistently with her nature, which was kindly disposed to every creature that breathed, and led her to do them all the good in her power. Of this they availed themselves to their no small profit. They levied contributions, under the name of loans, upon her larder, her flour-barrel, and her meat-tub; seldom replenishing their own scanty stock of provisions, until a supply from her store-room had served them a week. The kitchen utensils were in constant requisition. The servants sometimes took upon them to resist these exactions, when such a clamor would be raised, as to throw poor madam into hysterics; in terror of which and in mercy to his own ears, her good spouse was fain to give orders that Jemmy and Nanny should have whatever they asked for, without contention or debate.

This was to the unbounded indignation of Aunt Vi’let; a sable-complexioned dame, who ruled in the kitchen with despotic sway, and held old Scipio, her niece Flora, and Peter the footboy, in wholesome subjection; often extending her dominion to the parlor, where she found no difficulty in overawing madam; and even Mr. Fayerweather, though he sometimes proved refractory, as in the above instance, yet he generally found it his safest course to submit in silence to Aunt Vi’let.

If there was a being in the world, toward whom Vi’let bore a decided antipathy, that being was Nanny Boynton. This antipathy was partly caused by the conviction that the latter was addicted to witchcraft; a belief in which, not being yet wholly dispelled from the minds of the ignorant and uneducated in Salem. In Vi’let it existed in as full force as any of the articles of her religious creed; it might, indeed, be said to be one of them—and her feelings toward Nanny were governed by it accordingly; imputing to her agency every untoward event which occurred in the family generally, but more particularly her own private mishaps, her ailments and vexations. No fear, however, found a place in her feelings toward her enemy; for had the latter attacked her, backed by him of the cloven foot, in bodily shape, she was of a temper and spirit to hold her ground and berate the foul fiend to his face; and if he had not fairly turned and fled, panic-struck at the torrent of abuse accompanying her adjurations, he had proved himself, indeed, a brave spirit.

The brawls and disturbances occasioned by the hostility of these two high-spirited maidens—for Vi’let too had forsworn matrimony—rendered it the first object of Mr. Fayerweather’s wishes to remove the Boyntons; and he endeavored to prevail upon them to relinquish their claim for a reasonable compensation; but for many years in vain, their residence in his neighborhood was much too profitable and convenient for them to be easily induced to change it.

George Fayerweather, the elder of Mr. Fayerweather’s two sons, being the hero of this legend, it may be as well to give some account of his boyhood, especially of those events and associations that had some share in the formation of his character. Though in strength and frame a young giant, he had delicate, handsome features, and a complexion which seemed to defy the effect of sun or wind, rosy cheeks, and long, curling, golden hair. He resembled his mother very much; and madam could not always avoid betraying her fond pride in this living image of herself, as she smoothed his hair, and turning each golden lock over her finger, formed it into ringlets round his blooming face and ivory throat, after her daily operations of washing and dressing him. These offices she took upon herself until he was eleven years old, and there is no knowing how much longer she might have chosen to perform them, if his father had not interfered—“Finding,” as he said, “the boy was in danger of becoming a conceited, effeminate coxcomb—which no son of his should be.”

One morning Mr. Fayerweather was reading in a small apartment, which opened out of the sitting-room, formerly used by him as a counting-room, and still retaining the name, though it might have been dignified with the title of library, being lined with book-shelves well filled. The door was half open, and hearing some one enter the sitting-room, he looked up and saw his son, who had just undergone the above-mentioned dressing operations under his mother’s hands. The boy, not perceiving his father, went up to the large looking-glass which hung over the marble slab, where he stood apparently admiring himself, while he took a handful of sugar-plums from his pocket, and putting them into his mouth, ate as he gazed.

Mr. Fayerweather, with difficulty restraining his indignation, left the room quietly by another door, which opened at the foot of the stairs, up which he went. He descended quickly, bringing a silk gown of his wife’s on his arm, and a lace cap in his hand, and softly approached George, who was still absorbed in the contemplation of his own image. Seizing the boy, who, paralyzed with shame, could make no resistance, he stripped off his upper garment, and put the gown and cap on him; then taking him on his knee, he began to trot and dandle him, singing, “High diddle diddle.” George’s rage obtained the mastery; he struggled and kicked with the strength of a half-grown Hercules, and at length freeing himself from his father, he stripped off the gown and stamped upon it—madam’s very blue-watered tabby! then catching a glance at himself in the glass, and seeing the cap on his head, he tore it in two, and flying up to the glass, with one blow of his fist, broke it into a thousand pieces. The tempest now subsided in a torrent of tears, and the poor boy ran off to hide his shame.

His father, when he saw the result of his experiment, almost repented having carried it so far. He did not think of the value of the glass, though he had sent “home” for it, at the cost of fifty guineas; and in its elaborately carved and gilded frame, it was the pride of all “Paved street”; nor madam’s blue-watered tabby, though it was her fourth best—indeed, she rather preferred it to her Pompadour lustring, having an idea that Mr. Fayerweather thought it becoming to her complexion—the value of these twice-told he would have thought well-bestowed if they cured George of his girlish vanity, and called forth in him a manly spirit; but he regretted having outraged the feelings of his son. He, however, courageously repressed the yearning which he felt to go and soothe the boy and do away the effect of his severe lesson by sweetmeats and caresses. He very sensibly left George to himself for a while.

Madam was out at this juncture. I pass over her lamentations, on her return, at the injury done to her favorite gown and cap, and the still louder ones which escaped her at the sight of the broken looking-glass; suffice it to say, that Mr. Fayerweather promised her a green damask to replace her outraged tabby, and to send home for a pair of glasses by the next vessel. George did not make his appearance at dinner, but his father manfully resisted his inclination to seek for him, and succeeded in keeping down madam’s hysterics, by diverting her mind with some news which he told her relating to the king and queen. He did not, however, prevent her from heaping up a plate with every dainty the house afforded, and giving it to Scipio, with a charge “not to leave till he had found the child, and made him eat his dinner.”

Tea-time came, and no George took his accustomed seat, as near his mother’s apron-strings as possible. On the door being opened, however, which led into the passage between the sitting-room and kitchen, his voice was heard in pretty loud and determined tones, and Vi’let expostulating with him; which somewhat allayed madam’s fears that her pet had run away and jumped into the river, or had cried himself sick. The tea-things were cleared away, but he did not appear. Amy, who had presided at the tea-table, went to the window and looked out, thinking her uncle had been almost too hard upon poor George.

It was near the close of a fine day in mid-winter. The sun was just setting, and the whole atmosphere appeared kindled into one bright red flame, giving a rosy tint to the new-fallen snow, which lay deep upon the ground, smooth and undrifted, and covering every roof; while the grotesque figures of the long icicles which hung from the eaves were glittering in the ruddy light. The moon’s broad disk was full in view in the east, but as yet her rays of silver were lost in the brighter glow of twilight. Amy thought how pleasant a sleigh-ride would be, if the culprit could be taken into favor, and they could all go.

The hour passed without its accustomed cheerfulness to the family within. Mr. Fayerweather paced the room, with his hands clasped behind him, as usual, when his mind was not perfectly at ease. Madam had taken her knitting, and was seated at one side of the fire-place, occasionally giving a gentle sigh; while little John counted his marbles into her lap, for want of a more convenient place, and missing his brother very much, but not venturing to ask why he did not come in. The room was warm from the fire of hickory which had blazed in the wide chimney all day, but which was now reduced to a mass of burning coals covered with white ashes. This was the hour in which it was customary for Scipio, preceded by Vi’let as pioneer, to make his appearance with a log as big as he could lug, to lay the foundation of the fire for the next day.

After some altercation having been heard in the passage, Vi’let entered alone with a more portentous scowl than usual, and surveying Mr. Fayerweather over her spectacles, muttered something which sounded marvelously like “an old Turk,” and “folks being in danger of their lives;” then making a dive into the coals with her huge kitchen-shovel, she gave a deep sigh, which ended in a grunt, and continued her grumbling, her last audible words being “a poor, broken-hearted family.” All this passed unheeded by them, as “only pretty Fanny’s way.”

No Scipio followed; but in his stead, in came Peter, with his milled cap, his striped homespun and tow apron, carrying a log larger than usual; on seeing which, Mr. Fayerweather, whose nerves were still vibrating, broke out in wrath, as the log fell into the hollow made to receive it by Vi’let, throwing the coals and ashes far out over the hearth.

“Peter, how dare you come into the parlor with the log? Do you not know it is Scipio’s work, you blockhead? And what did you bring in such a log as that for? Did you mean to break your back, to save me the trouble of breaking your head?”

The boy turned his face around to Mr. Fayerweather, who stood aghast at seeing him; for the streaked and clouded visage which met his view, did not belong to Peter, but to his own son, who had involuntarily doffed the milled cap from habitual reverence as his father spoke.

“Why, Mr. Fayerweather, it’s George, if I’m alive!” screamed his mother; “and he has cut off all his beautiful curls, and his face is all streaked with I don’t know what! It will never come white again. What upon earth has got into the boy!”

George was silent for a moment; at length he muttered, “I don’t mean to be dressed in girl’s clothes again.”

“You are right, my man,” said his father, speaking with some difficulty, and shaking his son’s hand, he continued; “now you make me proud of you; but you need not wear Peter’s clothes, and you should not have lifted a log as big as a cider-barrel—it might have strained your back.”

The boy’s countenance brightened as his father spoke; at the last words he held his head boldly up and said, “It did not hurt me at all, sir—I can lift a log twice as big as that. I mean to bring in all your wood, to pay for the looking-glass, I—” his lip quivered, and he could not finish.

The father’s eyes twinkled; he coughed, and made one or two ineffectual efforts to speak; but all would not do—and he was obliged to quit the room precipitately, to hide his emotion. In a moment he was heard calling out to Scipio, in a voice between a sob and a shout, to bring out the sleigh; and now, his eyes dried and his throat cleared, Mr. Fayerweather was himself again.

“Come, my dear,” he said to madam as he returned, “put on your cloaks, you and Amy, and we’ll all have a sleigh-ride. There’s the moon just up, and it will be as light as day; the sleighing is like glass. George, my man, be quick, and go put on your own clothes, and wash your face—I intend you shall drive.”

The sleigh was brought out, and they all got in; madam and her niece on the back seat, and Mr. Fayerweather and the two boys on the front, where, having seen them comfortably seated, well cloaked and blanketed, their feet at the hot bricks, of which Vi’let always kept a supply at the kitchen fire, summer and winter, the reader and I will leave them, being somewhat in haste to finish this part of my story.

George from this moment put off childish things; his fair complexion and rosy cheeks became a source of serious mortification to him; and he endeavored by exposure to all kinds of weather, to bring them to a more manly hue. He began now to mingle with other boys of his age; and the noble and generous spirit which appeared in him, on every occasion that could call it forth, rendered him a great favorite with his companions. The smaller boys looked up to him as their champion; the weak and defenseless—as he considered the whole tribe of the lower animals to be—he took under his especial protection; and wo to the merciless boy who infringed on their rights, by depriving them of their liberty, or by any other act of cruelty toward them in his sight. His prodigious bodily powers, his fearlessness and spirit of adventure, made him a leader in every bold enterprise.

There is apt to exist, in every town, a rivalry and jealousy between the inhabitants of different parts; this spirit was maintained to an unusual degree between the population of the eastern and western sections of Salem—the “Down-in-towners” and the “Up-in-towners,” as they were respectively called. This feeling displayed itself among the boys particularly, and on every occasion of their meeting. It was even said that the flock of geese which led their goslings to feed in the vicinity of “Broadfield,” and often breasted the waters of “Mill Pond,” and those which, more adventurous, dared the waves washing the “Neck,” often took the field against each other in hostile array, when dire would be the hissing and great the loss of feathers. This, however, is not vouched for; but it is certain that the biped youth without feathers, had regularly a grand pitched battle of snow-balls every winter near the first of January; and the victorious party usually maintained their superiority for the remainder of the year, and held possession of the play-ground, then the common, constituting a kind of border territory, being situated at nearly an equal distance between the eastern and western extremities of the town. This common has since become a fine promenade, shaded with trees, forming Washington Square.

For several years the Down-in-towners had been victorious in the annual fight; probably they being mostly the sons of sea-faring men, their bringing-up had rendered them stronger and more fearless than the “land-lubbers,” as they called the boys of the west end. But as soon as George Fayerweather took the field, the face of affairs was wholly changed; the foe was routed in every engagement, and the play-ground was so quietly yielded to the Up-in-towners at length, that the possession, losing all its glory, ceased to be an object; and George prevailed on his band to cede it back to the Down-in-towners, urging that it properly belonged to them, and that it was a shame to keep them out of their right. This trait of magnanimity gained him many friends among the sons of Neptune at the east end, and finally brought about a peace between the hostile powers.

Among George’s new acquaintances was one whom he liked particularly, because he was almost as bold and fearless as himself; but more especially, because he had once done him the extraordinary favor of falling through the ice as they were skating down to “Baker’s Island,” thereby affording George a glorious opportunity of showing his prowess in pulling the lad out of the water at the manifest peril of his own life. It would be difficult to say which felt the most obliged on the occasion, George or Dick Seaward; but the foundation was then laid of a strong and lasting friendship between the parties.

About two months after this event Captain Seaward returned from a long voyage in the Two Pollys, and Dick lost no time in bringing about an acquaintance between his father and his friend. The latter went by special invitation one evening to eat cocoa-nuts, and see the curiosities which the captain had brought home. The old salt took a liking to George at first sight, and, in his rough way, spared no pains to entertain him. He appeared like some hero of romance to his wondering guest; and pleased with the lad’s admiration, he ransacked his memory, stored by voyages of five-and-twenty years, for marvelous adventures, unheard of perils by shipwreck, pirates, etc. His narrative, interlarded with high-sounding and mystic terms, such as “Mawlstroom,” “Tuffoon,” “Mousoon,” “Kamskeatshy,” and the “Chainymen,” produced much such an effect on his hearer’s excited imagination, as Don Quixote might have experienced at hearing the adventures of Amadis de Gaul from his own mouth.

The captain then displayed his curiosities; these were numerous and strange, and served in some sort as illustrations of his discourse. There were elephant’s tusks and ostrich’s eggs, the sword of the sword-fish, and the saw of the saw-fish; there was a nautilus’ shell, which might have carried a boat’s crew; and there was the entire skin of an enormous snake, which the captain intended to have stuffed and hung as a capital ornament round the best room. There was one upon which Mrs. Seaward set an especial value, it being the first gift the captain had brought her home, when he was “a courting her.” This gift of true love was an elephant’s tail, with about twenty black bristles on it, the size of darning-needles, and looking like polished whale-bone; but the one upon which her spouse particularly prided himself, was the gaping jaw of a monstrous shark, with its triple row of teeth, suggesting the pleasurable idea of one’s leg or arm, or half one’s body serving as a bonne bouche to the monster. These treasures were displayed before George’s admiring eyes, and he looked upon the possessor of them with a feeling almost amounting to awe.

A word or two more regarding these same curiosities: after being handed down through several generations, they were among the first deposited in the Salem Museum upon its being founded; and they there formed a nucleus, around which has been gathered, from time to time the present noble collection.

But to return to our narrative; when George rose to take leave at this first visit, the captain, overflowing with good-will, brought out two cocoa-nuts, a pine-apple, and a pot of foreign sweetmeats—

“Here, you may stow away these for your ma’am;” (the pockets were capacious in those days) “and mind, don’t forget to ax your sir to let you come down next Wednesday, and you and Dick may go over the Two Pollys.”

The desired permission being obtained, the two lads were taken to visit what was nearest to its proud owner’s heart—after his “old woman and Dick”—his good vessel the Two Pollys. To describe George’s ecstasy at the view of the new world now presented to him would be impossible. He examined every part of the vessel—let himself down the sides, and clambered up again—bestrided the bowsprit—ran up the shrouds—and, before the captain could call out—“Take care, boy, do you mean to break your neck!” he was swinging by his two hands from the top-mast. The frightened seaman swore a tremendous oath, and threatened the nine-tails; but by the time George had reached the deck, which he did in a whole skin, his terror for the boy’s life was changed into admiration at his daring.

“Your sir ought to make a sailor of you; it’s a shame that such a lad as you should be a land-lubber.”

So thought George, and his resolution was from this moment taken.

The chief part of his time, out of school, was now spent on board the Two Pollys; and in the course of a month he was nearly as well acquainted with every part of the vessel—knew the name of every mast and sail, of the ropes and the yards, and understood their management nearly as well as an ordinary mariner of half a dozen years’ standing. But the climax to George’s enjoyment was yet to come.

One evening his father received a call from Captain Seaward, accompanied by his son Dick. Mr. Fayerweather, although somewhat surprised, gave his guest a very cordial reception, and ordered out his best wine. The captain took the glass, and after the accustomed “My sarvice to you,” drank off the wine and smacked his lips; then clearing his throat he opened his business.

“I come to ax a favor of you, Mr. Fayerweather; d’ye see, Captain Brayton sets sail to-morrow, if the wind’s fair, on a v’yage to the West Ingees, and he’ll touch at New York going out, to see a vessel of his’n, that’s laying there, and only waiting for his orders to come home. Now, Captain Bob Stimpson and I, and one or two more of us old fellows, think of taking the trip with him as far as New York, and coming back in his vessel. I’m going to take my boy here with me, and I want you to let your son George go. I ha’n’t said nothing to him about it, bethinking myself, as how if you wa’n’t willing he’d be disappinted, and I knew he wouldn’t go without your leave, and I’m sure I shouldn’t think o’ taking him. We expect to be gone three days.”

Mr. Fayerweather was pleased with the honest bearing and hearty good-will of his weather-beaten guest, but he hesitated about letting George go; the company not being altogether exactly such as he would have chosen to trust his son with for so long a time; although all who were named bore the character of worthy men. He was endeavoring to frame a refusal that would not wound the captain’s feelings, when his son entered the room. On hearing his old friend’s errand from Dick, George expressed so much delight at the proposed expedition, that the fond parent prevailed over the prudent one, and the consent was given. Captain Seaward took his leave, with a charge to George to be ready by two o’clock next morning, if called for.

We pass over his mother’s expostulations, and Vi’let’s evil prognostics, who said she had seen Nanny Boynton that very day, “sowing seed in the ground backward, and talking to herself all the while, when she went over to scold Dinah for not bringing home the brass kettle she had borrowed.” George was deaf to all. He was up and dressed next morning by one o’clock; the wind, however, had no mind to be hurried, and did not choose to set fair till day-break, when Dick appeared with his summons, and off the two lads set in high spirits.

His mother would probably have passed a very melancholy day, it being the first time her son had been out of her sight, with the prospect of being absent longer than a few hours; but her husband taking occasion to intimate that his counting-room wanted a thorough cleaning, and his book-shelves putting in order—a task she always superintended herself, aided by her niece—he hinting, moreover, that he should be glad of their assistance in making out a catalogue of the books, which had long been needed, ample employment was afforded to all three, to keep George from their thoughts.

It was now about the middle of June. The summer had so far been dry and dusty, and every thing appeared languishing for want of rain. At length Dame Nature, like a notable housewife, began to feel her temper rise at the dirt and disorder of every thing belonging to her. She rated her house-maids soundly—“Idle hussies! that did nothing but loiter and sleep night and day; they had not done a stroke of work to tell since the March cleaning; they did not even earn the breath they drew! There were her beautiful grassy carpets, not three months old, an inch thick with dust; their flowers were all faded and their turf dried up and withered. Her windows! not a star could shine through them; and as for the curtains, they were of such a color, it would puzzle a philosopher to tell what they were made of. Her crystal and once clear fountains were unfilled, and the bright surface of their mirrors covered with green slime. She was actually ashamed the sun should look upon such a scene of neglect! The slothful, lazy jades had better bestir themselves, for not one of them should get into their beds till every hole and corner was cleaned, and put into thorough order; or she would know the reason why!”

The elements roused from their lethargy, and chafed by their imperious mistress, sighed and muttered—the clouds huddled together scowling, and sending forth a low murmur of discontent, dropped a few angry tears. The winds brandished their besoms, and with one sweep made dust, leaves and branches, and even small trees, scuttle-doors and hen-coops all fly before them. It was an unlucky day for ancient buildings! The roof of one respectable old barn, whose shingles had for some time been moving up and down like feathers on a fowl’s back, was at length seen sailing with great dignity across the street, to the manifold terror of two old women who kept a huckster’s shop there; but whose premises, however, escaped uninjured, it alighting very considerately on the field behind their house. The winds having performed these feats, rested awhile to take breath. The lightnings now flashed and the thunders roared; the clouds dashed from their brimming pails the torrents, which rolling over hills and valleys and through streets and lanes, formed rivers in the gutters, and carried all before them, which the winds had scattered in their way, into the sea.

In the afternoon of this day, two hours before sunset but after tea, Madam Fayerweather and her niece took their accustomed seat at a pleasant window in a small apartment which served as a kind of ante-room to madam’s own chamber. On one side a door opened at right angles with the head of the front stairs, and from which a long passage led through this story. Facing this door was the one which opened at the head of the back stairs; while a third, opposite the window, led into madam’s chamber. Vi’let was seated at the kitchen-door, directly beneath the window, solacing herself with her pipe; while Tabby winked and purred at her side.

Jemmy Boynton’s kitchen and wood-shed, at the distance of some rods, were nearly hidden from sight by a hedge of tall lilacs and rose-bushes bounding Mr. Fayerweather’s premises on this side, the view took in gardens, orchards and fields extending to the North river, (a small inlet from the sea so called,) the whole space of which is now covered with streets and houses.

Amy was reading to her aunt, who, with a large basket of fragments of silk of various colors at her side, was deeply engaged in an elaborate piece of work, concerning which she affected a great mystery, keeping its purpose and destination a profound secret. Both aunt and niece were so much engrossed by the subject of the book—it was Clarissa Harlow, which had lately been received from England—that the darkening sky and rising wind had escaped their notice. A loud scream from Vi’let aroused their attention.

“O! the massiful s’us! there’s the old witch flying away at last! Land’s sake alive! O-h-h-h!”

They both looked out, and behold! there was Nanny Boynton in good earnest—at least so their terrors made them believe—high in air, her red cloak fluttering, amidst a cloud of dust, shingles, staves of old tubs, broomsticks, etc. etc.

She directed her course south, and was soon lost to view, while the dismay of madam and Amy deprived them of the power of utterance. At length, on Amy’s turning her eyes to the spot whence she supposed the whirlwind had caught up their ill-fated neighbor, what met her sight but the object of their terrors herself, on firm ground, but despoiled of cloak, ’kerchief and cap; her lean and bony arms bare and extended, and each separate hair of her gray locks on end; giving her much the appearance of one of the weird sisters in the midst of an incantation.

The aunt and niece were expressing their relief at Nanny’s escape from being carried off bodily, when the recollection of her son, exposed on the water to the fury of a hurricane, now darted into the mind of the former. She shrieked out:

“Oh, George! my child, my child! what will become of you! Oh, Mr. Fayerweather, why did you let him go!” she exclaimed to her husband, who at this moment entered the apartment.

He was ashy pale, but no other indication of the dreadful apprehension under which he was suffering was visible on his countenance, and not being able to nerve himself to bear the sight of his wife’s agonies, should she know how strong were the grounds for her fears, he endeavored to make light of them.

“Oh, my dear, do not be in trouble about George; he’s far beyond the reach of this little squall; he and Dick have probably been in New York these two hours.” (Mr. Fayerweather hoped devoutly to be forgiven for thus belying his conscience, well-knowing that implicit confidence would be placed in his assurances.) “He and Dick, I have no doubt, are now patroling the streets with eyes and mouths wide open at the wonders they see.”

“Well, I am rejoiced if they are out of the reach of this hurricane; but I hope Captain Seaward will not trust them alone in New York streets; I have always heard it is a terrible place for children. Sometimes they are kidnapped as I have heard tell,” replied Mrs. Fayerweather, her fears somewhat quieted.

“Oh, you need not be afraid of that, my dear; the captain promised faithfully that he would not suffer George to go out of his sight,” said her husband as he left the apartment, and Amy resumed her book.

The gust, after several vain attempts to shake the solid old mansion from its foundation, at length relaxed its efforts and fell into a calm; the sky cleared up and the sun went down in tranquil beauty. Before its disc had wholly disappeared, however, it was surrounded by a light haze, which gradually spreading and deepening, at length assumed the form of a dark thunder-cloud, reaching nearly to the zenith.

A flash of lightning was the signal for the whole household to assemble, and before the low, deep bass of the distant thunder reached their ears, they were all collected within madam’s chamber and its nearest precincts. The bed was her own retreat, and she would have been glad to have given the whole family a place on it could they have found room. Amy, whose fears were scarcely less, seated herself on a low stool by the bed-side, and leaning her arms on the bed buried her face in the counterpane. Vi’let without ceremony ensconced herself in the easy-chair, rocking to and fro and groaning out at intervals, “Oh, that old witch!” while old Tabby, who did not choose to be left alone in the kitchen, crowded in by her side, and took her full share of the cushion. Not finding another low seat, Flora took the floor at the side of Miss Amy, and leaned her arms on a chair in imitation of her young mistress; and Peter placed himself at first on the top-most of the back stairs, but by degrees, as the storm increased, edged further into the apartment, and at length after a loud clap of thunder, planted himself on one leg against the side of the door, with his woolly poll half in his mistress’s chamber. John, who enjoyed a thunder-storm above all things, took his station at a window where he could best see the lightning, while his father and Mr. Wendell, a young lawyer who was an admirer of Amy, and was now added to the family party, paced up and down the long passage, extending their walk into the antechamber before-mentioned, in a corner of which Scipio had placed himself.

Though the long summer twilight had but just commenced, darkness had suddenly covered the face of all things, when a dash of lightning, more intense than the sun, quivered for a moment through the passage and in the chambers, accompanied by a crash of thunder.

“The massiful s’us!” groaned Vi’let. “The lawful massy!” ejaculated Flora. Poor madam could only whisper, “O dear! dear!” Amy trembled.

“That’s royal!” cried John, starting up and clapping his hands.

“Be silent, boy,” said his father, sternly—“is this a time—”

“Mr. Fayerweather, my dear, are you sure George is safe?” madam implored.

“Oh, yes, my dear,” replied her husband, “he’s safe as we all are—in the hands of Divine Providence. Peter, get candles.”

A chattering of teeth was heard, but the statue did not stir from its pedestal.

“Scipio, do you?”

“Please, master, it’s Aunt Vi’let’s business to get ’em ready,” said Scip in a trembling voice.

The worthy gentleman, not feeling himself equal to an encounter with Vi’let in such an extremity, said—

“Well, it will be the shortest way to get them myself,” and made preparations to do so; at which Vi’let, safe in the easy-chair, displayed great indignation.

“Why don’t you go, Scip? there’s master going himself, if I’m alive. I wish I was near you, I’d see if you didn’t stir your stumps.”

A low grumble was heard from Scip in the ante-room.

“Hold your tongue, you black nigger,” returned Vi’let from the easy-chair; “aint ye ’shamed yeself? ’sturbing madam and all the good family with your clamor. If I was master I would soon clear the house of you all.”

During this colloquy, or rather monologue, John, starting up, made but two steps over the stairs and soon reappeared with lights. Mr. Fayerweather then took up the prayer-book which, with the large bible, lay on the table in the inner chamber, and asked his young friend if he would read prayers, his own broken voice sufficiently showing himself unequal to the office. Mr. Wendell, with a little hesitation took the book, turned over a few leaves, while the household all assembled kneeling in the chamber; when, amidst the roar of the storm without, his voice was soon heard, in tones solemn and low, like some spirit of peace rebuking the angry elements. He read with deep feeling a part of the evening service, with prayers for the midst of a storm. This act of submission and trust in Him who rules the tempest and makes the whirlwinds to obey, calmed the spirits and elevated the thoughts of the little assembly. Madam soon fell into a gentle slumber, and Vi’let’s nasal organs gave tokens that she had followed her mistress’s example. Flora and Peter ditto.

The storm at length somewhat abated, but Mr. Fayerweather resumed his walk. After a while he stopped suddenly for a moment, and then exclaiming,

“The Almighty be praised! there’s George’s voice,” and ran down stairs, followed by John, Mr. Wendell and Amy.

Loud and rough voices, but in high good-humor, with shouts of laughter, were now heard rapidly approaching the house. They all opened the front-door together, and in crowded Captain Seaward, Captain Bob Stimpson and the two lads. Captain Seaward said—

“Here, Mr. Fayerweather, I’ve brought George home t’ye, safe and sound.”

Captain Bob Stimpson, in order to draw the attention of the company to himself, cleared his throat with a humph, in which were harmoniously blended the German guttural and the French nasal, and striking his huge cane on the floor, added—“And if there’s another two such lads in the whole province of Massachusetts Bay, I am not Captain Robert Stimpson!—why, they saved the vessel and the lives of us all.”

Here Captain Seaward chimed in.

“D’ye see, Mr. Fayerweather, the gale was sich a one as not many of us had often been out in afore; and at one time when it blew so strong as to threaten to capsize the vessel, one of the ropes got loose, and it was needful for somebody to go aloft and make it fast without loss of time, or the vessel would have gone to pot in less than no time. Not a lubber of a sailor would stir, but they all stood staring at each other like so many sculpens. Brayton’s stout-hearted enough, but he’s lame, and Stimpson here and I are both old and clumsy”—Captain Bob Stimpson fetched a grunt—“but we were going to try what our old carcases could do, when them ’ere two lads pushed afore us, and were up the shrouds in a twinkling and fastened the rope. The vessel was saved, but she was so much strained that we were obliged to put back for repairs, and for Brayton to get some better hands. So, now we’ll shake hands and bid ye good-night.”

Mr. Fayerweather tried hard to prevail on the two sea-worthies to stay and eat supper; but Captain Seaward excused himself, alleging that his “old woman would be skeared about them;” his friend, Stimpson, adding—

“And my daughter, Judy, will cry herself to pieces, if she doesn’t see her sir to-night.”

The noise below now aroused Madam Fayerweather, who called out between sleeping and waking:

“What’s the matter, Amy?—Mr. Fayerweather?” Then thoroughly awake, she exclaimed—

“Where are they all gone?” and rising from the bed, said in a louder tone—“Vi’let, what upon earth is the matter?”

Vi’let snored out, “It’s that ’ere Scip; he’s the torment and plague of my life—he’s always making a hullagaloo.”

Here the whole party entered the chamber. What was madam’s surprise at seeing George! When she discovered that he had been out in all the storm, she complained loudly of having been kept in ignorance of his danger.

“As if I was not his mother, and had not a right to know every thing about him; but it’s the way you always do, Mr. Fayerweather, and I do not take it kindly of you at all. I should have had a fit had I known that he was on the water all this time.”

And madam was near falling into one at the idea of it; but the fear that her son might be half-starved, and not be able to get any thing to eat if she should take up the time in having hysterics, made her think better of it; so she desired Vi’let to get a good supper and make George some white wine-whey. Vi’let, punching Peter down stairs before her, and followed by her satellite Flora, made her descent, grumbling and muttering at having vittles to get at that time o’ night.

They had an excellent supper, during which George related all the wonders which he and Dick had seen and performed on that memorable day—and if he felt somewhat lifted up, might he not be pardoned? After supper Mr. Wendell took his leave, and the family sought repose; though not before offering up fervent thanks for George’s preservation.

The shrill reveille of the barn-yard trumpeter early aroused Nature from her slumbers, and fearing she had overslept herself from the fatigues of yesterday, she threw off her dark counterpane and donned in haste her gray kirtle. The bull-frog had ceased tuning his eternal bass-viol, and with the beetle, the whippowil, the owl, and other roysterers of the night, had gone to bed. All was still, excepting that here and there might be heard the soft twitter of some warbler who was to take part in the grand chorus of the morning, as nestled among the branches he tuned his little pipe. Her wearied handmaidens were yet sleeping after their night’s toil; and their indulgent mistress left them awhile longer to their repose, for never had they better performed her bidding. The eastern casements were new hung in draperies of rose-color and gold, and the morning-star was peeping in, to see that all was in order for his monarch’s arrival; while the moon still lingered near the western portal, to take one look at his joyous visage before her departure. The west-wind now woke, and sweeping fragrance from the new-born flowers, gently fanned the face of the careful matron as she cast a pleased eye over her fair domain. Her fountains were filled to the brim and gleamed in the early light; her fresh green turf was glittering with gems, and a diamond hung from every leaf of her foliage. But the paling of the morning-star now gave notice of the sun’s approach; and spying his steeds advancing over the ocean, and her broad mirrors reflecting his glance on their burnished surfaces, she gave the signal for the morning concert to strike up, and all radiant with smiles welcomed her lordly visitor. The moon meekly courtesied her adieu.

Vi’let was early astir this morning. She went down stairs, her cap on one ear, very much out of humor at having the house to put to rights again, “arter working like a dog all yesterday from sunrise till midnight.” Routing up Scip and Peter, and setting Flora to put the breakfast-room in order, she then placed the coffee and chocolate on the fire, and the cakes into the Dutch-oven to bake—this, the reader will recollect, was before the era of cooking-stoves and ranges—after which she called out to Flora to know if Dinah had brought back the frying-pan.

“No, Aunt Vi’let,” returned Flora, in a deprecating tone; “but you mustn’t blame me, for I told her you’d want it this morning to fry the flap-jacks.”

“That’s always the way with that old witch, Nanny; if she gets any thing out of anybody, they’ve good luck to get it again—Pete’, what are you gaping at me for? Why don’t you clean master’s shoes, you lazy nigger? What’s Scip’ poking about—why don’t he bring in the stuff to make the fire burn? Breakfast wont be ready till nine o’clock, and madam will be down scolding so that the house wont hold her—sich a life as I lead!”

Here she went across the yard to the hedge dividing her master’s premises from those of Jemmy Boynton, thrust her head through the lilacs yet in full bloom—the white linen border of her cap turned back, setting off to great advantage her ebony complexion—and called out,

“Dinah!”—then louder and sharper, “Dinah!”—no Dinah appeared.

“What the old gallows ails the gal, that I must split my throat a screeching arter her!” then raising her voice to the utmost pitch—“Di-i-ina-ah!”

Here Dinah’s head appeared out of a little square window in the out-house.

“What’s wanting, Aunt Vi’let?”

“What’s wanting?—the frying-pan’s wanting—what d’ye think?”

“Laud ’a’massy, Aunt Vi’let, I forgot all about it; we had sich a rumpus here yesterday.”

“Rumpus! yes, I ’spect you had a rumpus! I only wonder the house wa’nt blowed away. Them as lives with witches must ’spect to ride in the air some time or ’nother.”

“Hush! Aunt Vi’let,” cried Dinah, in a voice somewhat lower. Here she ran across the yard to the place of rendezvous, frying-pan in hand, and added, in a whisper, “I reckon she’s got sharp ears; I wonders sometimes how our most privatest conversations gets to her hearing.”

“Has she got her cloak back?” asked Vi’let.

“No, she han’t got it yet; but I ’spect she’ll get it to-day; the wind blowed it over to South fields, and it got stuck in the top of a tree. They had sich a time about it last night, I thought they’d raise the neighbors, case Tom Duckenfield wouldn’t go and look arter it, arter he’d rung the bell for nine. She ’clared she’d put him in jail for the one-and-sixpence he owed her for milk; and Tom said she’d better take care, or he’d let out about the bran, he see her steal, that old Swasey begged for his pig, to feed her cow.”

“The bran from old Swasey’s pig!” exclaimed Vi’let in indignation; “I guess she needn’t steal much bran! the cow gets all her living out of our barn. She gets in when the gate is shut fast! the old witch knows how. Pete’ says he see her lift up the latch with her horns; now, what nat’ral cow, that’s raly a cow, would have sense to do that, I want to know! Oh, I see’d well enough what she raly was, one night last winter.”

“Why, what was it?” asked Dinah, with ears and eyes wide open for the marvelous.

“Why it was just afore nine o’clock, and I heard old Tabby miaow terribly at the kitchen-door. I opened it, and in she flew, looking as if she was skeared to pieces! her tail was as big as that,” (doubling up her fist.) “So I looks out to see what it was as frightened her so, when, a standing inside the barn-door, I see’d—as true as you stand there—I see’d a woman, all in white, without n’ary head! it had a handkercher in its hand, and it kept a waving it back’ards and for’ards—”

“I should ha’ swounded away dead,” said Dinah.

“So would anybody but me; but I kept up my courage, for my temper ris; I thought Nanny was at the bottom of it all along, though I know’d it was a sperit—for I’ve see’d enough on ’em,” she continued, her imagination kindling with the subject; “and it rolled its eyes, and—and—”

“But, Aunt Vi’let,” observed Dinah, submissively, “I thought you said it hadn’t n’ary head.”

“Hold your tongue, you fool! what do you keep ’terrupting me for? Where was I? Well, then, it fetched a sithe—sich a sithe!—I couldn’t stand it no longer; so I called master out. ‘There, sir,’ says I, ‘now I hope you’ll believe your own eyes’—for he always laughs and ri-dicules at witches and ghosts, and all them sort o’ things. So I tell’d him—and out he goes. I see all the time he was skeared enough, only he was ’shamed to show it afore me; but when he got to the barn-door, he set up sich a laugh—you might a hearn him into your house. I ’clare it made my hair stand on eend to hear him. ‘Here,’ says he, ‘Vi’let, your woman without a head is changed into a cow’s hind legs and tail!’ and sure enough, it was the beast then, but I know’d well enough what it was afore. Howsomenever, it wan’t no use a telling him; so I takes a skillet of biling water, that was on the fire, to bile some eggs—for our folks must always have some mess o’nother hot for supper, to keep me at it slaving from morning to night; not but I likes a little bit o’ suthen comfortable myself afore I goes to bed, and the most part on it comes into the kitchen. So I was going to fling it on to her, to see what she’d turn into next; but master tell’d me to let her alone, for the barn wouldn’t miss a little hay. Did you ever hear any thing so ’diclous! I tell’d him—”

“Aunt Vi’let! Aunt Vi’let!” was now heard from the kitchen-door; “the cakes is burning, and mistress wants to know if breakfast wont be ready soon.”

“And why don’t Flora take the cakes out of the oven, then! Can’t nothing be done without me?” cried Vi’let. “For the laud’s sake, give me my frying-pan, and let me go, or I shall have the whole house arter me.” She went into the kitchen in a hurry, took up her cakes, and fried her flap-jacks.

After their morning devotions, the Fayerweather family, in high spirits, gathered round the breakfast-table. This was laid in the western room, before an open glass-door, which looked into the garden. The cool morning breeze, after frolicking among the flowers, found its way in at the door, and mingling its stolen perfumes with those of the coffee and chocolate, played antics with the table-cloth.

I might here describe the breakfast; but as there was nothing appertaining to it which greatly differed from a modern one, I will just ask the reader to imagine his or her own family circle—which is, doubtless, the most agreeable in the world—in the best possible humor, and with excellent appetites, before a repast exactly suited to the taste of each individual of said family, seasoned by all the wit and liveliness possessed by each, in a peculiar degree, and my task will be accomplished in the best possible manner.

From this memorable period, all George’s accustomed avocations became tedious and disagreeable to him. Greek and Latin, in both of which he had made an unwilling progress, under Master Goodwin, of the grammar school, to prepare him for college, he now actually loathed; and his father found he must give up the hope nearest his heart, of ever seeing his eldest son distinguished in one of the learned professions.

“Well, my boy,” he said at last, “if, as you say, you are convinced you can never make a scholar, as it is not my way to drive a nail that will not go, I consent to your giving up Greek and Latin; though I did hope to see you in one of the professions which your grandfathers followed so creditably. As to your going to sea, remember, it is wholly against my inclination. I shall expect you to continue at school two years; then, if you make such progress in general learning, and in studies connected with navigation, as to give me reason to hope seeing you something above the mate of a Marblehead skipper, I will then consent, though I should much prefer your going into a counting-house in London.”

The youth, satisfied with the hope of obtaining his father’s consent to his following the sea on any terms, promised faithfully to do all that was required of him; and, moreover, possessing some common sense, a quality not usually abounding in characters of his stamp, he set his mind to applying itself with energy and perseverance to the studies dictated by his father and Master Goodwin.

During the two years specified, two events of note occurred in the Fayerweather family; one was Amy’s marriage. This was conducted with all the state due to so important an occasion. The time for Amy’s “walking bride,” as it was termed, for the three Sundays succeeding the wedding, happened to be unfortunately in the early spring, the first Sunday falling on Easter, near the beginning of April. The bridal procession, consisting of the happy pair walking arm-in-arm, four bridemaids and as many groomsmen, set off from Mr. Fayerweather’s and paraded the whole length of Essex street to the end of St. Peter’s, where stood the church of wood dedicated to the same saint, lately replaced by a handsome gothic edifice of stone.

The bride was attired in a rich white satin; her fair neck shaded by a tucker of costly Brussels’ lace, a ruffle of the same falling over her dimpled elbow. Her sharp-pointed shoes, with heels three inches high, were of white brocade, with a silver flower in the toe, and brilliant paste buckles, nearly covering the instep. Any thing in the shape of hat, bonnet, cloak or scarf would have been altogether outrÉ on such an occasion. The large fan which it was customary for the bride to carry, and to hold up gracefully to shade her face, was mounted with white leather on which was painted, in lively colors, the wedding train of Isaac and Rebecca; Rebecca in a sacque, with triple ruffled cuffs, and Isaac in a full-bottomed periwig; walking side by side, through arches festooned with flowers, followed by six pairs of young nymphs holding the Jewish bride’s train; whilst a winged Cupid, with bow and arrows, and a Hymen, with his torch pointing to the church in the distance, marshaled the procession. A pair of turtle-doves, imagined to be cooing, sat on the arch directly over the heads of the happy couple. This fan was the wonder and admiration of the Élite of Salem.

Mr. Wendell was in a coat of milk-white broad-cloth, with nether garments of white satin, and paste knee-buckles; and a white satin waistcoat flowered with silver, in the button-hole of which was placed a large bouquet of hyacinths, which Amy had coaxed to bloom for the occasion. A chapeau-bras held under his arm completed his equipments.

It was a raw and disagreeable day in this least pleasant of the seasons in New England; with an east wind—which sourest and most ill-tempered of the children of Eolus usually blows on the seacoast from the beginning of April until the end of May, and oftentimes encroaching far into June. By a miracle the bride did not catch a cold. On the second Sunday she wore her second suit, a rose-colored damask, and on the third a straw-colored paduasoy; each week “sitting up for company” every day, with her attendants, in the afternoon for ladies, and in the evening for gentlemen, drest in the habiliments she wore on the Sunday beginning the week. These indispensable ceremonies were usually performed under the roof of the bride’s parent or guardian; after which the new-married pair took possession of their own house. That of Mr. and Mrs. Wendell, as will be seen presently, was situated at a very short distance from Mr. Fayerweather’s, where Amy still spent the greater part of her time.

The other event of importance that took place during George’s two years of probation was the obtaining of a quit-claim by Mr. Fayerweather from Jemmy and Nanny Boynton. This he had obtained through the assistance of his new nephew, Mr. Wendell, and without paying more than one third more than it was worth. After securing this deed or quit-claim the kind uncle converted Boynton’s house and his old ware-house, which stood near it, into a pretty residence for the young married couple, in order, as he said, to have Cousin Amy still under his own wing. As soon as the important negotiation with the Boyntons was concluded, Mr. Fayerweather came with all possible haste to make the joyful communication to the family. As he laid the document in triumph on the table he said,

“There, my dear, I have got the quit-claim at last from the Boyntons. The land is all our own now.”

On hearing these words, madam aroused herself from a deep reverie and exclaimed,

“La! Mr. Fayerweather, you don’t say so; how thankful I am. How did you prevail on them?”

“Oh, Wendell and I were too strong for them; though Nanny, I believe, would still have held on if I had not offered a good deal more than I had intended; and she was not satisfied after all; but I don’t care, I have the deed, and now we shall be rid of them.”

The two lads, who were laying their heads together at the window, and planning, it is to be feared, some mischief, started up in a transport—

“Then we’ll have a bonfire out in the field to-night, as high as the house, in spite of them,” cried John, “to-night’s Gunpowder Treason.”

“Yes,” added George, “and we’ll burn Jemmy for Pope; I know a capital way to get his old wig.”

“You’ll do no such thing, boys,” interrupted their father; “you may make your bonfire up to the moon if you will, but let Jemmy Boynton alone—we are quit of him now, and you shall give no occasion for any more brawls with him or Nanny either.”

“With Nanny! no indeed!” and madam, clasping her hands, cast her eyes upward, rolling them in a very remarkable manner.

The youths went out, and their father was following them, when a “Mr. Fayerweather, my dear,” stopped him short, and he turned round to his better half, who, he saw, was dying to make some very momentous communication.

“Well, my dear, what is it? What have you to tell me?”

“Oh, my dear, I meant to have told you before, but you were so full of business this morning that I had not a chance; but I think you ought to know.” Madam looked awful and mysterious.

“Why, what was it? Did Nanny’s red cloak take another flight?”

“La! no, my dear—you’ll never forget that, I believe—but this is what took place in our own kitchen, and I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Well, what was it then? I am all impatience to know?”

Madam cleared her voice—“Why, I happened to be in the kitchen yesterday, just before tea-time, when Dinah came over to borrow half a pint of meal to make some porridge for Nanny, so I asked Dinah what was the matter with her? for you know that nobody takes porridge but when they are sick, and not then, if they can afford a little posset, or even oatmeal gruel with raisins in it. Dinah said, she was sure she did not know what ailed her, but she was so nervous and cross there was no living in the house with her. I reproved Dinah for talking so of her mistress, and after she was gone I told Vi’let to make some nice sack-posset, and carry it over to Nanny; you know, with all their money, they scarcely afford themselves the necessaries of life. Vi’let grumbled enough, and said ‘water porridge was good enough for witches, and too good, too;’ however, she went to get the skillet to boil the milk in, and when she came back with it in her hand, what should slip in between her feet but a monstrous great black cat. Old Tabby always fights all strange cats, but when she saw this, she slunk away, and hid herself behind the settle. Vi’let was going to strike the strange cat over with the skillet, but I would not let her—not bethinking myself that it was any thing more than a common cat—though it was the biggest one I ever saw—but it seemed to be nothing more than skin and bone, and it rubbed up against me and mewed so pitifully, that I told Vi’let not to hurt the creature, but to give it something to eat. Vi’let said she wasn’t going to do no such thing; and if I wanted to give Christian folks’ vittles to evil sperits I might get it myself. Then she tried to strike it again; when the creature, or whatever it was, hunched up its back and spit at her; and then it set up an awful yowl and disappeared. I thought I saw it go out after Dinah; but Vi’let said it banished up chimney; and she was sure Nanny sent it to bewitch us all. And this morning she says she was pinched black-and-blue all night, so that she couldn’t sleep a wink, and took three crooked pins out of her sleeve, which she was sure she never put there, for she has only two, and one of them hasn’t any head. She showed me her arm that was pinched so; it was certainly very much swollen, though I couldn’t see any black-and-blue marks for the color of her skin. I am pretty sure I felt some twitches, too, in my right arm; and this morning I had the strangest cramp in my foot. I wet my finger and crossed the place, and the cramp went off; but I feel all the time as if it was coming on again. Now what do you think of all this, Mr. Fayerweather? Don’t you think it high time Nanny was seen to?”

Mr. F. looked comical.

“Now what are you laughing at?” said madam, in an unwonted pet; “I’ll never tell you any thing again, if Nanny bewitches us all together, which it’s likely enough she’ll do, now we have the land against her will.”

“Don’t be offended, my love,” said her husband; “I was only pleased to have my mind made easy on one score—you’ll never be hanged for a witch, I am sure; and as to Nanny, why, I think you may safely leave her to Vi’let—I’ll match her with any witch in the Bay Province.”

Madam was appeased, though not wholly satisfied, but, as in duty bound, said no more, not being quite sure as to the twitches; and having, moreover, a vague suspicion that Vi’let’s swollen arm might be occasioned by the rheumatism, though she would have scarcely ventured such a surmise to Vi’let herself. The matter of the strange cat she dismissed from her mind.

George’s two years of probation passed rather slowly to him; but at last they came to a close. He had improved his time to the entire satisfaction of his father, having made such progress in his studies as to reflect great credit on Master Goodwin, and also prove his own industrious application. His predilection for a sea-faring life had rather strengthened than abated, and his father could no longer withhold his consent. A favorable opportunity was all George waited for, which soon presented itself. Captain Brayton was going on a voyage up the Mediterranean, and was to proceed to London, and touch at several European ports in coming home. He had a good crew, and Captain Seaward made interest with his old friend to take his son and George as light hands, and to keep them under his especial protection, lamenting at the same time that the Two Pollys, which was lying in the dock, undergoing some repairs, could not be made ready for the voyage.

Before Captain Brayton sails, we beg leave to introduce to the reader another one of young Fayerweather’s acquaintance Down-in-town.

He, also, bore the title of captain, which was accorded to all who, like himself, had ever been a ship-master—old Captain Bob Stimpson—a short, thick-set man, with legs like a mill-post, the upper parts encased in leather breeches, the lower parts in blue worsted stockings, with smart shoes fastened with huge silver buckles of great brilliancy. His wig, which had once been black, was rendered nearly red by age, and formed a setting to his redder face, which matched well with his huge bottle-nose of the same fiery hue. But do not mistake, gentle reader; Captain Bob Stimpson was a temperate man. He usually wore a brown coat and waistcoat, out of which latter appeared ostentatiously the ruffle of his shirt, broader than usual for the fashion of the day. He was a man of substance, and owner of a rope-walk, at the door of which he was usually found seated, pipe in mouth.

What could a youth of seventeen find in the society of such an old codger of fifty-two? Can you guess, my fair reader? He had a daughter—the Down-in-town beauty, she was called; a girl of whom any father might have been proud.

She was his only child; her beauty was a rare specimen of the blonde, with a high polished forehead, and exquisite features. A slight drooping of the lid at the outer corner of her clear blue eyes, sometimes gave a shade of sadness to her lovely countenance; but when animated, these eyes became bright and merry, and her face was radiant with dimpled smiles.

Captain Stimpson’s house was considered a fine one for the time in which he lived. It was a large square building, situated in the midst of a spacious terrace, of which the under part was improved for shops, for the sale of ready-made seaman’s clothing; and the lawn in front of his house was directly over their roofs. The ascent to the terrace was by a long flight of stone-steps, situated between two shops. The lawn was covered with fine grass, bordered with rose-bushes and lilac-trees, and a broad gravel-walk through the centre led to the house. This was of three stories, with a cupola on the top, which cupola the two captains used for a look-out, when vessels were coming in or going out; it commanded a view of the harbor; the house being situated in that part of the town now called Neptune street, or as they used to say, “down on the wharves.” There was nothing further remarkable about the house, excepting the cap of the front-door, which was ornamented by a figure of Neptune, with his trident—the wonder and admiration of all the young mermen of the vicinity.

George first saw Judith Stimpson—conceive of a beauty with such a name!—as he went with Dick, one summer afternoon, on some errand from the father of the latter to Captain Stimpson. She was with a little troop of companions who were on an afternoon’s visit to her, having finished all the tasks of sewing and knitting which their prudent mothers had set them. As yet pianos were scarcely invented, and there was but one spinnet in the place, and this was viewed by some with distrust, as having a secret connection with witchcraft. Judith and her companions issued from the house for a game of romps on the terrace. It was not in those days considered as infringing on decorum for girls of thirteen to play at “blindman’s-buff,” “old Tickleder,” or “hide-and-seek” in the open air. The little girls had just formed the magic circle around the beautiful Judith, who, dressed in a yellow grogram, with elbow-sleeves and ruffles of worked cat-gut over her round, white arms, was dancing with great glee, and singing in a voice rather loud for a young lady of her years, “Ring around the maiden in Uncle Johnny’s garden,” her light, silken curls flying in every direction round her glowing and innocent face, when who should appear on the terrace but the two young men! Away scampered the girls, vainly endeavoring to reach the house before their tormentors could catch them.

Judith was caught by Dick, who pretended to insist strongly on taking the forfeit she had incurred, while she blushed and struggled to free herself from his grasp. George, seeing the pain and confusion she evidently felt at being thus surprised, insisted on Dick’s releasing her without the forfeited kiss; and it was then he first observed her great beauty and modesty. While his friend went into the house to do his errand, he so improved his acquaintance with the little girls that he soon became foremost in their plays. At “hide-and-seek” and “old Tickleder,” he was found incomparable. They were just forming a circle in “Ring around the maiden,” round Betty Brayton, a little black-eyed girl, the intimate friend of Judith, the hand of the latter of whom George had taken care to secure, when Dick came out. He, after teazing the girls and rallying his friend a little, drew him, rather reluctantly, away; not, however, before George had gathered a rose, and flinging it at Judith, said slyly, in a rather low tone, “Keep that for my sake.” From this time he seized every opportunity of improving his acquaintance with Judith; and several keepsakes passed between them. Those from Judith being extorted rather than given, and those from George received with a merry laugh.

[To be continued.

---

———

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

———

---

---

———

BY WM. ALEXANDER.

———

---

———

BY P.

———

About twenty years ago, there lived near the pretty town of Launceston, in Cornwall, an elderly maiden lady named La Vellette. She was of French origin, and had emigrated to England about the commencement of the first French Revolution. She was remarkable for the simplicity of her manner, and the amiability of her character. Exhibiting but little of that vivacity which usually characterizes her fair countrywomen, she nevertheless displayed a subdued cheerfulness, which, while it did not stimulate mirth, never tended to arrest a merry laugh or an innocent joke. In person she was small, and her features, though marked by age, and saddened by care, still bore the lingering traces of beauty. Her neat, retired, and snug little cottage, which, in summer, used to peep forth beneath a forest of honeysuckle and ivy, and her prim and Quaker-like simplicity of dress, were in happy harmony with her disposition. Living in my youthful days within a few yards of her residence, I was frequently invited with my playmates to visit her garden. Gradually I became an especial favorite; and I used to feel so much at home in her company, that I needed no invitation to pay her frequent visits. She seemed to take a high degree of interest in my amusements, and that of my companions; and when any conflicts arose from the mysteries of a game at marbles, or from the strategy in hide-and-seek, she would be the first to heal up the difficulty, and restore amicability. Another valuable trait, which, boy as I was, I could not help observing, was the unwavering resignation which she always exhibited; while on the other hand, I was remarkable for my impatience, and a somewhat irritable disposition. And when, as often I did, I laid my complaints before her, when I grieved about the loss of a favorite top, or the death of a favorite pigeon, I was always met with her sympathy, and gently chid for my discontentment. Soothing me with her mild but sorrowful smile, she would draw me to her bosom, and strive to show me the folly of grieving for an unavoidable loss, and the duty of submitting manfully to misfortune.

To her neighbors her early history was involved in some degree of obscurity. They knew she was a French emigrÉ, that many years ago a favorite sister had died, and that she had been deprived of her parents at an early age. They had heard it rumored that she had suffered from severe misfortunes—that her connections had been people of rank, and while they all knew she enjoyed a competence, some conjectured she was even wealthy. Other stories of a romantic character were sometimes circulated, but unsupported by any degree of certainty.

My esteem for her grew with my growth, and I have reason to believe that it was reciprocated; but as I advanced in years, my visits became less frequent, from unavoidable circumstances. At length the period arrived when I was called upon to leave home for a situation in a foreign land, and as I had often felt a strong desire to become acquainted with her history, I called upon her on the day previous to my departure to take my farewell, and to see if I could have my curiosity gratified. After I had expressed this wish with all the delicacy my confusion enabled me, and had excused the request by intimating the possibility that we might never meet again, she consented to leave me a brief account after her death. And that event, she added, is not far hence. Something tells me that my pulse will soon cease to beat, and my heart to throb. I have long waited for Heaven’s messenger; I have long panted for that land “where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.” She then gave me a few words of advice, she pressed her lips upon my cheek, placed a small parcel, containing a gold watch and ring, into my hand, and then, in a broken voice, bade me farewell.

Her anticipation of death was speedily realized. I was told that, about eleven months after my departure, while reading her Bible in an arm-chair, she suddenly and silently vanished, like one of heaven’s stars, into the other world. Among her papers was a packet directed to me, in which was the following brief sketch of her early life.

I was born in the year 1770, at the village of St. Marc, near Lyons, in France. I was the youngest of three children, having had a brother and sister. My parents were connected with families of rank, and, though well-off, were not wealthy. My mother was a woman of delicate constitution, and of a most amiable disposition. She looked upon her husband as the beau-ideal of perfection, and with a mother’s partiality, she thought her children were paragons of beauty. My father was certainly a kind, handsome, and an intellectual-looking man. In after life I had opportunities for observing many families, and I do not remember any father who was fonder of his home, more devoted to his wife, or more affectionate to his children. Many years have passed, and many strange scenes have racked my mind, since I last saw his dear face; yet the recollection of his features are still as fresh upon my memory as if I had seen him to-day. He loved study and his books; and, though an aristocrat by birth, and a gentleman by fortune, he was a sincere friend of the people, and an enemy to the profligacy and oppression of the court. He was not, that I am aware of, a believer in the republicanism then advocated. He thought France was then unfit for a democratic government. He maintained that all institutions, to be permanent, must be gradual in their growth. The strong and stately oak, flourishing through centuries, slowly acquired its vigor and dimension; the animalculÆ springing into life, in a moment of time, becomes as suddenly extinguished. “What my country needs,” said he, “is not a universal suffrage, but freer institutions; not a republic, but opportunities and experience to fit her for it.” He no less decried the irreligious doctrines by which liberal opinions were then so frequently accompanied. “France,” he would say, in his clear, manly voice, “will never be really free until she is religious. The reign of virtue and order must always accompany the reign of freedom. Without these requisites she may conquer, but only to be defeated; she may establish a republic, but it will be only a despotism in disguise.”

These opinions did not seem to please many of his auditors, and he would frequently leave a political club with feelings of grief and despair. He saw no hope for his country so long as her shackles remained—and he mistrusted the wisdom of the reforms which the people desired to introduce.

My sister was about two years older than myself. She was fairer and prettier than I was, and bore a strong resemblance to my mother. She had light hair, large, clear blue eyes, and a tall and graceful figure.

My brother was five years my senior. He was in every respect, but in affection, unlike the rest of us. At an early age, I remember, he exhibited marks of a powerful frame, with an active, bold, and enthusiastic disposition. His mind, naturally good, was improved by an excellent education; and though carefully watched over by an attentive father, he could not prevent him from imbibing very extravagant notions about government, and very loose opinions upon religion.

The limits to which I purpose to confine myself, precludes the possibility of mentioning any of the incidents connected with my childhood. I shall therefore pass them by, and in the following pages, merely allude to those events which may be of interest, and I hope of profit.

Suitors made their appearance as my sister and myself approached womanhood. For some time I did not discover any one who attracted my attention. Having every comfort I desired, and parents upon whom I doated, I was in no hurry to divide my affection. But we are told that every woman must, sooner or later, fall in love—and my experience formed no exception. At a party given by a neighbor, I was introduced to a young man, who struck my attention, and who in a short time won my heart. His name was Alfred Pomiville. He was admitted on all hands to be very prepossessing; and I thought he was a model of manly beauty. My parents had formed the humane and sensible resolution of allowing their children the disposal of their own affections, reserving, of course, the right of approving or disapproving of their choice. When, therefore, my father became acquainted with my partiality for Alfred, he did not accuse me of disobedience, but endeavored to study his disposition and to ascertain his character. Measuring his feelings by mine own, I thought the more closely Alfred was studied the more he would be admired. I was therefore surprised when I found my father forming a somewhat undecided opinion of him, and entreating me to be cautious before I gave away a woman’s dearest treasure—her heart. I promised obedience to his advice; but with the characteristic weakness of most of our sex, when our affections are engaged, I speedily forgot my promise, and went on confiding and loving. In the course of a few months I observed with much pleasure that he gradually rose in my father’s estimation; with my mother he was from the first a favorite; and my brother and sister both considered him agreeable. To me he was kind and affectionate in the highest degree; he studied my smallest wish, and seemed devoted to my happiness. Within a year after our acquaintance he was recognized by my parents as my future husband, and then I saw naught but smiles and sunshine before me; then I thought, in the weakness of my heart, I had attained the summit of human happiness, and could defy misfortune.

---

As time flew on, the dark clouds of the Revolution advanced. It was now evident to every observing eye that a fearful storm was at hand. The most hair-brained courtier, strutting through the balconies of Versailles, heard the distant rumblings of the coming thunder and stood aghast. Even the political agitators trembled for a moment at the prospect they had created. My father therefore became more anxious, more active, and less at home. At length the storm burst. The indignant voice of fifteen millions could no longer be controled. Then followed that unparalleled era of romance and crime, of heroism and pusillanimity. Then commenced the first of a series, not yet completed, of modern popular reaction against political oppression. We had, ere this, removed to Paris, and we saw what has been called the commencement of the Revolution. But I must pass over the dreadful scenes which subsequently passed before our eyes. They have now long enjoyed an unenviable notoriety, forming alike a warning to the oppressed and their oppressors. Strange to say, after a little while, we were able to hear the awful events around us with comparative composure, so easy does our nature become accustomed to circumstances. No doubt this was in a great measure owing to the confidence we entertained of the safety of our family. My brother was one of the popular favorites, and so seemed Alfred. My father, though conservative in his republicanism, and an uncompromising opponent of infidelity, was admired by all who held his opinions, and respected by those who differed with him. Our relatives, most of whom were aristocrats in sentiments as in rank, had ere this emigrated to Germany.

The Revolution gathered force as it rolled along, and my father’s disappointment increased as he observed the acts which accompanied its progress. We now felt it was unsafe for him to remain, and at our earnest wish, he appointed an old domestic to take care of his property, and consented to leave France with us for England. Alfred accompanied us to Paris, and my parents agreed that we should be immediately united, and that he should then accompany us in our exile. A priest, an old acquaintance, who had sought for shelter under our roof from the popular excitement, was appointed to perform the marriage ceremony. The gloom which had lately hung heavily upon me now disappeared. I was confident of a speedy release from further trouble and looked forward to our future residence in England with much anxiety.

The morning of the day fixed for my bridal at length arrived. I remember I slept very little on the preceding night. When I arose the day seemed delightfully fine, which I looked upon as a favorable omen. Habited in a plain white dress, I descended to our little parlor, where Alfred and all the family, except my father, were assembled at breakfast. The latter, I was told, was absent on business relative to our departure. The ceremony was not to take place until one, and we highly amused ourselves during the intermediate time, in projecting future schemes, and building pretty castles in the air. My sister drew a very charming picture of our English residence—Alfred gave us amusing and extravagant descriptions of the English—and I endeavored to estimate how much I should enjoy the English scenery, its picturesque cottages, its snug little gardens, and the luxury of peace and safety. And then Alfred drew me by his side, and whispered compliments in my ear, and assured me that stores of happiness awaited us. Thus pleasantly the time flew on until the clock struck one, when the priest reminded us that the hour for our wedding had arrived. At that moment a knock was heard at the door, which Annette declared was our father’s. The missal was then opened, and my sister placed the chairs in order. Then my heart began to palpitate, and a nervousness come over me which young ladies, I presume, are accustomed to experience upon such occasions. As I was advancing with Alfred toward the priest, I happened to turn my eyes to the window fronting the street, where I saw my dear father in the executioner’s cart, on its way to the guillotine!

To describe the feelings which I experienced when this dreadful sight presented itself, would be impossible. Nearly forty years have passed since then, during which I have witnessed many never-to-be-forgotten scenes, and experienced many uncommon trials, yet that moment stands out in greater prominence than any other event of my life, and even now my hand trembles and my eyes become dim as the recollection of it returns to my memory.

Upon recovering from the insensibility which the shock produced, I was met with another catastrophe, no less appalling than its predecessor—the death of my mother! It seems she also had observed my father on his way to execution, and the sudden fright operating upon a diseased heart, produced a sudden and fatal attack. Thus the hour which I fancied was to make me happy became the commencement of a series of misfortunes; the day which was to have rescued us from danger carried my father to the scaffold and fitted my mother for the grave! Truly says an old French proverb—“L’homme propose, et Dieu dispose.”

My marriage was of course postponed. So soon as we were able we made preparations for the burial of our deceased parents. On the day after that duty was accomplished, tidings reached us that our estates were confiscated, adding poverty to orphanage. Collecting our little stock of money and jewels, we nevertheless determined to leave France for England. It was agreed, for it was necessary, to make our escape by different routes, so as to avoid notice and lessen the possibility of detection. It was also agreed that we should meet at a friend’s house in London. Accompanied by my sister, we reached Toulon, which was then in the hands of the royalists, where we found an English ship which carried us safely to England.

But my troubles did not end here. My sister was naturally of a weak constitution, and the fatigues of our journey, and the excitement consequent upon our losses, had greatly increased her debility, so that upon our arrival in London I found it necessary to place her under medical treatment. The family where we agreed to rendezvous were royalists, and they had left for Germany, to join the invading army against France. We were therefore in a strange country, with an imperfect knowledge of its language, friendless and almost moneyless. Oh! how different was our condition to that which we a few weeks previous had anticipated! Some time, however, elapsed before I allowed these circumstances to depress me. My nerves seemed to strengthen with the increase of my difficulties—a faculty, which I think, is peculiar to our sex, and which, alas! they are often called upon to exercise. I also buoyed myself up with the hope of the speedy arrival of my brother and Alfred, and I used every means by which they might become acquainted with our address. At last my little resources were almost exhausted, my poor sister still lingered unimproved, and I had received no news of their arrival, nor intelligence of their whereabouts. I had tried, but in vain, to obtain employment, and I almost began to despair of any relief but death. The doctor told me that medicine was of no use to my sister, and recommended nutritious diet, which I had not the means of procuring. He, and the people with whom we boarded, also importuned me for money, and payment of what I owed deprived me of all I possessed. We therefore felt it necessary to remove to a small, ill-ventilated room, in the outskirts of the city. After this my poor sister became worse. The want of proper food, of pure air, and medical advice, aggravated her disease. I fortunately, after very great exertion, obtained employment in making fancy collars, which by hard labor enabled me to earn about one shilling a day. Deducting half of that sum for rent, we had only three shillings per week to board with. With this I used to purchase oatmeal, and we converted it into what the Scotch call porridge. Annette seemed at first to like it, but her partiality for it speedily changed, and the only food she subsequently cared for, which my means enabled me to procure, was milk and toast. Her illness was also aggravated by the disorderly persons who boarded in the house, and when I entreated the landlord to command silence, he roughly told me I was welcome to leave if I felt uncomfortable. She was now so weak that removal would have extinguished the faint spark of life which remained, and I was therefore compelled to submit to this annoyance. One or two of our fellow-lodgers did take compassion on our condition, and showed us a little kindness. An old woman, named Grassett, the wife of a pensioner, sometimes visited our room, and gave us a cup of nice tea, or would wait on my sister while I worked at my collars, or endeavored to snatch a little sleep. We had also occasional visits from a pious French priest, who, though he could not alleviate our sufferings, often cheered us with his sympathy. My sister lingered on for about ten months, sometimes worse and sometimes better. On the evening of a day in the month of December she seemed livelier than I had seen her for a long time before, which afforded me a hope of her ultimate recovery. She sat up in her bed, and with her sweet voice endeavored to convince me that there were happy days in store for us, and of the strong probability of the speedy arrival of Alfred and our brother. And then she would kiss my care-worn cheeks, and smilingly assure me that I had lost none of my beauty. I assumed an assent to all she said, because I knew it would afford her pleasure.

While conversing in this manner, the postman arrived and handed me a letter. Pointing to the address which was in French, and to the writing which resembled my brother’s, she exultingly declared it was his, and playfully demanded that I should never more doubt her predictions. For a moment I fancied it was his, and the bearer of good news, but the first words, “Dear Miss,” dashed away all these expectations. I however endeavored to hide my emotion, because I was intently watched and incessantly questioned about its contents. As I read on, the particulars of my brother’s adventures became gradually unfolded—at last the finale was reached, he had been arrested within a few miles of the frontier, and then met with the fate of his father. So wrote the friend who obtained a few hurried words from him previous to his execution, and who promised him to communicate this intelligence to us. But strange to say, when I reached this dreadful part of the letter, my stupefied brain felt my sister’s arms suddenly clasped around my neck, heard her sob, as she kissed me, “poor dear Emma,” and then remain silent. In a few minutes I felt somewhat restored, I ventured a glance upon her face, and she seemed to be asleep. I removed her arms, and as I gently tried to awake her, the awful truth revealed itself that she, too, had departed. Whether it was produced by reading my brother’s fate upon my countenance, or by any physical infirmity, is to me a mystery.

Some hours must have elapsed before I returned to consciousness. I awoke as from some horrible dream, but the dreadful reality quickly returned. And as I heard the thunder roaring and the rain pouring without, and observed the gloom within, the fatal letter on the door, and my dead sister by my side, I became reckless with despair. Grief refused to pay her tribute to misfortune, my heart seemed to harden, my head seemed to burn. I fancied Heaven and earth had conspired to injure me.

A raging fever followed, accompanied with delirium, and I was told, that as I lay under its influence I would call upon my parents, my sister and my brother, and entreat them to send for me. At other times I upbraided Alfred for his absence, and then expressed a confidence in his arrival, and framed excuses for his delay. Anon I would promise to be good to him, to wait upon and watch over him, to make him happy and deserve his love.

At the moment the first gleam of reason returned, I observed persons carrying my sister’s corpse from the room, in a coffin composed of a few rough boards, which seemed to be clumsily nailed together. I recognized their object at once, and entreated that I might be allowed to give her one last kiss before they consigned her to the grave. With a little grumbling they removed the lid, and as I pressed my lips upon her cheek I truly envied her condition. I then asked for a ringlet of her hair, but I was told that they had all been cut off and sold to a hair-dresser to meet the expenses of her funeral. A choking sensation now seized me, I fell back and buried my face in the bed-clothes, and my dead sister was removed.

In a little while I felt somewhat relieved. My eyes—those safety-valves to a sorrow-stricken heart—became suffused with tears for the first time since my illness. I also now experienced that a some thing was wanting; my conscience troubled me, but I could not tell why or wherefore. I also startled myself by conjecturing that my misfortunes were intended for some wise purpose, and that that purpose had some reference to myself. I reviewed my past life, but I could not then remember any act of mine which deserved punishment; indeed, I felt a degree of complacency, because I fancied I was so much better than many whom I remembered, and had done my duty as a daughter, a sister, and as a friend. But the feelings which produced these inquiries wore off with my recovery; it was reserved for a future period to make a deeper impression.

Some of the people of the house extended a rough kind of sympathy to me, and Mrs. Grassett continued a constant attendant. One day she mentioned the death of the kind old French priest who used to visit us, and added that an English clergyman, who visited the poor in the neighborhood, had made inquiries and expressed a desire to see me. I may here mention that my father descended from a Huguenot family, and though they felt themselves obliged to conceal their opinions after the edict of Nantes, yet they continued to disseminate them privately among their household. I felt, therefore, little compunction in accepting this gentleman’s offer, particularly at that moment, when I very much needed some one with whom I could converse. On the day after I consented to see him he called upon me. His name was Bonner. In appearance he was about fifty, with a pale, expressive and benevolent face. He spoke French fluently, and alluded to my recent loss with much delicacy and feeling. Although I was then unable to comprehend all he said upon religion, I soon felt at home with his manner, and desired him to visit me as often as possible.

As soon as I regained a little strength, he recommended me to seek the situation of governess, and offered me a letter of introduction to a family with whom he had a slight acquaintance, who, he believed, were in want of one. I gladly accepted his offer. The name of the family was Curtis. The father had been a soap and candle manufacturer, but had amassed wealth by successful speculations. He was little more than forty in age—he had a stout figure, a long, narrow face, a hooked nose, sharp, deep-set eyes, and a broad mouth. His wife was a daughter of a man of family, who had become poor by extravagance, and who silenced his unmarried creditors (so Mr. Curtis once told me) by presenting them with his daughters. This occasioned him to remark, in a moment of anger, that he had purchased his wife for six hundred pounds. She had been educated as a lady—that is, she could speak French slightly, dance, sing, play on the piano, and read novels. Her daughters were three in number. The eldest, Jemima, when I first came, was sixteen; the second, Dorothea, was fourteen; and the third, Angelica, about twelve. I think they bore a greater resemblance to their father than to their mother. I will not particularize their features, because I fear I might betray ill-feeling, which I fear has already exhibited itself. I will merely observe, that though not prepossessing, they were not ugly. They had very great dislike to poverty, and much reverence for wealth and rank.

These young ladies, Mr. Curtis informed me, (for Mrs. C. rarely troubled herself about such matters,) were to be educated in music and drawing, French and Italian, from ten to four each day, and during the remainder I would be expected to occupy myself in writing for him, or in needle-work for the family. For these duties, if performed in a satisfactory manner, I should receive at the end of the year ten pounds. I thought the salary was rather small, and I feared the labor would be too laborious, but I dared not refuse to accept the offer, because I doubted my ability to obtain a better situation, and I dreaded a renewal of the privations I had undergone. I therefore consented to enter upon these duties on the following morning.

When I arrived Mr. Curtis called me apart, and observed that he had heard the French were generally familiar and gay in their manner, but he would warn me that any familiarity, or the slightest appearance of freedom toward his daughters, would be met with my immediate dismissal and forfeiture of salary. I must confess, that when I heard this injunction, a remembrance of my family mantled my cheeks with a blush of pride, and it was with difficulty that I could suppress a flood of tears which were gushing to my eyes when I conjectured the shock my poor mother would have felt had she been a listener. I assured him, however, that I hoped never to give them cause to complain of my rudeness or discourtesy.

With this promise I was directed to my bed-room, which was a garret, on the back part of the house.

It was with no little nervousness that I commenced my duties on the following morning. On entering the class-room, I found the young ladies at their lessons. They slightly returned my bow, and seemed to regard me with a good deal of curiosity. At last I summoned courage to inquire the branches they were studying, and the progress they had made, which request they complied with after a little whispering and delay. I then laid before them the system I purposed to pursue, to which they nodded an approval.

As I anticipated, I found my duties were laborious and not very agreeable. The young ladies seemed to think a governess ought not only to teach but to do. If they found a branch of arithmetic difficult, an explanation was insufficient, I was also expected to solve its problems. If a picture which they were copying ceased to be attractive, I had to complete it, and then it was exhibited to visitors as a specimen of their ability. In their music lessons I could rarely prevail upon them to follow my directions, when, I regret to say, I would exhibit a little annoyance, and then they would leave the piano, and lodge a complaint with their father.

I remember upon one occasion I was very anxious that Jemima should learn a very pretty French ballad, which had been taught me by my mother. I was, moreover, desirous that if she sang it at all, she should sing it well. I took great pains in teaching, but she seemed very indifferent about learning it. When I urged her to practice it, she became impatient, and flung the song into the fire. As it was a copy made by my sister, I could not help weeping when I saw it enveloped in flames. At this moment Mr. Curtis entered the room in company with two ladies. Jemima immediately gave him an incorrect account of the cause of my tears, and he refused to hear my explanation, and expressed his impatience in seeing a governess giving herself such airs about a valueless piece of music. His companions nodded an assent to his remarks, and sympathized with Miss Curtis for the annoyance, they were sure, I occasioned her. Perhaps I was really a little irritable at times, when I fancied they endeavored to displease me; but on the whole, I am sure, I was too easy and obliging, and I thought my heart would have broken, when I heard them speak so disparagingly of me.

I may also mention another little reminiscence of my musical experience. Mr. Curtis frequently gave dinner-parties to gentlemen exclusively. On one occasion, while sitting over their wine, one of the company expressed a desire to hear Miss Curtis on the piano. This wish was acquiesced in by the others—and they accordingly entered the drawing-room to have it gratified. She played a pot-pourri of national airs. After the music had ceased, a Scotch gentleman, who was somewhat beyond the verge of sobriety, asserted that one of the airs—the Blue Bells of Scotland—had been incorrectly played. Mr. Curtis overheard the remark, and he replied that if that was the case, the fault was mine—and he ordered that I should be immediately sent for. You may suppose I was very much astonished when I entered the room, and found it filled with strange faces, and that I was much more frightened when I heard Mr. Curtis, addressing me in a loud voice, demanding to know if I expected to be kept and paid for incorrectly teaching music to his daughters? Upon receiving a somewhat indistinct explanation, I tremblingly endeavored—holding on to a back of a chair for support—to convince him that the alterations complained of were variations, and that the fault, if any, was the composer’s, not mine. Some of the gentlemen seemed to feel for my situation, and endeavored to defend me; but this exasperated him the more, and, with a very violent expression, he ordered me to leave the room.

I ran back to my little garret, stupefied and affrighted. I believed I was the most unfortunate being in the world. I looked out upon the stars, which were now peeping through the heavens, and imploringly asked if my troubles were never to cease?

On the following morning I communicated to Mr. Curtis my desire to leave, and he replied that I might do so whenever I paid him the money he had advanced me to purchase some articles of clothing. Our agreement was, he said, that I should be paid provided I gave satisfaction; but as I had not done so, I was not entitled to any remuneration. I had no means for repaying him, I had no one to give me advice or render me assistance, and therefore I felt myself compelled to remain. The clergyman, Mr. Bonner, who recommended the situation to me, had left London for another part of England.

Upon accepting it, I agreed to do any writing which Mr. Curtis might require, but I by no means anticipated the quantity which he daily laid before me. In the evenings it was necessary to take the documents he gave me to copy to my chamber, where I would work without intermission until my task was completed, or until drowsiness and fatigue compelled me to rest. Often during these occasions, about the hour of midnight, the letters would swim before my eyes; the glare of my candle became unbearable, and I would feel a knocking sensation at the back of my head. At these moments my imagination was more active, and my sensibility more acute. When I heard the sound of music, of mirth and merriment in the rooms below, past scenes would present themselves in painful distinctness; the merry days of childhood, my happy home, and my kind companions. My dear mother would return and give me that look of mingled love and sympathy which a mother only can bestow. My father and brother would stand by my side, and whisper a word of encouragement, and promise happier days. My sister would come back, in her sick dress, and repeat her last words, “Poor, dear Emma!” And then the thought of Alfred would renew conflicting hopes and fears. At one moment I would fancy he was dead, and then convince myself he was alive, and conjecture a favorable cause for his non-arrival. And so I would go on, hoping and fearing, thinking and dreaming, until my candle had sunk into the socket, or my aching head made further labor impossible.

It was necessary that I should get up at an early hour every morning, because, in addition to the writing which I was unable to finish on the previous evening, I had to dress the young ladies’ hair—a more difficult undertaking than it is now. After this Mr. Curtis required me to button-up his gaiters, because his stoutness prevented him from doing it himself, and he said I did it better than any of the servants. If I had completed my writing, he would give me a nod of approbation, and sometimes promise the payment of my salary, for the period he had formerly refused it. This would give me encouragement, and make me labor cheerfully, for it held out the hope of leaving.

Heavy as my duties were, I should have felt them much lighter if my diet had been more nutritious, and my opportunities for out-door exercise more frequent. With the exception of my visits to church on Sundays, I could rarely obtain more than two half-hours for walking through the week. My stomach gradually became so weak, on account of these disadvantages, that I was frequently unable to taste the food laid before me. My meals were sent to my room. The butter I had for breakfast and tea was purchased by Mr. Curtis from one of his tenants, and was called “pot-butter.” It smelt so disagreeable, that I was forced to ask the girl to remove it from my table. I also enjoyed the privilege of the tea-leaves which came direct from the parlor, and after a time, I was indulged with fresh tea on Sundays. I considered this a great favor, because the servants had to drink milk and water. My bread was home-made, and I used to find it dark in color, and difficult of digestion. At dinner I enjoyed a joint, cold or hashed, which came from the parlor on the preceding day, and what I left was then sent to the kitchen.

The close of the first year at length arrived. I repeated to Mr. Curtis my wish to leave, because my failing health was unequal to my duties. He stared at me with apparent wonder, and then declared his astonishment at my ingratitude, and his surprise at my complaint. He endeavored to assure me that I ought to feel highly indebted to him for the shelter he had afforded me; and that my labors, for a governess, were unusually light. By way of closing the conversation, he again hinted, that if I did leave, I could not expect any salary; and when I ventured to ask the reason, he frowningly alluded to our relative position, and censured my presumption in asking him for an explanation.

I was conscious that I was undeserving such treatment, but my defenseless condition rendered resistance impossible, and I was obliged to remain another year. When I communicated this intention to Mr. Curtis, he gave me, to my surprise, half of the amount due me, and promised the remainder when my agreement terminated.

My duties continued unaltered, my health gradually grew worse, and in a few months, I was laid upon a bed of sickness. The family wanted to send me to the hospital, but the doctor assured them I was unable to bear the removal. He attributed my illness to over-exertion, and a want of out-door exercise. I had become pale and emaciated. A look of premature old age had spread itself over my countenance. My head seemed stupefied, melancholy forebodings were constantly troubling me, and I was frequently subjected to fits of crying. I had lost all appetite for food, and all love for life. Like Natalie, I longed “for the grave and nothing more.”

A great change had come over me since my former illness. The loneliness of my situation, and the recollection of my losses, had frequently drawn my attention to matters beyond the grave. I gradually felt the necessity of studying as well as reading my Bible; and I began to look forward to the Sabbath more as a day for religious instruction than as a day of rest. As the subject of religion became nearer and dearer to me, I experienced a feeling of confidence and resignation which I had never felt before. I became less irritable when misfortune assailed me, and looked upon it as intended for some wise purpose. During my present sickness, I felt very much the need of a clergyman, but for some unaccountable reason, Mr. Curtis refused to allow one to be sent for, and threatened my removal to a hospital if I mentioned my wish to the physician.

The doctor was kind and skillful. By his attention, and the diet he recommended, I was declared convalescent after the lapse of nine weeks. But when I had recovered I did not regain my former strength, and was unable to go through with my former duties. The family speedily saw this, and Mr. Curtis then informed me that my services were no longer required. He presented me with an account, in which I was credited with nine pounds for salary, on which he requested me to write a receipt. After handing it to him he returned me another, in which I was charged fourteen pounds for board, etc., during my illness. That, he remarked, extinguished the amount due me, and left a balance of five pounds in his favor, which, out of kindness, he did not intend to charge.

This disappointment very much surprised me. My physician refused to make any charge for his attendance, and I never expected, as my illness was produced in Mr. Curtis’s service, that he would be less liberal. I was, therefore, once more thrust upon a strange world, weak, moneyless and friendless.

After I left his house, I wended my way to my former residence, for I had no where else to go to. Upon arriving I was told that my old room was occupied, and I was sent to one adjoining it. I felt very lonely that day. The scenes around forcibly brought back the recollection of my dead sister, and recalled my subsequent disappointments and my cheerless prospects. I did not know what to do, or where to go. But there was not wanting, amid this despondence, a degree of confidence in the superintendence of a Higher Power, which I formerly did not enjoy.

About nine in the evening Mrs. Grassett entered my room, and expressed her delight at my return. She said she would have called before, had she not been engaged in waiting upon a sick stranger, who occupied my former room, and who she did not think would live much longer. When I inquired about him, she replied that he was a foreigner, with an unpronounceable name, and desired that I should visit him with her, as I might be able to converse with him in his native tongue. After a moment’s consideration I consented to do so. I found the room greatly altered. The walls were actually black with dust, the plaster on the ceiling seemed on the point of falling off, the window was covered with cobwebs, and the bed-linen seemed very much in need of washing.

We found the patient asleep, his face buried in his pillow. A moment or two afterward he awoke, and asked, first in French and then in broken English, for a little water. I turned to observe his features, and notwithstanding his hollow cheeks, his distended eye-balls, and his disheveled hair, I recognized my long expected Alfred. My surprise was so great that I sprang forward, threw my arms around his neck, and alternately laughed and wept for joy.

He was suffering from typhus fever, and had been confined to his bed for eleven days. I gathered from him subsequently, that the last time he saw my brother was when we parted in Paris—that he did not hear of his death until some months after it occurred—that he had been compelled to remain in France some time after we left—that he had been in London for two or three months before I saw him, but he was unable to find me—that by some accident he had lost the money he brought with him to England, and was driven by necessity to seek for shelter in the place where I found him. I asked for some further information, not from mere curiosity, but from the interest I took in every thing which concerned him. He chided me for doing so, because it implied a want of confidence, and the fear of exhibiting that was sufficient to stop all further inquiries on my part.

The moment my surprise abated I commenced to wait upon him. I had three shillings and some odd pence in my pocket, which I placed into Mrs. Grassett’s hands, to purchase what necessaries she could with it for our patient. I now forgot all the trials which a few minutes ago weighed so heavily upon me; and with a lighter heart than I had felt for a long time before, I endeavored to put the room in order, and to add to his comfort.

Within a few days my little sum was exhausted. I then obtained fifteen shillings from a pawnbroker for a gold case in which my mother’s miniature had been set. This supported us for nearly ten days, and before the expiration of that time I succeeded, after much exertion, in obtaining collar work. I labored upon this principally during the moments Alfred slept, and earned from five to six shillings per week. With the exercise of economy, and the sale of the remaining trinkets which belonged to me and my sister, I was able to succeed pretty well, and to support Alfred somewhat comfortably.

Nearly six weeks elapsed before he recovered. His sickness made him a little irritable, and sometimes my inexperience made me displease him. My anxiety to please him sometimes confused me, and he would censure me for my stupidity.

For nearly four weeks Mrs. Grassett and myself would wait upon him in turns of twelve hours each. His sickness required unremitting attention, but I can truly say my labor about him was indeed a labor of love. The hope of sparing him one pang made the longest day seem short; and the hope that his life might be spared gave an unqualified pleasure to my exertions. Oh! how often during dark nights, when all eyes but mine were closed in sleep, have I watched his features, to seek for traces of returning health, as if my life depended upon his. Every expression of pain he exhibited had a sympathetic influence upon myself; every appearance of revival upon his looks spread a corresponding change upon mine own. And when gentle slumber had crept over him, I would kneel by his side, and in a subdued voice pour forth a supplication to Heaven, that his life might be spared. I felt as if he was the last and only link which bound me to earth.

Whenever an opportunity offered, I drew his attention to religion. Sometimes he would listen to me with attention, and at others he begged me to be silent on account of his debility.

Occasionally I tried to amuse him by singing some of our old French ballads, when the evening was too far advanced for my collar work. At other times I read interesting works, from a neighboring circulating library.

At length he became better, and we were to be married so soon as he could leave his room. Then hope once more drew back the curtains of despair. The future brightened again. During his sickness he seemed dearer to me than he ever was before. I felt as if he was now my own, to love and cherish, to live for, and, if need, to die for.

As his strength increased he agitated himself in conjecturing how he could obtain a livelihood; but I endeavored to convince him of my ability to earn a very comfortable maintenance for us both.

On the second day after he left his room, and three days previous to that fixed for our marriage, a letter reached him from Bonn, enclosing some money, and communicating the death of his uncle, who had bequeathed to him all his property. The receipt of this news gave us much joy. I looked upon it as an unequivocal guaranty that my troubles were ended. It may have been selfish in me, but I confess I felt a little disappointment when he informed me that this communication necessitated a further delay of our marriage until his return from Germany. I fancied that as we had been separated so long we should not be parted again so quickly, but he strove to convince me that his immediate absence was necessary, and I at last cheerfully assented. He left on the day which had been fixed for our wedding, and it was agreed he should return on the following month.

Within a few days after his departure I again fell sick, arising, perhaps, from my late exertions and insufficient rest. It was accompanied with the same loss of appetite, nervous fits of crying, lowness of spirits, and occasional attacks of delirium, which I had formerly suffered from. My sane moments, however, were enlivened by pleasing anticipations of Alfred’s return; and I even felt grateful he was ignorant of my sickness, because I believed it would spare him much pain and anxiety. I did not recover so soon as I expected. My physician did not seem to understand my complaint so well as his predecessor.

Four weeks had now elapsed since Alfred departed, and I heard no news of his return. Three or four days more elapsed without intelligence, and I became alarmed. At length a letter arrived, addressed to me in his hand—and my heart throbbed with joy. I felt so delighted, that I committed, what some will call a piece of extravagance, that is, I kissed the address, because I was convinced it was his writing. I then hurriedly broke the seal and began to read the contents. The first paragraph informed me that he had taken possession of his uncle’s property, and that it was more valuable than he had supposed, and was, I fancied, conveyed in cooler language than I expected. The next paragraph had reference to matters of little importance, but as I read on, another communication rose up, which made the blood freeze in my veins, and seemed to suspend the beating of my heart. It told me that now our relative conditions were greatly changed—that he feared our dispositions were incompatible—that our marriage was impossible. As I read on with a brain throbbing and burning, with a bosom struggling between doubt and despair, I observed an invitation to reside with him, and a promise to give me a settlement if I subsequently desired a separation. I think one more paragraph concluded the letter, but I could read no further. I alternately laughed and cried. I declared it was all a vile forgery, and then something told me all was true. I declared it was a dream, but anon the dread reality stared me in the face. At last every thing seemed to disappear. For many a long day reason deserted me.

---

About two years after, I felt as if I had awakened from a sleep, and I found myself in a very respectably furnished room, with an elderly lady, who was apparently watching me. I had a somewhat confused remembrance of both her and the room, though I could not divine her name, nor remember how I had become acquainted with her. She also appeared as much surprised as myself, from the earnest and dubious look she directed toward me. She arose from her chair, and introduced herself as Mrs. Burnett, I hardly knew what to say, or what inquiry to make. After a moment, I ventured to ask if I was not staying in her house—to what circumstance I was indebted for that favor, and whether I had not been suffering from insanity?—for that dreadful truth gradually came to my mind. Perceiving that I was restored to reason, she answered all my inquiries, and communicated much more than I anticipated. She informed me how that my father’s old and faithful steward had by some means prevented the confiscation of his property from being executed—how that he had, a few months after my departure, disposed of it, and escaped to London with the proceeds, for the purpose of handing it to me. How that he used great exertions, after his arrival, to find me, and in the midst of them fell sick and died. Before his decease, he lodged the money in the hands of her husband, who was a banker, together with every information he could give which might lead to my discovery. That Mr. Burnett had renewed his efforts, but after several months he abandoned them as useless. That shortly after he was appointed to be one of the inspectors of a metropolitan lunatic asylum, and at one of his visits there, he found an inmate bearing my name. Upon making inquiries from the keeper, and at the house where I had boarded, (where he examined some books and papers which belonged to me,) he satisfied himself that I was the person whom he and the steward had sought for; and as he heard a favorable character of me, he removed me to his house, in the hope of affording better treatment than I was likely to receive in the asylum.

You may suppose this explanation very much surprised me; but the unexpected recovery of the proceeds of my father’s property did not produce much gratification. I was not sorry I now possessed a competence, though I did not feel glad. I felt very grateful to my deliverers, and to Him by whom my life had been spared; but it was accompanied with a recklessness and indifference about my future prospects. My disposition also seemed to have changed into a settled sadness, which has never since altogether left me.

My kind friends wished me to remain with them, but, with many thanks, I declined their invitation. I wanted to leave London, and upon that determination I came to Cornwall, and occupied the little cottage where we became acquainted.

---

Many years have passed since these trials happened; and as the sweetest perfumes are derived from the bitterest drugs, so these dark clouds have produced many bright and sunny days. True, they are associated with painful reminiscences, but they have been followed with incalculable advantages. Amid their severest strokes I can now recognize the hand of a just but benevolent Father. If in my subsequent career I could bear disappointment without discontent, and misfortune without repining; if I could feel resignation suppressing impatience, and contentment controlling ambition, I owe it to the struggles which I have endeavored to describe. It is in the rugged vale of tribulation that the path to human happiness is found.

---

———

BY EDWARD J. PORTER.

———

---

———

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

———

People seem to have an idea that facts are every thing in the business of the world—the only considerations in the philosophy of human progress. Opposed to what is merely imaginary, facts are allowed to have much dignity. Your practical reasoners look for facts; facts “are the jockies for them”—such as they can see, hear, handle, or demonstrate; while the imaginations are mostly held synonymous with the worthless, the unsubstantial and the ridiculous. They seem to say in the spirit of one of Congreve’s characters—we forget which—“fiddle-faddle, don’t tell me of this and that and every thing in the world; but give me mathematical demonstration.” Now we do not go so far as the philosopher Bayle, who, on the other hand, affected to laugh at mathematical demonstration; but we think, “under leave of Brutus and the rest,” that facts do not seem, and have not seemed to be so exclusively essential to “the cosmogony of the world,” to the history and progress of mind and the general business of things, as some solid authorities think. Without troubling our heads, in this gossiping paper, with the subtleties of Berkley and others, who knock all creation into the compass of a man’s perceptions—establish the column of the unsubstantial universe on the pentagonal base of the senses—we have an idea that a vast amount of the fictitious and imaginary is blended with our regular business of being, doing and suffering. Human nature has, in all times, contrived a little gilding, to make the bitter pill of life go down. Tasso truly says—in his Invocation to the Virgin Mary for a muse—at the opening of his “Gerusalemme Liberata”—

Not alone have the edges of the cup of life been touched in this way, but the contents of it have always been dashed with large doses of the same emollient. Reality is not such a delightful thing, after all. The false and the phantasmal have ever been considered the necessary complements, as it were, of our condition here.

If we take away from the amount of what the world possesses that which belongs and is due to the imagination merely—what is not authentic, and could not be sworn to in a court of justice—what will be left? Let us take it away—and what then? There is a sudden solitude in the world. The beautiful is vanished, and the hard, blank remnant of things is full of gaps, and desert places, disastrous flaws and a strange silence. There is nothing now, but facts in this macrocosm. But, believe us, ’tis a very rude, cold place to live in—much worse than ever it was before; and that—in the opinion of the pale pessimist over the way there—was bad enough in all conscience. They who first found out this world, and roamed about on it, had scarcely called it very good when they began to make it better, by peopling its too extensive solitudes—creating phantasms and imaginations for it, where there were none before. The unclothed reality of things was too bare and blank, beautiful as it was, for the first human beings that walked the earth. They looked to the elements, and the infinite host of heaven, and following their unanswerable instincts, they began to make mysteries, airy fabrics and visions. They imagined a god for the cope and the clouds of the firmament, and he wielded the thunderbolts from a high mountain; another, shaped after the most perfectly formed of men, resided in the sun,

His sister was the goddess of the earth’s satellite—

They heard gods in winds and in fire—and altars to these were among the earliest raised. They saw a terrible divinity in the vastness or angry billows of the sea, and imagined a crowd of lesser beings to haunt its caverns and depths. The forests were sacred to the universal Pan—his fauns, sylvans and satyrs; every oak had its hamadryad, every river its naiad or potamid; the oreads took charge of the flowery meadows, and the napÆÆ wandered forever in the shady valleys. Impatient of mere reality, men filled the universe with phantasies and theories—

Suppose we demolish all these graceful fallacies, and the poetry, also, in which they are embalmed. What a throng of splendid deeds, of heroic and beautiful figures—demigods, warriors, kings—bright women and brave men, moving in gorgeous panorama over the vast back-ground of antiquity—is extinguished in the darkness! The creations of the ancient poets and imaginative writers have filled up a space in the earlier ages of the world, which without them would be a blank and lost to the human mind, as much as the pre-Adamite chaos is. What a disinheritance it would be to take away the Iliad and Odyssey! to obliterate Hector, the kind-hearted and manly hero; and Priam with his mighty sorrows a suppliant for his dead son; and the warring Achilles—

and the wandering Ulysses, seeing strange shores and cities, and the varying manners of men! Not alone would much be wanted in the want of these venerable works, but in the want of all that literature which they inspired and gave rise to in after time. The succeeding poets and dramatists of Greece and Rome drew light from Homer, as Milton’s stars did in their golden urns from the sun. They took his historic imaginations and characters as their models, and reproduced them in forms which the world will not willingly let die, and which it prizes nearly as much as the Institutes and Pandects of Justinian, or any thing else of that authentic and substantial kind.

To come to our own familiar literature, the fictions of our insular or continental writers are as favorably and generally remembered as the historic facts of the English-speaking peoples. In our genial moments, when the mind desires to be refreshed or pleased it will revert, with an almost universal preference, to what is imaginary, or adorned with the graces of imaginative literature; and half the world regard with as much attention the men and women of Shakspeare and Scott as those of Hume and Prescott. And how intimately and lovingly we give our interest to the words and actions of these imaginary beings! What a world of thought and life is in the dramas of Shakspeare! There is the venerable Lear, driven out into the storm, and talking the finest philosophy to the wild elements, that so feelingly persuade him what he is; and Hamlet, so sententious in his antic disposition; the fair Ophelia, and the prosy old courtier, Polonius; and the immortal bed-presser, and huge hill of flesh—the greatest liar and the greatest favorite in the world; and Macbeth, with his terrible hags on the heath, and his more terrible wife; and Richard, wooing Lady Anne, or fighting desperately his last battle. Then there are the witty and adventurous Rosalind, and

and Portia, the beautiful, wise young judge; and the impassioned Juliet, with the southern lightnings in her veins; and Miranda, the enchantress, of an enchanted island—and all that magnificent array of womanhood which reflects for ever the unequaled genius of Shakspeare.

We have also the creations of Scott—coming nearest of any to those of the great dramatic poet, and enjoying even a more general popularity. Successive generations prize them as an imperishable legacy, and the memory has a pleasure in conjuring them up—so vivid and picturesque in their colors and outlines: The hall of Cedric, the Saxon—the swineherd, the templar, the gorgeous tournament at Ashby de la Zouche, Friar Tuck, the storming of Torquilstone, the Black Knight, fighting as if ten men’s strength were in his single arm; and the beautiful Jewess—what splendid series of images—bringing back so vividly the old pomp and circumstance of the feudal times! We shall never forget the feelings with which we first read Ivanhoe, and there found all our vague feelings of romance and dreams of knightly doings put into such spirit-stirring expression. Then how true is the picturesque bravery of Fergus McIvor—

and the marching of the Scottish clans; the fine old Baron Bradwardine, the high-spirited Flora, and the tender Rose. We see the fierce Balfour of Burley, slaying the guardsman at Drumclog, or raving in his cave; and the swords of the Solemn League and Covenant waving in desperate tumult on Bothwell Bridge. Edgar and Lucy walk to the haunted spring, Caleb Balderstone performs laughable prodigies of cunning to save the credit of Wolf’s Crag, and the last Lord of Ravenswood disappears awfully into the “Kelpie’s flow,”

Norna of the Fitful-Head, speaks her wild rune of the reimkennar to the spirits of the North wind; “bold Magnus, the son of the earl;” Minna, Brenda, Cleveland, Claude Halcro, feast, love, fight and rhyme in the Udaller’s charmed isle. Diana Vernon, on horseback, clears her five-barred gate and gallops by; Rob Roy cries “claymore,” and Bailie Nichol Jarvie fights his highlandman with a hot coulter, and goes up perilously to the Clachan of Aberfoil; Jeannie Deans stands in the presence of Queen Caroline, pleading for the life of her sister, while the Duke of Argyle puts his hand to his chin whenever her Majesty or the Duchess of Suffolk are in danger of a random hit from the lips of the unconscious advocate; Monkbarn’s discovers the remains of a Roman prÆtorium, and Edie Ochiltree comes up and says: “PrÆtorium here, prÆtorium there; I mind the bigging o’t!” The Knight of the Leopard and the disguised Soldan fight their chivalrous duel in the desert, and then feast together at the spring, and Richard Plantagenet, leaping from his sick-bed, in spite of the Hakim, tears down the standard of Austria from the mound at Acre, and hurls the giant Wallenrode from the top to the bottom of it. Dominic Sampson exclaims “prodigious!”—Dirk Hatterick strangles Glossin and shoots Charlotte Cushman—Meg Merrilies we should say, but it is all one—who recognizes young Bertram and dies hard. Hal o’ the Wynd “fights for his own band” on the Inch of Perth, in the mÊlÉe of the clans Chattan and Quhule. Tristram l’Hermit, hangs the trees around Plessis les Tours with Zingaris, like acorns. Louis and Charles the Bold ride together into Liege by a breach in the walls, and the head of the savage De Lamarck secures to the Scottish soldier the hand of Isabel Croye. The Highland Widow mourns over her condemned son with all the tragic truth of Æschylus or nature; the Last Minstrel sings a wild epic of goblin gramarye—the Leaguer of Branksome—knights and ladies—the lists and the festival. Roderick and the Knight of Snowdon fight by the ford of Coilantogle; Constance perishes awfully in her convent cell, and Marmion dies like a courageous knight, at Flodden

All these, and more, come thronging at the call of the wizard. And with them will also pass before the reader’s or muser’s eye the extravagant hero of him who “smiled Spain’s chivalry away;” Doctor Primrose and his delightful family, Parson Adams, Sir Roger de Coverley, Evangeline, Ichabod Crane, and a thousand others, which every body’s memory will distinguish for itself—just as every eye shapes its proper rainbow. They have all the distinctness of reality, and it is by an effort that we draw the line between them and bona fide characters.

Many of these last, in fact, are little better than the fictions of poets, dramatists and romancers. The histories of the venerable Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, etc. are half imaginative. There are outlines of truth in them—

The history of Scotland, for ages, from the reign of Fergus, and of Ireland from the days of Heber, Heremon and Ith, down to the conquest of the country by Strongbow, are just as fanciful as the metrical romances of Scott and Moore. Then, for the annals of Greece; Herodotus, the patriarch of history, sets down almost every thing he hears from the lying priests of Egypt, or that he can gather from vague tradition; and people don’t exactly know whether to call the CyropÆdia of Xenophon a romance or an authentic narration. Plutarch romances at times like the Scuderis. An old English author, Taylor, says, of his fallacies and blunders in the lives of the orators—mendaxille Plutarchus qui vitas oratorum dolis et erroribus consutas, olim conscribillavit. Neibuhr has got into our old history of Rome and laid about him like an iconoclast. He destroys a crowd of our beliefs, and makes a solitude in the first ages of Rome—so wonderful and picturesque in our school-boy days. He makes a solitude and calls it truth. He demolishes Mars, Rhea Sylvia, Romulus and Remus and the Wolf—Numitor, Evander, and so forth. Under the flourishing of his pen they make themselves into thin air in which they vanish. Then the Tarquins, their insolence and expulsion; Lars Porsenna of Clusium, the siege of Rome, Cocles on the Bridge and ScÆvola at the flaming Altar—all are inventions of Fabius Pictor, Ennius, NÆvius, and others. This portion of the history of Rome, says the German, should be called the Lay of the Tarquins, and is just as authentic as the Lay of the Nibelungen! “Livy’s pictored page,” (if we may be permitted to make a critical emendation of Byron’s phrase in the spirit of Bishop Warburton’s Notes on Shakspeare,) is allowed to be just as fallible as it is brilliant. Thus we have a vast amount of what is called ancient history confounded with the professed creations of fanciful minds; and there does not seem to be any very marked difference between Agamemnon or Ajax, and Cecrops or Codrus; between Æneas or Dido, and Numa or Clelia—they are all equally distinct or indistinct. Scott’s King Richard, singing a roundelay and exchanging a buffet with the Clerk of Copmanhurst, is as firm on the canvas as Alfred baking his cakes, or Canute sitting on a chair to rebuke his flatterers on the sea-shore.

And even as regards the more modern and authentic annals of history, we do not think they have paid much more respect to the actual truth of things than do the fictionists. Sir Robert Walpole used to say to his friends, “Don’t read history; that must be false.” And Sir Walter Raleigh, looking from the window of his prison in the Tower, and witnessing a quarrel in the court-yard or the street, and the after-testimony of the by-standers respecting it, was tempted, it is said, to throw his History of the World into the fire, in despair of ever being able to gather any thing like truth from conflicting authorities. And, certainly, the differences of historians—their doubts concerning motives, and their disagreements concerning facts, tend to give us very unsettled ideas of history in general. Writers have sent Col. Kirke down to us from James the Second’s reign with a very black and bloody renown. But he was not half so black as he was painted by the whigs; and the story of the poor girl whose husband he hanged before her eyes, in the morning, though she had dearly purchased his life on Kirke’s own terms, is pronounced by Ritson to be an impudent and bare-faced lie. The story is much older than Kirke. Richard the Third is also one of the historical reprobates; though it is not unlikely that the young princes were not murdered in the Tower, and that Perkin Warbeck was really the prince after all; as truly as the surreptitious, warming-pan prince is known to have been the true son of James the Second, in spite of the Protestant historians. Then there are Jack Cade and Wat Tyler; these have been receiving cruel wrong at the hands of the annalists. They dared, in an age when the rights of the people were imperfectly understood, and the influence of the feudal system still strong in the nation, to take up arms and go to war with the king and the nobles for liberty! Their sufferings and provocations were undeniable, and their spirit was certainly heroic—kindred to that which glowed in the bosoms of Melchthal, Furst, and Stauffacher, at the Brunnens of Grutli. The Swiss peasants were successful, and are held in honorable remembrance forever. But the Englishmen failed, and are set up as scarecrows and Indibria, upon the field of history. Poor Tyler and Cade were animated by the same kind of blood which boiled in the face of a tyrant at Naseby, Marston Moor, Dunbar, and elsewhere—which warmed the hearts of the exiles on the cold rock of Plymouth, and flowed so freely at Lexington and Bunker Hill. We should honor these English rebels—in spite of history, and in spite of Shakspeare. It is remarkable to see this myriad-minded man, so full of the finer humanities of our nature, yet incapable of sympathizing with the cause and feelings of the mass of the lower classes. But Shakspeare was a man of his era—to which, with an astonishing and happy wizardry, he obliged chronology and human nature to conform; he dreamed as little of the later evangils of democracy as he did of the Daguerreotype and the electric telegraph. In this way Cade, Richard, and a thousand others are in the hands of the historians, tricked out as much in the colors of imagination as in those of fact.

No man can be sure of the lesser details of the annals, though he may put faith in some of their great facts. We are not indisposed to allow that there was a man named Julius CÆsar; though whether he ever said, Quid times? vehis CÆzarem, in the boat, or Et tu Brute! when the republicans set upon him in the senate-house, is not quite so credible. Most of these picturesque properties of character or fact, so to speak, are furnished by the fancies and after-thoughts of the narrators, or fabricated wilfully for a purpose. We need not go very far back in history to discover the truth of this. In a late memoir (Achille de Vaulabelle’s) of the “Two Restorations,” we are told that an old story of the consternation of the members of the Directory, on its violent dissolution by Bonaparte, in 1800, was a false one. There was no hurry-skurry, nor jumping out of windows, any more than when Oliver Cromwell put an end to the Long Parliament. Again, that glorification made on the sinking of the Vengeur, in an engagement with the English fleet, during the first French revolution, has been latterly put out of countenance. The story in France was, that, being terribly damaged, this ship sunk with all on board, her flag flying, and the crew shouting, “Long live the republic!” Carlyle adopted this version in his history, and makes quite a cartoon of it, in his own outlandish phraseology. But on the appearance of the story in an English work, a naval officer who witnessed the affair of the Vengeur, wrote a letter to the Times, in which he stated that, instead of going down with true republican devotion, the poor French sailors, small blame to them! jumped overboard, and tried to save themselves, and that some hundreds of them were rescued in the British boats. That message, said to have come from the dying Dessaix to Bonaparte, on the field of Marengo, (“Tell the First Consul I die regretting I can no farther serve him and France,”) was fabricated in the bulletin by the aforesaid consul himself. The story of the Duke of Wellington lying in the hollow square of the Guards at Waterloo, and, on the advance of the French, crying, “Up, Guards, and at them!” is as untenable as our own famous saying—“A little more grape, Captain Bragg!” or the military speeches of the great generals of antiquity, as recorded by Tacitus, Sallust, CÆsar, and the rest of the writers. Then, as regards great facts, different nations give different accounts. Ask who gained Waterloo? “We did,” say the Prussians. “We gave vast assistance,” say the Belgians. Ask John Bull, or rather, don’t; his answer would be rather brief than polite. We should like to see a history of the campaigns in Greece of Darius, Xerxes, and Mardonius, written by Persians. All history is more or less deserving of Sir Robert Walpole’s designation. Hume, in one of his letters to Robertson, alluding to the publication of Murdin’s State Papers, which threw unexpected light upon the annals, exclaims, “We are all in the wrong!” And, indeed, Hume himself is among those to whom we are mostly indebted for the imaginative character of history. He had little of the industry of Gibbon, and trusted very much to his own sagacity for his views. He was also a tory, and became, in his scorn of whiggery, the apologist of the Stuarts. His history is charming as a composition, but errs in its colorings of facts and its conclusions from them.

Imagination, as we have said, seems the complement of the world of facts and things, in all mental exercises, except the logical and mathematical. If we contemplate nature it enhances what we behold. The mountains, rivers, forests, and the elements that gird them round about, would be only blank conditions of matter, if the mind did not fling its own divinity around them. Nature was thus endowed from the beginning—when men heard voices in the winds, and the supernatural inhabitants of terra firma,

or, in the train of powerful Poseidon,

And the modern lovers of nature, though they no longer recognize the mythologic people of the ancient beliefs in her picturesque wildernesses, clothe them with the attributes of the mysterious abstract power which is over all things. And, in the towering of her peaks, the murmur of her forests and seas, the roar of her storms, the singing of her nightly stars, they find revelations and prophecies of higher and farther existences. In this respect, the modern poetry of nature has a nobler scope and purer inspiration than the ancient. Wordsworth and Byron speculate more sublimely than Lucretius.

In another sense, the imagination materially imposes upon facts. In contemplating cities, works of art, ruins, or scenes of nature, we almost always appreciate them for the associations that belong to them—the imaginations they excite. Look at a gray bleak sort of plateau between mountains and the sea, and you see little to admire. But let somebody say, “that is Marathon!” while the blood thrills at the name, a flood of glory flashes over the immortal ground; the air is thick with phantoms—

It is this quality of the imagination which gives old countries their superior attractions when compared with new soils. At the sight of battle-fields, religious houses, cathedrals, castles, either in ruins or otherwise, we are pleased in calling up a crowd of shadows from the dust, and finding a sort of mysterious companionship with them during our passing reveries.

Campbell says very well, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and it is generally true of the human mind that it regards the past with a feeling of tenderness—a disposition to make the best of it. There is a certain charm in Time, whom we regard as the dominator of us all; and the ruins or remnants of any thing speak an impressive warning of our own evanescent fate. That belief in the good old times is an instinct too strong for the philosophy of most of us. We have a thousand proofs that they were rude, bad, ignorant times. But the poetry of our nature will not be reasoned with, and we believe with the bard—

Any thing old or historic is appreciated in proportion to the scope it gives to the imagination—to point a moral or adorn a tale. We gaze on the wild hill, vale, stream or forest of a new country, with none of those feelings which fill us in beholding similar objects in an old land. The former may be as fair or fairer to see; but, as

of whom Wordsworth speaks, so the latter is a stream, a forest, a hill—nothing more. The nameless savages had the place from the beginning, and the solitude. The other is a tradition, a romance, a memory. In the valley is the legendary well, and the fairy ring; by the stream is the fortalice of the feudal period, or the abbey dwindled to a few ivied walls and the oriel, on the site of a bloody battle where a king fell fighting, a thousand years ago; and, on the slope of the hill stand the Druid stones, in a circle, set there, certainly, in the ancient time of the giants, who descended from Thor and

As Webster, the old English dramatist, says:

They receive all their witchery from the imagination of him who surveys them. This faculty is potentially mingled with all that is most real in nature; nay, it would seem to be as much a reality as any thing else we call such. The preacher calls the world a vain shadow, and the Berkleyan philosopher calls it a huge accident of the five senses; and Shakspeare is inclined to think there is nothing that is but thinking makes it so. The practical men, therefore,—the directors of railways, the managers of stock, and the owners of electric telegraphs cannot be considered to have matters all to themselves. The poet and the romancist control as much of the “thick rotundity of the world” as they; and certainly the most enchanting portion. Schiller gives us in an admired lyric, the idea that the imaginative being was forgotten by Jove in the distribution of the earth; but received a general invitation to the Court of Olympus. Our nether “maker,” or “finder,” does still, of course, avail himself of this privilege; but not as one without alternative. He has a great share and dominion in all sublinary things; and his castles in the air may be found as firmly fixed, after all, and as well tenanted, as any existing on any other element.

---

———

BY ALICE CAREY.

———

---

———

BY A READER.

———

Oh! once again resume thy potent pen,

Thou pleasing stranger and heart-moving man,

And lead our thoughts back captive once again,

As thou alone of others only can.

Thy “Slaver” long had lingered in our mind,

And called forth hopes of future fame for thee,

When came thy “Cabin-Boy,” so fair and kind,

To set our heart’s best thoughts and feelings free—

Say, was he real? Truth seemed written

On every line that in the tale was shown,

And maidens fair by the ideal were smitten,

And sighed because the real was unknown.

Silent and passionless our hearts had beat

For months, and feared thou hadst resigned thy sway,

And earth-cares closely clung around our feet,

When sprung thy “Ocean-Born” to joyous day.

Thy beauteous “Garcia,” pure as e’er a star,

Called forth all pity, sympathy and love;

We dreaded lest the ending, darkling far,

Would all too fierce and desp’rate for her prove;

But for the son who, born of such a pair,

Thy wondrous pen portrayed so truly good,

The picture thou hast drawn so passing fair,

To us it seemed as by thee he had stood.

Oh! cease not yet—nor deem it labor vain

The treasures of thy mind to bring to view,

Let the creations of thy soul again

Their joyous power spread over us anew.

---

———

BY THE AUTHORESS OF THE CONSPIRATOR.

———