Last month direct reference was made by our contributors to the beauties of May. Poets have felt the inspiration of the season from the first, and all the beauties and all the odors of the month have seemed transfused to their verse, rich in metrical excellence, and redolent of the sweets it embalmed. But we have taken a range among the hills and valleys, and, unable to express in poetry those sentiments which the season inspired, we must, though a month later, appeal to humble prose, and make a record of what we saw and felt, with no hope of suggesting high thoughts to others, or of awakening that feeling which, in the gifted and the good, may be aroused by eloquence.

The chill of April winds does not prevent the greenness of herbage which the fecundating power of April rains provokes. And hidden in among the relics of last year’s vegetation, and the nascent herbage of young spring, little flowers had nestled away; little, but beautiful flowers, decorating the narrow space between the new-born child and the dead parent. I plucked a few of those modest gems, almost afraid that I desecrated the altar of Nature, in thus taking its scanty decorations; but they did their office, since they awakened in me a remembrance of Him whose hand planted the towering oak that makes the forest majestic, and whose fingers scattered the seed that produced these minute ministers of his will, these records of his omnipotence and omnipresence.

“All things are full of God”—it is the language of the heathen poet, it is the language of divine inspiration, it is the language of the heart touched with the truths of Nature, and connecting them with Nature’s Author. “Hill and dale are of thy dressing.” And as I stood in the dale, amid the delicate outpouring of the beauties there, and looked upward to the hills studded with the time-marked trees, I said to myself, “Here is that volume of truth that speaks of the unknown, yet not unreverenced, God, whose will and providence are revealed in the volume of inspiration.”

I had, almost insensibly, got within the enclosure of a burying-ground, which is situated near the Frankford Road, only a few miles from the city, and was transferring my thoughts from the beautiful objects of Nature to the specimens of human ingenuity that transmit the date of birth and death, with the name of the mortal, from one generation to the other. No one, I believe, passes through a burying-ground without pausing to read the little story, and thinking over the events which marked the life of the deceased. It is good when standing thus to think that he who is below was of like passions with ourselves—that he had all the social and domestic feelings which we possess, and was influenced by the events of life as we are. What a world do we animate when we thus think of each individual—thus place him in connection with social, domestic, political life. How we multiply interests, augment joys, and increase the pangs to which human existence is liable.

At the turning of one of the little avenues that “lead to the tomb,” making an easy path to the grave, I saw that a new head-stone had been erected, and it bore the name of one whom I had known in her childhood. She was beautiful—but more lovely in mind than person. She married early, and gave birth to an infant, and died—a short biography. She was not forgotten. The memorials testified to the yet existing memory of her husband—and a nurse leading a little child toward the mound signified that her virtues were to be kept in remembrance by the child she had borne.

A little flower had sprung up on the very top of the grave. It had probably been planted in the autumn, but it was now beautiful in its solitude. Its colors were as rich as if the roots had struck down and drawn nutriment from the heart that mouldered below, and its odors were as rich as if they were imparted by the spirit that had gone upward. I know not when I have seen thus placed a more lovely flower; perhaps it owed a part of this estimate to its loneliness, a part to its connection with the beauty and purity of her over whom it expanded.

The little child on leaning over the grave fell prostrate, and manifested no disposition to rise. After a few moments delay, I gently raised her in my arms, and placed her on her feet. She seemed not pleased at first with my interference.

“It is my mamma’s grave,” said she, with much emphasis, “and she is down there now.”

“But lying on that moist ground might expose you to take cold.”

“Yet I love to throw myself there,” she said. “I must do it, for I loved her much.”

I tried to persuade her to desist, but she stepped toward the grave with a view of repeating her fall. Her attendant stooped down, and said in a low voice,

“But your dear mother would not be pleased to see you do wrong, even if it was in token of your love for her.”

“Then I will not do it.”

If there had been no good seed planted in the child’s heart, at least the soil had been beautifully prepared for the planting—what could have been better done than this reverence for the name and virtues of a mother, and this obedience to her supposed will? I had, I thought, lighted on another truly lovely spring flower.

“Do you come often to visit your mother’s grave?” I asked of the little one. The child looked up as if the inquiry should be repeated.

“We make frequent visits hither,” said the attendant. “We come almost daily in good weather.”

“Oh, yes!” said the child, “we come every fine day to visit where mother lies—and I am not afraid.”

“Why should you fear?” said I.

The child looked confused at the question.

“You will some day meet your mother if you are constant in your love, and thus seek to do whatever your friends tell you she would have desired, and to avoid what she would not have approved.”

“I will endeavor to do so—but—I shall not meet her—we are going to Europe again, and shall not return.”

“To Europe—but, my child, God is everywhere.”

“Yes, sir; but my mother is not.”

“But, my dear child, your mother’s spirit, her soul, that which is loved in your mother, is, I hope, in Heaven; it is not in the grave to moulder into dust—the body takes that course, but the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

“Sir,” said the attendant, “they do not teach the child such things, and they do not approve of them.”

“Who does not?”

“Her father and a cousin—they are good people, but are unbelievers in all such matters; and though they seldom dispute with others, they never admit of any instruction to their child about religion.”

“But,” said I, “she must know something about it.”

“Not at all, sir; she does not know what you mean by a spirit or a soul. How should she know—the cousin is her teacher, and she never refers to the subject, and forbids it to me.”

“But the child has been taught something of the kind.”

“Who taught her, sir?”

“Perhaps God. But I will see whether she has any idea of the matter.”

“Do you know, my child, what the soul is?”

“No sir—do you?”

I did not like to reply to her query—so I proceeded, “Your mother has yet an existence, and if she was good—”

“Oh, my mother was very good—always good.”

“Then the spirit which animated her body is in the enjoyment of all the good belonging to its present state, which the body could enjoy on earth—it is happy.” I was ashamed of the explanation.

“Would it be like her, if I could see it?”

“Probably exactly like her.”

“And could I see or know of her real existence in that state?”

“Yes, though not usual. All is possible with God.”

“Then I understand you. I have seen her often—often at night; and I have started as if I had been asleep. But at night I see my mother just as she looked when I saw her before her death, only there seemed to be light around her head, and she moved easily and rapidly. Oh, how night after night I have been with her, toiling on to overtake her steps, or carried rapidly forward; sometimes she seems to give me instruction—sometimes I rise in the morning and think I will pray to her, or I will pray God to give her to me again; and I have made known my feelings to cousin, and she has laughed at me or chid me for being so babyish as to be thoughtful about dreams. But I see now that this was truly my mother, and I will watch to-night, and when she comes again, I will ask her about her soul—have we all souls?”

I think, now, that I could have placed the child in a position to comprehend these things a little better; but then I was confused with the extraordinary state of the child’s mind.

“Did God teach her that?” said the attendant.

“Did he not teach her that?” I turned away as I saw some one coming down the walk.

Did God teach that child? Was it the yet unfaded visions from which her soul was drawn, ere it became a tenant of the clayey tabernacle that was overshadowing her mind; the recollections of heaven illuminating its little earthly experience, growing dimmer and dimmer with time—was that the mother in the child, or was there, indeed, an appeal to its mind through its affections? Had she, shut out from all instructors during the day, denied all the knowledge which is the true foundation of a Christian’s life—denied it by father and relative—had she, in her bed, been met as little Samuel was met, by the voice of God, calling up the mind to its high destiny, and instructing it in the things that were to come?

I could not solve this enigma. But how innocent, how attractive to the spirit of goodness must have been the mind of that little girl; and it would not be strange, at least it would seem most meet, that her guardian spirit should find means to awaken in her a sense of her importance, and to invite her to goodness by her love for a departed mother. I turned round before I left the ground, and saw the little child standing beside the grave. She looked down steadily upon the uplifted earth, and then turned her face upward, and seemed to gaze with intense interest into the blue sky above. I would have given much to know the thoughts that had occupied her mind, to have seen how love for the perishing object below, how reverence for the purified spirit above were alternating in her mind. I am sure that her thoughts had in them more of maturity and truth relative to those objects of her contemplation, than they had of the things of this life.

I passed onward to the road, full of the idea of the child, who could not be deprived of knowledge. I had found an early flower—the chill of winter, its snows and its frosts, had forbidden its development—but a gentle ray from the sun of truth had called it forth; it was blossoming for man, delightful now, to be transplanted to its native heaven hereafter.

C.

The Sewing Girl.—The inequality of social life and domestic comfort in large cities, is, we presume, inseparable from a state of society as at present organized, and the bold reformer, even while he is preaching, is illustrating its incapacity for sudden change. So long as capital possesses supreme power, and the inherent quality of reproduction, there must be dependents and laborers. We cannot all ride in carriages, or there would be none to build them, and the present stock, we think, would in time grow ricketty upon the hands of the most adroit leveler. And if we descended into a race of pedestrians, we fear that we should in time, even if we divided the last dollar with a needy brother, be looked upon as soulless and decidedly shabby. We do not know that Fourier, even in his maddest dreams of social reformation and equality, ever seriously contemplated an era when boots should grow upon trees, without the aid of human hands, and coats come down like snow-flakes to cover our nakedness. We think not. And even if he had, there are certain disagreeable anticipations—aside from want of modesty—in wandering about on a wintry day, hunting for garments—to say nothing of having our beef killed and cooked to stay our appetites the while.

We suppose then we must have sewing girls—but we see no necessity of forgetting that they are girls—and neither horses nor mules—that they are human beings—noble women, with as warm hearts, and as good blood as ourselves, feeling the same yearnings after sympathy, the same keenness of suffering under insult, neglect or wrong. There is no necessary humiliation in labor. It is in itself of the highest dignity and of the loftiest nobility of extraction. She who, by assiduous industry, makes her little home happy, clothes her infant brothers, and administers to the wants of an aged and decrepit parent, has clothed herself in the holiest of garments, and though their texture may not be of the finest, she may stand up proudly beside the purple of a queen, and if she sees but the trembling of scorn upon the royal lip, may say, “Stand off! I am nobler than thou!” The treatment, however, which some of them receive from very fashionable and very silly young ladies, who have been badly educated by ignorant and vulgar mothers, is humiliating to witness occasionally, and must be very hard to bear continually.

And yet the fashionable young lady may number among her accomplishments a smattering of French, or a villainous enunciation of Italian; may thrash the piano, with all discordancy, and nurse her poodle dog with infinite grace, and call it very fatiguing, and be obliged to take a nap after dinner, for fear her strength may fail her in the evening, in the waltz with Mr. Alfred Fitzhuggens, who labors under the accomplishments of an imperial and a dandy cane; while the young sewing girl may be devoting diligently sixteen hours out of the weary twenty-four, in earning the most indifferent food for a family of dependents.

We wonder if these young ladies while thumbing their gilt prayer-books on Sunday, and lisping over the prayer, “From all blindness of heart, from pride, vain glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us,” ever think of the meaning and solemn import of the words they are using. We doubt it. Or in the more direct adjuration, “That it may please thee to strengthen those who stand, and comfort and help the weak hearted,” they ever think how little their heartlessness to dependents justifies them in putting up the prayer. Or still further, do they ever think of the obligations of that sublime command, in which Christianity sparkles like a divine light, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” We fear that at many a table where grace is said, the hearts who hear it are utterly graceless in this regard, and that many who are very rigid in paying the formalities of prayer to God, forget the divine injunction, “feed my lambs,” and would rather add an additional hour to the day of toil, and a shilling less to the pay of the toil-worn sewing girl, than to lighten her burdens by a cheerful word or token of encouragement.

Not that we wish for a moment to be supposed as intimating that this lack of enlarged charity is wanting in well trained hypocrites only—who do not dishonor religion, but by daily acts prove its truth and beauty, by showing that they are none of Christ’s. The haughty assumption and vulgar domineering is far worse where all restraint is thrown off, and worldliness unmitigated and shameless, in scarlet and effrontery, rides purse proud over the decencies as well as the charities of life, and makes dependency a worse slavery than that of the poor Indian in the mines.

The character of a lady is in no way more surely tested than in treatment of her domestics—and, generally, in the frequency with which she changes them. Depend upon it—the house in which nobody can be happy, must be a miniature of existence in a darker world.

G. R. G.

Cape May Season.—As the warm weather steals upon us, our friends begin to talk of “the Capes,” and to look up straw hats and bathing-dresses. Cape May has in its very sound a charm pleasingly familiar to almost every Philadelphia ear. Here visits the merchant in the summer months, for relaxation from the counting-room—the clerk for his holydays—the man of pleasure for enjoyment—the idle for luxurious indolence. It is Philadelphia in miniature, and full of life—lively, chatty, gossipy, and hilarious—disposed to enjoyment, and determined to have it. A family reunion at holyday times.

The old gentleman has a reputation abroad for great simplicity of manner—wearing his coat of the very purest material, and of the very plainest cut—and a hat of undeniable beaver, of great amplitude of brim; a sturdy old chap, with a benevolent face, who gives his simple and emphatic “No!” to the allurements and pressing solicitations of folly. The younger shoots have departed greatly from the plainness of the primitive tree, and flourish in the luxuriousness of magnolia and orange blossoms, and show a strong tendency to burst out in all the beauty and splendor of hot-house “japonicadom.” Yet under the eye of the old gentleman, in these holyday times, the youngsters seem to scorn the borrowed aid of laces, satins and jewelry, and give tight boots, dandy-coats, and perfumery the go-by; for it is whispered, that he shuts his money-box rather tightly to such of his heirs as run after worldly vanities; so that here you may see them in blouses and straw-hats, in dressing-gown and slippers, perfectly unrestrained with tight lacing, luxuriously happy, and indescribably gay. They go about with an honest, hearty, unrestrained laugh—snapping their fingers at care, and perfectly unconcerned at the imputation of having let down their dignity. The family improves evidently under this relaxation from brocades and stiff ceremonies. They have a more hearty expression of face, a more thoroughly robust and vigorous frame, and though the cheek may be a little browner, the eye is brighter, and the heart happier.

The regular visiter at these times is a black-eyed, cherry-cheeked cousin from Baltimore, a little given to flirting and dangerously fascinating, as graceful as a young fawn, and as frolicksome as a kitten. She always appears to have come down purposely for a romp, having left city affectations at home, and brought her graces with her. Then she wont go home until she has half a dozen of her cousins—from the third to the sixth remove—desperately in love with her, to keep them in mind of Cape May.

Then “Tom”—“Our Tom”—he is always there; Tom wouldn’t miss Cape May, in the season, for a £100—and the sly dog knows how to show off the attractions of his beautiful cousins. He is sure to decoy them into the Archery every bright morning, and has so many neat and appropriate remarks in regard to the health and gracefulness of the exercise—and the bows are so inviting, and the arrows so neat—the gold and crimson target so tempting that you do not wonder to see a cloud of arrows filling the air, and a crowd of lounging beaux, filled with shafts more dangerous. Then “Tom”—sad Tom—knows that his fair cousins are as fearless as beautiful, and fire off pistols with quite a soldierly air—that is, when Tom loads them; and the sly scamp, speaks in so low a tone—so softly and so kindly—when he hands the pistol with the hair-trigger, that you are amazed to find that there was powder in it when it goes off—and at the first crack “Tom” has the whole family there; then he is such a lover of enjoyment himself—is good, honest, manly Tom Barrett—that it delights him to see them. Then he has his Bowling Saloons in tiptop order; his Billiard-room, too; his dogs and guns for crack shots at woodcock, and ambitious young sportsmen after curlew; and then he has—In short, it wouldn’t be Cape May, if Tom wasn’t there—and there’s an end of it. Well, well, Tom! we shall not try your pistols nor your archery this summer, but shall take a crack at Cape May, in a story, which we have in type. So let the surf come tumbling in with its musical roar—its wild waves wash out no memories. Our loves and our hates keep time in the heart which beats on proudly, yet bides its time hopefully. In the roar of the wilder ocean, where men go down battling unregretted, how many who now spread their bright sails to the favoring breeze, shall, ere the voyage is ended, find sail and cordage gone, their vessels wrecked, and the happy hearts of merry companions, one after the other, swept by the remorseless wave forever under—who shall tell, Tom! But so the side toward heaven has been ripened by the sunlight of kindness to man, what matters the breakers, Tom, to you or to me?

G. R. G.