"Rather expensive fireworks, I am afraid," said Caroline flippantly, as her father described the lurid grandeur of the scene.

"Do not speak lightly, my daughter, of that which must reduce many from affluence to beggary. Millions of property were lost last night. The 16th of December, 1835, will long be remembered in the annals of New-York, I fear."

"It will long be remembered in my annals," whispered Caroline to her cousin, with a bright smile, despite her father's chiding.

"Not at home to any but Mr. Philip Oswald," had been Caroline Danby's order to the servant this morning; and thus when she was told, at twelve o'clock, that that gentleman awaited her in the drawing-room, she had heard nothing more of the fire than her father and the morning paper had communicated. As she entered, Philip arose to greet her, but though he strove to smile as his eyes met hers, the effort was vain; and throwing himself back on the sofa, he covered his face with his hand, as though to hide his pallor and the convulsive quivering of his lips from her whom he was reluctant to grieve. Emboldened by her fears, Caroline advanced, and laying her hand on his, exclaimed, "What is the matter?—Are you ill?—your mother?—pray do not keep me in suspense, but tell me what has happened."

He seemed to have mastered his emotion, from whatever cause it had proceeded; for removing his hand, he looked earnestly upon her, and drawing her to a seat beside him, said in firm, though sad tones, "That has happened, Caroline, which would not move me thus, but for your dear sake—I asked you last night to share my fortune—to-day I have none to offer you."

"Gracious heaven!" exclaimed Caroline, turning as pale as he, "what do you mean?"

"That in the fire last night, or the failures which the most sanguine assure me it must produce, my whole fortune is involved. If I can recover from the wreck what will secure to my poor mother the continuance of her accustomed comforts, it will be beyond my hopes; for me—the luxuries, the comforts, the very necessaries of life must be the produce of my own exertion. I do not ask you to share my poverty, Caroline; I cannot be so selfish; had I not spoken of my love last night, you should never have heard it—though it had been like a burning fire, I would have shut it up within my heart—but it is too late for this; you have heard it, and I have heard—the remembrance brings with it a wild delirious joy, even in this hour of darkness "—and the pale face of Philip Oswald flushed, and his dimmed eye beamed brightly again as he spoke: "I have heard your sweet confession of reciprocal regard. Months, perhaps years may pass before I attain the goal at which I last night thought myself to have already arrived—before I can dare to call you mine—but in our land, manly determination and perseverance ever command success, and I fear not to promise you, dearest, one day a happy home—though not a splendid one—if you will promise me to share it. Look on me, Caroline—give me one smile to light me on my way—with such a hope before me, I cannot say my dreary way."

He ceased, yet Caroline neither looked upon him, nor spoke. Her cheek had grown pale at his words, and she sat down with downcast eyes, cold, still, statue-like at his side. Yet did not Philip Oswald doubt her love. Had not her eye kindled and her cheek flushed at his whispered vows—had not her hand rested lovingly in his, and her lip been yielded to the first kiss of love—how, then, could he dare to doubt her? She was grieved for his sake—he had been selfishly abrupt in his first communication of his sorrow, and now he—the stronger—must struggle to bear and to speak cheerfully for her sake. And with this feeling he had been able to conclude far more cheerfully than he commenced. As she still continued silent, he bent forward, and would have pressed his lip to her cheek, saying, "Not one word for me, dear one,"—but, drawing hastily back, Caroline said with great effort,

"I think, Mr. Oswald—it seems to me that—that—an engagement must be a heavy burden to one who has to make his own way in life—I—I should be sorry to be a disadvantage to you."

It was a crushing blow, and for an instant he sat stunned into almost death-like stillness by it:—but he rallied;—he would leave no loop on which hope or fancy might hereafter hang a doubt. "Caroline," he said, in a voice whose change spoke the intensity of his feelings, "do not speak of disadvantage to me—your love was the one star left in my sky—but that matters not—what I would know is, whether you desire that the record of last evening should be blotted from the history of our lives?"

"I—I think it had better be—I am sure I wish you well, Mr. Oswald."

It was well for her, perhaps, that she did not venture to meet his eye—that look of withering scorn could hardly ever have vanished from her memory—it was enough to hear his bitter laugh, and the accents in which he said, "Thank you, Miss Danby—your wishes are fully reciprocated—may you never know a love less prudent than your own."

The door closed on him, and she was alone—left to the companionship of her own heart—evil companionship in such an hour! She hastened to relate all that had passed to Mary, but Mary had no assurances for her—she had only sympathy for Philip—"dear Philip"—as she called him over and over again. "I think it would better become one so young as you are, to say, Mr. Oswald, Mary," said Caroline, pettishly.

"I have called him Philip from my childhood, Caroline—I shall not begin to say Mr. Oswald now." Mary did not mean a reproach, but to Caroline's accusing conscience it sounded like one, and she turned away indignantly. She soon, however, sought her cousin again with a note in her hand.

"I have been writing to Mrs. Oswald, Mary," she said; "you are perhaps too young, and Mr. Oswald too much absorbed in his own disappointment, to estimate the propriety of my conduct; but she will, I am sure, agree with me, that one expensively reared as I have been, accustomed to every luxury, and perfectly ignorant of economy, would make the worst possible wife to a poor man; and she has so much influence over Mr. Oswald, that, should she accord with me in opinion on this point, she can easily convince him of its justice. Will you take my note to her? I do not like to send it by a servant—it might fall into Philip's hands."

Nothing could have pleased Mary more than this commission, for her affectionate heart was longing to offer its sympathy to her friends. Mrs. Oswald assumed perhaps a little more than her usual stateliness when she heard her announced, but it vanished instantly before Mary's tearful eye, as she kissed the hand that was extended to her. Mrs. Oswald folded her arms around her, and Mary sank sobbing upon the bosom of her whom she had come to console. And Mrs. Oswald was consoled by such true and tender sympathy. It was long before Mary could prevail on herself to disturb the flow of gentler affections by delivering Caroline's note. Mrs. Oswald received it with an almost contemptuous smile, which remained unchanged while she read. It was a labored effort to make her conduct seem a generous determination not to obstruct Philip's course in life, by binding him to a companion so unsuitable to his present prospects as herself. In reply, Mrs. Oswald assured Caroline Danby of her perfect agreement with her in the conviction that she would make a very unsuitable wife for Philip Oswald. "This," she added, "was always my opinion, though I was unwilling to oppose my son's wishes. I thank you for having convinced him I was right in the only point on which we ever differed."

It cannot be supposed that this note was very pleasing to Caroline Danby; but, whatever were her dissatisfaction, she did not complain, and probably soon lost all remembrance of her chagrin in the gayeties which a few men of fortune still remained, amidst the almost universal ruin, to promote and to partake.

In the mean time, Philip Oswald was experiencing that restlessness, that burning desire to free himself from all his present associations, to begin, as it were, a new life, which the first pressure of sorrow so often arouses in the ardent spirit. Had not his will been "bound down by the iron chain of necessity," he would probably have returned to Europe, and wasted his energies amidst aimless wanderings. As it was, he chose among those modes of life demanded by his new circumstances, that which would take him farthest from New-York, and place him in a condition the most foreign to all his past experience, and demanding the most active and most incessant exertion. Out of that which the fire, the failure of Insurance Companies and of private individuals, had left him remained, after the purchase of a liberal annuity for his mother, a few thousands to be devoted either to merchandise, to his support while pursuing the studies necessary for the acquirement of a profession, or to any mode of gaining a living, which he might prefer to these. The very hour which ascertained this fact, saw his resolution taken and his course marked out.

"I must have new scenery for this new act in the drama of my life," he said to his mother. "I must away—away from all the artificialities and trivialities of my present world, to the rich prairies, the wide streams, the boundless expanse of the West. I go to make a new home for you dear mother—you shall be the queen of my kingdom."

This was not the choice that would have pleased an ambitious, or an over-fond mother. The former would have preferred a profession, as conferring higher social distinction; the latter would have shrunk from seeing one nursed in the lap of luxury go forth to encounter the hardships of a pioneer. But Mrs. Oswald possessed an intelligence which recognized in that life of bold adventure, and physical endurance, and persevering labor, that awaited her son in the prosecution of his plans, the best school for the development of that decision and force of character which she had desired as the crowning seal to Philip's intellectual endowments, warm affections, and just principles; and, holding his excellence as the better part of her own happiness, she sanctioned his designs, and did all in her power to promote their execution. He waited, therefore, only to see her leave the house whose rent now exceeded her whole annual income, for pleasant rooms in a boarding-house, agreeably situated, before he set out from New-York.

It is not our intention minutely to trace his course, to describe the "local habitation" which he acquired, or detail the difficulties which arose in his progress, the strength with which he combated, or the means by which he overcame them. For his course, suffice it that it was westward; for his habitation, that it was on the slope of a hill crowned with the gigantic trees of that fertile soil, and beside a lake, "a sheet of silver" well fitted to be—

"A mirror and a bath for beauty's youngest daughters;"

and that the house, which he at length succeeded in raising and furnishing there, united somewhat the refinement of his past life to the simplicity of his present; for his difficulties, we can only say, he met them and conquered them, and gained from each encounter knowledge and power. For two years, letters were the only medium of intercourse between his mother and himself, but those letters were a history—a history not only of his stirring, outer life, but of that inner life which yet more deeply interested her. Feeling proud herself of the daring spirit, the iron will, the ready invention which these letters displayed, yet prouder of the affectionate heart, the true and generous nature, it is not wonderful that Mrs. Oswald should have often read them, or at least parts of them, to her constant friend and very frequent visitor, Mary Grayson. Nor is it more strange that Mary, thus made to recognize in the most interesting man she had yet known, far more lofty claims to her admiration, should have enshrined him in her young and pure imagination as some "bright, particular star."

Two years in the future! How almost interminable seems the prospect to our hopes or our affections!—but let Time turn his perspective glass—let us look at it in the past, and how it shrinks and becomes as a day in the history of our lives! So was it with Philip Oswald's two years of absence, when he found himself, in the earliest dawn of the spring of 1838, once more in New-York. Yet that time had not passed without leaving traces of its passage—traces in the changes affecting those around him—yet deeper traces in himself. He arrived in the afternoon of an earlier day than that on which he had been expected. In the evening Mrs. Oswald persuaded him to assume, for the gratification of her curiosity, the picturesque costume worn by him in his western home. He had just re-entered her room, and she was yet engaged in animated observation of the hunting-shirt, strapped around the waist with a belt of buckskin, the open collar, and loosely knotted cravat, which, as the mother's heart whispered, so well became that tall and manly form, when there was a slight tap at the door, and before she could speak, it opened, and Mary Grayson stood within it. She gazed in silence for a moment on the striking figure before her, and her mind rapidly scanned the changes which time and new modes of life had made in the Philip Oswald of her memory. As she did so, she acknowledged that the embrowned face and hands, the broader and more vigorous proportions, and even the easy freedom of his dress, were more in harmony with the bold and independent aspect which his character had assumed, than the delicacy and elegance by which he had formerly been distinguished. His outer man was now the true index of a noble, free, and energetic spirit—a spirit which, having conquered itself, was victor over all—and as such, it attracted from Mary a deeper and more reverent admiration, than she had felt for him when adorned with all the trappings of wealth and luxurious refinement. The very depth of this sentiment destroyed the ease of her manner towards him, and as Philip Oswald took the hand formerly so freely offered him, and heard from her lips the respectful Mr. Oswald, instead of the frank, sisterly Philip, he said to himself—"She looks down upon the backwoodsman, and would have him know his place." So much for man's boasted penetration!

Notwithstanding the barrier of reserve thus erected between them, Philip Oswald could not but admire the rare loveliness into which Mary Grayson's girlish prettiness had expanded, and again, and yet again, while she was speaking to his mother, and could not therefore perceive him, he turned to gaze on her, fascinated not by the finely turned form or beautiful features, but by the countenance beaming with gentle and refined intelligence. Here was none of the brilliancy which had dazzled his senses in Caroline Danby, but an expression of mind and heart far more captivating to him who had entered into the inner mysteries of life.

A fortnight was the limit of Philip Oswald's stay in the city. He had come not for his mother, but for the house in which she was to live, and he carried it back with him. We do not mean that his house, with all its conveniences of kitchen and pantry, its elegances of parlor and drawing-room, and its decorations of pillar and cornice fitly joined together, travelled off with him to the far West. We do not despair of seeing such a feat performed some day, but we believe it has not yet been done, and Philip Oswald, at least, did not attempt it; he took with him, however, all those useful and ornamental contrivances in their several parts, accompanied by workmen skilled in putting the whole together. Again in his western home, for another year, his head and his hands were fully occupied with building and planting. For the first two years of his forest life, he had thought only of the substantial produce of the field—the rye, the barley, the Indian corn, which were to be exchanged for the "omnipotent dollar"—but woman was coming, and beauty and grace must be the herald of her steps. For his mother, he planted fruits and flowers, opened views of the lake, made a gravelled walk to its shore bordered with flowering shrubs, and wreathed the woodbine, the honeysuckle, and the multiflora rose around the columns of his piazza. For his mother this was done, and yet, when the labors of the day were over, and he looked forth upon them in the cool, still evening hour, it was not his mother's face, but one younger and fairer which peered out upon him from the vine-leaves, or with tender smiles wooed him to the lake. Young, fair, and tender as it was, its wooings generally sent him in an opposite direction, with a sneer at his own folly, to stifle his fancies with a book, or to mark out the plan of the morrow's operations.

More than a year had passed away and Philip Oswald was again in New-York, just as spring was gliding into the ardent embraces of summer. This time he had come for his mother, and with all the force of his resolute will, he shut his ears to the flattering suggestions of fancy, that a dearer pleasure than even that mother's presence might be won. He had looked steadily upon his lot in life, and he accepted it, and determined to make the best of it and to be happy in it; yet he felt that it was after all a rugged lot. Without considering all women as mercenary as Caroline Danby, which his knowledge of his mother forbade him to do, even in his most woman-scorning mood, he yet doubted whether any of those who had been reared amidst the refinements of cultivated life, could be won to leave them all for love in the western wilds; and as the unrefined could have no charms for him, he deliberately embraced bachelordom as a part of his portion, and, not without a sigh, yielded himself to the conviction that all the wealth of woman's love within his power to attain, was locked within a mother's heart.

A fortnight was again the allotted time of Philip Oswald's stay; but when that had expired, he was persuaded to delay his departure for yet another week. He had been drawn, by accompanying his mother in her farewell visits, once more within the vortex of society, and his manly independence and energy, his knowledge of what was to his companions a new world, and his spirit-stirring descriptions of its varied beauty and inexhaustible fertility, made him more the fashion than he had ever been. He had often met Caroline Danby—now Mrs. Randall—and Mary more than once delicately turned her eyes away from her cousin's face, lest she should read there somewhat of chagrin as Mr. Randall, with his meaningless face and dapper-looking form—insignificant in all save the reputation of being the wealthiest banker in Wall-street, and possessing the most elegant house and furniture, the best appointed equipage, and the handsomest wife in the city—stood beside Philip Oswald with

"——a form indeed Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man,"

and a face radiant with intelligence, while circled by an attentive auditory of that which was noblest and best in their world, his eloquent enthusiasm made them hear the rushing waters, see the boundless prairies, and feel for a time all the wild freedom of the untamed West. Such enthusiasm was gladly welcomed as a breeze in the still air, a ruffle in the stagnant waters of fashionable life.

Within two or three days of their intended departure, Mrs. Oswald proposed to Philip that they should visit a friend residing near Fort Lee, and invited Mary to accompany them. Among the acquaintances whom they found on board was an invalid lady, who could not bear the fresh air upon deck; and Mary, pitying her loneliness and seclusion, remained for awhile conversing with her in the cabin. Mrs. Oswald and Philip were on deck, and near them was a young and giddy girl, to whose care a mother had intrusted a bold, active, joyous infant, seemingly about eight months old.

"That is a dangerous position for so lively a child," said Philip Oswald to the young nurse, as he saw her place him on the side of the boat; "he may spring from your arms overboard."

With that foolish tempting of the danger pointed out by another, which we sometimes see even in women, the girl removed her arms from around the child, sustaining only a slight hold of its frock. At this moment the flag of the boat floated within view of the little fellow, and he sprang towards it. A splash in the water told the rest—but even before that was heard, Philip Oswald had dashed off his boots and coat, and the poor child had scarcely touched the waves when he was beside it, and held it encircled in his arm.

"Oh, Mary! Mr. Oswald! Mr. Oswald!" cried one of Mary's young acquaintances, rushing into the cabin with a face blanched with terror.

"What of him?" questioned Mary, starting eagerly forward.

"He is in the water. Oh, Mary! he will be drowned."

Mary did not utter a sound, yet she felt in that moment, for the first time, how important to her was Philip Oswald's life. Tottering towards the door, she leaned against it for a moment while all around grew dark, and strange sounds were buzzing in her ears. The next instant she sank into a chair and lost her terrors in unconsciousness. The same young lady who had played the alarmist to her, as she saw the paleness of death settle on Mary's face and her eyes close, ran again upon the deck, exclaiming, "Mary Grayson is fainting,—pray come to Mary Grayson."

Philip Oswald was already on deck, dripping indeed, but unharmed and looking nobler than ever, as he held the recovered child in his arms. As that cry, "Mary Grayson is fainting," reached his ears, he threw the infant to a bystander, and hastened to the cabin followed by Mrs. Oswald.

"What has caused this?" cried Mrs. Oswald, as she saw Mary still insensible, supported on the bosom of her invalid friend.

"Miss Ladson's precipitation," said the invalid, looking not very pleasantly on that young lady; "she told her Mr. Oswald was drowning."

"Well, I am sure I thought he was drowning."

"If he had been, it would have been a pity to give such information so abruptly," said Mrs. Oswald, as she took off Mary's bonnet, and loosened the scarf which was tied around her neck.

"I am sure," exclaimed Miss Ladson, anxious only to secure herself from blame,—"I am sure I did not suppose Mary would faint; for when her uncle's horse threw him, and every body thought he was killed, instead of fainting she ran out in the street, and did for him more than any body else could do. I am sure I could not think she would care more for Mr. Oswald's danger than for her own uncle's."

No one replied to this insinuation; but that Philip Oswald heard it, might have been surmised from the sudden flush that rose to his temples, and from his closer clasp of the unconscious form, which at his mother's desire he was bearing to a settee. Whether it were the water which oozed from his saturated garments over her face and neck, or some subtle magnetic fluid conveyed in that tender clasp, that aroused her, we cannot tell; but a faint tinge of color revisited her cheeks and lips, and as Philip laid her tenderly down, while his arms were still around her, and his face was bending over her, she opened her eyes. What there was in that first look which called such a sudden flash of joy into Philip Oswald's eyes, we know not; nor what were the whispered words which, as he bowed his head yet lower, sent a crimson glow into Mary's pale cheeks. This however we do know, that Mrs. Oswald and her son delayed their journey for yet another week; and that the day before their departure Philip Oswald stood with Mary Grayson at his side before God's holy altar, and there, in the presence of his mother, Mr. Danby, Mr. and Mrs. Randall, and a few friends, they took those vows which made them one for ever.

Does some starched prude, or some lady interested in the bride's trousseau, exclaim against such unseemly haste? We have but one excuse for them. They were so unfashionable as to prefer the gratification of a true affection to the ceremonies so dear to vanity, and to think more of the earnest claims of life than of its gilded pomps.

Mr. Danby had been unable to pay down the bride's small dower of 8000 dollars; and when he called on his son-in-law, Mr. Randall, to assist him, he could only offer to indorse his note to Mr. Oswald for the amount, acknowledging that it would be perilous at that time to abstract even half that amount from his business. It probably would have been perilous indeed, as in little more than a month after he failed for an enormous amount; but fear not, reader, for the gentle Caroline: she still retained her elegant house and furniture, her handsome equipage and splendid jewels. These were only a small part of what the indignant creditors found had been made over to her by her grateful husband.

Six years have passed away since the occurrence of the events we have been recording. Caroline Randall, weary of the sameness of splendor in her home, has been abroad for two years, travelling with a party of friends. It is said—convenient phrase that—that her husband had declared she must and shall return, and that to enforce his will he has resolved to send her no more remittances, to honor no more of her drafts, as she has already almost beggared him by her extravagance abroad. Verily, she has her reward!

One farewell glance at our favorite, Mary Grayson, and we have done.

Beside a lovely lake, over whose margin light graceful shrubs are bending, and on whose transparent waters lie the dense forest shadows, though here and there the golden rays of the declining sun flash through the tangled boughs upon its dancing waves, a noble-looking boy of four years old is sailing his mimic fleet, while a lovely girl, two years younger, toddles about, picking "pitty flowers," and bringing them to "papa, mamma, or grandmamma," as her capricious fancy prompts. Near by, papa, mamma, grandmamma, and one pleased and honored guest, are grouped beneath the bending boughs of a magnificent black walnut, and around a table on which strawberries and cream, butter sweet as the breath of the cows that yielded it, biscuits light and white, and bread as good as Humbert himself could make, are served in a style of elegant simplicity, while the silver urn in which the water hisses, and the small china cups into which the fragrant tea is poured, if they are somewhat antique in fashion, are none the less beautiful or the less valued by those who still prize the slightest object associated with the affections beyond the gratification of the vanity.

The evening meal is over. The shadows grow darker on the lake. Agreeable conversation has given place to silent enjoyment, which Mrs. Oswald interrupts to say, "Philip, this is the hour for music; let us have some before Mary leaves us with the children."

Full, deep-toned was the manly voice that swelled upon that evening air, and soft and clear its sweet accompaniment, while the words, full of adoring gratitude and love, seemed incense due to the heaven which had so blessed them.

The last sweet notes had died away, and Mary, calling the children, leads them to their quiet repose, after they have bestowed their good-night kisses. Philip Oswald follows her with his eyes, as, with a child on each hand, she advances with gentle grace upon the easy slope, to the house on its summit. She enters the piazza, and is screened from his view by its lattice-work of vines, but he knows that soon his children will be lisping their evening prayer at her knee, and the thought calls a tender expression to his eyes as he turns them away from his "sweet home."

Contrast this picture with that of Caroline Randall's heartless splendor, and say whether thou wilt choose for thy portion the gratification of the true and pure household affections which Heaven has planted in thy nature, or that of a selfish vanity?



CHAPTER V.

This morning, as I sat in the library writing a letter, Annie came in and seated herself at a table on the opposite side of the room. Her unusual stillness caused me to look up after some minutes, and I found that Mr. Arlington's portfolio having been left upon the table, she had drawn from it one of his pencilings, and was gazing steadfastly upon it, as I could not but think, with something troubled in the expression of her usually open and cheerful face. While I was still observing her, the door behind her opened, and Mr. Arlington himself entered. A blush arose to Annie's cheeks as she saw him; a blush which had its origin, I thought, in some deeper feeling than a mere girlish shame at being found so engrossed by one of his productions.

"What have you there?" he asked, as seating himself beside her, he took the paper from what seemed to me her somewhat reluctant hand. No sooner had he looked on it, than his own bright face became shadowed, as hers had been, and yet he smiled, too, as he said, "That portfolio is really an omnium gatherum. I had no idea this had found its way there. When I first read Mrs. Hemans' poem of 'The Bird's Release,' it reminded me of this scene of my boyhood, though if I have never spoken to you of my darling Grace, you will not be able to understand why."

"You never have," said Annie, answering his looks rather than his words, while a slight increase of color was again perceptible in her fair cheek.

"She was my sister, my only sister; we were but two, the petted darlings of a widowed mother. I told you, that few could sympathize as I could with Koerner's memory of Mother-love. I was but six years old, and just such a chubby, broad-shouldered little varlet, I fancy, as I have sketched here, when Grace, who was two years older, and the loveliest, merriest little creature in the world, died. My mother was already beginning to feel the influence of that disease, which, two years later, terminated her life, and, I have no doubt, the death of Grace, who was her idol, increased the rapidity of its progress."

There was silence for some minutes, and then Annie said softly, "But what of the bird?"

"It was a thrush which had been given to Grace some time before her death, and which she was trying to tame for me. My mother could not bear to see it after her death, and with some difficulty persuaded me to give it its liberty. You will now see why I should have dedicated this sketch to Grace, and why these lines should have brought the scene to my mind, and caused me indeed to make this drawing of it."

"Will you read the lines for me?" asked Annie, "I had not finished them when you took the paper from me."

To tell you a secret, reader, I do not believe she had seen any thing on the paper except the few words in German text written at its head, "To my darling Grace."

Mr. Arlington read in a tone of feeling and interest,—

THE BIRD'S RELEASE.

BY MRS. HEMANS.

Go forth, for she is gone! With the golden light of her wavy hair She is gone to the fields of the viewless air: She hath left her dwelling lone!

Her voice hath pass'd away! It hath passed away like a summer breeze, When it leaves the hills for the for blue seas, Where we may not trace its way.

Go forth, and like her be free: With thy radiant wing, and thy glancing eye, Thou hast all the range of the sunny sky, And what is our grief to thee?

Is it aught even to her we mourn? Doth she look on the tears by her kindred shed? Doth she rest with the flowers o'er her gentle head? Or float on the light wind borne?

We know not—but she is gone! Her step from the dance, her voice from the song, And the smile of her eye from the festal throng; She hath loft her dwelling lone!

When the waves at sunset shine, We may hear thy voice amidst thousands more, In the scented woods of our glowing shore; But we shall not know 'tis thine!

Even so with the loved one flown! Her smile in the starlight may wander by, Her breath may be near in the wind's low sigh Around us—but all unknown.

Go forth, we have loosed thy chains! We may deck thy cage with the richest flowers Which the bright day rears in our eastern bowers; But thou wilt not be lured again.

Even thus may the summer pour All fragrant things on the land's green breast, And the glorious earth like a bride be dress'd; But it wins her back no more!

I was doubtful whether either Mr. Arlington or Annie were aware of my presence, and was just debating with myself whether I should make them aware of it by addressing them, or quietly steal away, when Col. Donaldson decided the point by entering the library and speaking to me. He came to ask that I would come to the parlor and see a boy who had just been sent from one of our charitable institutions, to which he had applied for a lad to act as a helper to his old waiter, John, who was now old enough to require some indulgence, and had always been trustworthy enough to deserve some. The boy looked intelligent and honest—he was neat in his person and active in his movements.

"He is an orphan," said Col. Donaldson, "and the managers of the institution have offered to bind him to me for seven years, or till he is of age. What do you think of it!"

"If the boy himself be willing, I should be glad to know he was so well provided for," I replied; "though in general, no abolitionist can be more vehemently opposed to negro slavery than I am to this apprenticeship business. What is it but a slavery of the worst description? The master is endowed with irresponsible power, without the interest in the well-being of his slave, which the planter, the actual owner of slaves, ordinarily feels."

"You speak strongly," said Col. Donaldson.

"I feel strongly on this subject," I answered. "I knew one instance of the effects of this system which I have often thought of publishing to the world, as speaking more powerfully against it than a thousand addresses could do."

"Tell it to us, Aunt Nancy," said Robert Dudley.

"It is too long to tell now," said I, as the dinner-bell sounded.

"Then let us have it this evening," urged Col. Donaldson—"for it is a subject in which I am much interested."

Accordingly, in the evening, I gave them the "o'er true tale" of

THE YOUNG MISANTHROPE.

"In the blue summer ocean, far off and alone," lies a little island, known to mariners in the Pacific only for the fine water with which it supplies them, and for the bold shore which makes it possible for ships of considerable tonnage to lie in quiet near the land. Discovered at first by accident, it has been long, for these reasons, visited both by English and American whalers. A few years since, and no trace of man's presence could be found there beyond the belt of rocks, amidst which arose the springs that were the chief, and indeed only attraction the island presented to the rough, hardy men by whom it had been visited. But within that stony girdle lay a landscape soft and lovely as any that arose within the tropical seas. There the plantain waved its leafy crown, the orange shed its rich perfume, and bore its golden fruit aloft upon the desert air, and the light, feathery foliage of the tamarind moved gracefully to the touch of the dallying breeze. All was green, and soft, and fair, for there no winter chills the life of nature, but,

"The bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers."

It was a scene which might have seemed created for the abode of some being too bright and good for the common earth of common men, or for some Hinda and Hafed, who, driven from a world all too harsh and evil for their nobler natures, might have found in it a refuge,

"Where the bright eyes of angels only Should come around them to behold A paradise so pure and lonely."

Alas for the dream of the poet! This beautiful island became the refuge, not of pure and loving hearts, but of one from whose nature cruel tyranny seemed to have blotted out every feeling and every faculty save hatred and fear; and he who first introduced into its yet untainted solitudes the bitter sorrows and dark passions of humanity, was a child, who, but ten years before, had lain in all the loveliness of sinless infancy upon a mother's bosom. Of that mother's history he knew nothing—whether her sin or only her sorrows had thrown him fatherless upon the world, he was ignorant—he had only a dim memory of gentle eyes, which had looked on him as no others had ever looked, and of a low, sweet voice, speak to him such words as he had never heard from any other. He had been loved, and that love had made his life of penury in an humble hovel in England, bright and beautiful; but his mother had passed away from earth, and with her all the light of his existence. Child as he was, the succeeding darkness preserved long in brightness the memory of the last look from her fast glazing eyes, the last words from her dying lips, the last touch of her already death-cold hand. She died, and the same reluctant charity which consigned her to a pauper's grave, gave to her boy a dwelling in the parish poor-house. With the tender mercies of such institutions the author of Oliver Twist has made the world acquainted. They were such in the present case, that the poor little Edward Hallett welcomed as the first glad words that had fallen on his ears for two long, weary years, the news that he was to be bound apprentice to a captain sailing from Portsmouth in a whaling ship. He learned rather from what was said near him, than to him, that this man wanted a cabin boy, but would not have one who was not bound to him, or to use the more expressive language in which it reached the ears of his destined victim, "one with whom he could not do as he pleased."

He who had come within the poor-house walls at six years old, a glad, rosy-cheeked, chubby child, went from them at eight, thin, and pale, and grave, with a frame broken by want and labor, a mind clouded, and a heart repressed by unkindness. But, sad as was the history of those years, the succeeding two taught the poor boy to regard them as the vanished brightness of a dream. The man—we should more justly say, the fiend—to whom the next fourteen years of his life were by bond devoted, was a savage by nature, and had been rendered yet more brutal by habits of intoxication. In his drunken orgies, his favorite pastime was to torture the unfortunate being whom the "guardians of the poor" of an English parish had placed in his power. It would make the heart of the reader sick, were we to attempt a detail of the many horrible inventions by which this modern Caligula amused his leisure hours, and made life hideous to his victim. Nor was it only from this arch-fiend that the poor boy suffered. Mate, cook, and sailors, soon found in him a butt for their jokes, an object on which they might safely vent their ill-humor, and a convenient cover for their own delinquencies.

He was beaten for and by them. The evil qualities which man had himself elicited from his nature, if not implanted there—the sullenness, and hardiness, and cunning he evinced, were made an excuse for further injury. During his first voyage of eighteen months, spite of all this, hope was not entirely dead in his heart. The ship was to return to England, and he determined to run away from her, and find his way back to the poor-house. It was a miserable refuge, but it was his only one. He escaped—he found his way thither through many dangers—he told his story. It was heard with incredulity, and he was returned to his tormentors, to learn that there is even in hell "a deeper hell."

Again he went on a whaling voyage. Day after day the fathomless, the seemingly illimitable sea, the image of the Infinite was around him—but his darkened mind saw in it only a prison, which shut him in with his persecutors. Night after night the stars beamed peacefully above him, luring his thoughts upward, but he saw in them only the signals of drunken revelry to others, and of deeper woe to himself. There was but one wish in his heart—it had almost ceased to be a hope—to escape from man; to live and die where he should never see his form, never hear his voice. The ship encountered a severe storm. She was driven from her course, her voyage lengthened, and some of her water-casks were stove in. They made for an island, not far distant, by the chart, to take in a fresh supply of water. Edward Hallett heard the sailors say to each other that this island was uninhabited, and his wish grew into a passionate desire—a hope. For the completion of this hope, he had but one resource—the sword and the shield of the feeble—cunning; and well he exercised his weapon.

The ship lay within a quarter of a mile of the shore, and a boat was sent to procure water—one man remaining always to fill the empty vessels while the others returned to the ship with those already filled. The best means of accomplishing his purpose that occurred to the poor boy was to feign the utmost degree of terror at the lonely and unprotected situation of this man during the absence of his comrades. He spoke his terrors where he knew they would be heard by the prime author of his miseries. The result was what he had anticipated.

"Ye're afraid, are ye, of being left there by yerself! Ye'd rather be whipped, or tied up by the thumbs, or be kept at the mast-head all night, would ye? Then, dam'me, that's just what I'll do to you. Here, hold on with that boat—take this youngster with you, and you can bring back Tom, and leave him to fill the casks for you."

Well did the object of his tyranny act his part. He entreated, he adjured all around him to save him from so dreaded a fate—in vain, of course—for his affected agonies only riveted the determination of his tyrant. It was a new delight to see him writhe in agony, and strive to draw back from those who were urging him to the boat. He was forced in, borne to the island, and left to his task. But this was not enough. He could not escape in the broad light of day, from a spot directly under the eyes of his tormentors, while between him and the ship a boat was ever coming and going. Through the day he must persist in the part he had assumed. He did not fail to continue it, and when the day approached its close, he sent to the ship the most urgent entreaties that he might be allowed to return there before it was night. The sailors, rough and hard as they generally were to him, sympathized with his agony of fear, and asked that he might return; but his demon was now inflamed by drink, and every word in favor of his petition insured its rejection. He even made the unusual exertion of going up himself in the last boat, that he might see the victim of his malice, and feast his ears with the cries and objurgations which terror would wring from him.

"If we should forget you in the morning, you can take the next homeward bound ship that stops here, but don't tell your friends at the poor-house too bad a tale of us," were the parting words of this wretch.

Darkness and silence were around the desolate boy, but they brought no fear with them. Man, his enemy, was not there. He saw not the beauty of the heavens, from which the stars looked down on him in their unchanged serenity, or of the earth, where flowers were springing at his feet, and graceful shrubs were waving over him. He heard not the deep-toned sea uttering its solemn music, or the breeze whispering its softer notes in his ear. He only saw the ship, the abode of men, fading into indistinctness, as the darkness threw its veil over it; he only heard the voice in his heart, proclaiming ever and again, "I am free." Before the morrow dawned, he had surmounted the rocks at the landing place, and wandered on with no aim, but to put as great a distance as possible between him and the ship. Two hours' walking brought him again to the sea, in an opposite direction to that by which he had approached the island. Here he crawled into a hiding-place among the rocks, and lay down to rest. The day was again declining before he ventured forth from his covert, and cautiously approached the distant shore, whence he might see the ship. He reached the spring by which he had stood yester eve, when his companions parted from him, with something like pity stirring in the hearts of all but one among them. Fearfully he looked around—before him—but no shadow on the earth, no sail upon the pathless sea, told of man's presence. He was alone—alone indeed, for the beauty of Nature aroused no emotion in his withered heart, and he held no communion with Nature's God. He was indeed an orphaned soul. Could he have loved, had it been but a simple flower, he would have felt something of the joy of life; but the very power of love seemed to have been crushed from his heart, by years of cold neglect and harsh unkindness.

Weeks, months passed, without any event that might awaken the young solitary from his torpor. By day, he roved through the island, or lay listlessly under the shadow of a tree; by night, he slept beneath the rocks which had first sheltered him; while the fruits, that grew and ripened without his care, gave him food. Thus he lived a merely animal life, his strongest sensation one of satisfaction for his relief from positive suffering, but with nothing that could be called joy in the present, and with no hope for the future; one to whom God had given an immortal spirit, capable of infinite elevation in the scale of intelligence and happiness, and whom man had pressed down to—ay, below—the level of the brutes, which sported away their brief existence at his side. Such tyranny as he had experienced, is rare; but its results may well give an impressive, a fearful lesson, to those to whom are committed the destinies of a being unconnected with them by any of those ties which awaken tenderness, and call forth indulgence in the sternest minds. Let them beware, lest the "iron rule" crush out the life of the young heart, and darken the intellect by extinguishing the light of hope.

Terrible was the retribution which his crimes wrought out for the author of our young hero's miseries. When he received the intelligence from the men whom he had sent in the morning to bring him from the island, that he was nowhere to be found, he read in their countenance what his own heart was ready to repeat to him, that he was his murderer; for neither they nor he doubted that the terrified boy had rushed into the sea, and been drowned in the effort to escape the horrors raised by his wild and superstitious fancy. From that hour his persecutor suffered tortures as great as his bitterest enemies could have desired to inflict on him. The images which drove him with increased eagerness to the bottle, became more vivid and terrific under the influence of intoxication. He drank deeper and deeper, in the vain hope to banish them, and died ere many months had passed, shouting, in his last moments, alternate prayers and curses to the imagined form of him whom he supposed the hope of revenge had conjured from the ocean grave to which his cruelties had consigned him.

Five months passed over Edward Hallett, in the dead calm of an existence agitated by neither hope nor fear. The calm was broken one evening by the sight of a seaman, drawing water from the spring which had brought his former companions to the island. As he came in sight, the man turned his head, and stood for an instant spell-bound by the unexpected vision of a human being on that island, whose matted locks and tattered garments spoke the extreme of misery. There was only one hope for the sad wild boy—it was in flight—and turning, he ran swiftly back; but the path was strewn with rocks, and, in his haste, he stumbled and fell. In a moment his pursuer stood beside him, acclaiming in a coarse, but kindly meant language:—

"What the devil are you runnin' away from me for, youngster?—I'm sure I wouldn't hurt ye—but get up, and tell us what you're doing here, and where ye've come from."

The speaker attempted, while addressing the boy, to raise him from the ground, but he resisted all his efforts, and met all his questioning with sullen silence.

"By the powers, I'm thinking I've caught a wild man. I wonder if there's any more of 'em. If I can only get this one aboard, he'll make my fortune. I'll try for it, any how, and offer the capting to go shares with my bargain;" and he proceeded to lift the slight form of the pauper boy in his brawny arms, and bear him to the boat, which, during the scene, had approached the shore. One who had had less experience of the iron nature of man, would have endeavored, in Edward Hallett's circumstances, to move his captor by entreaties to leave him to his dearly prized freedom; but he had long believed, with the poet,

"There is no pulse in man's obdurate heart— It does not feel for man;"

and after the first wild struggle, which had only served to show that he was an infant in the hands of the strong seaman, he abandoned himself to his fate, in silent despair. With closed eyes and lips, he suffered himself, without a movement, to be borne to the boat, and deposited in it, amidst the many uncouth and characteristic exclamations of his captor and his companions, who would not be convinced that it was really a child of the human race, thus strangely found on this isolated spot. Hastily they bore him to the ship, which the providence of God had sent, under the guidance of a kind and noble spirit, for the salvation of this, his not forgotten, though long tried creature.

Captain Durbin, of the barque Good Intent, was one who combined, in no usual degree, the qualities of boldness and energy with the kindest, the tenderest, and most generous feelings. These were wrought into beautiful harmony, by the Christian principles which had long governed his life, and from which he had learned to be, at the same time, "diligent in business" and "kindly affectioned"—to have no fear of man, and to love his brother, whom he had seen, as the best manifestation of devotion to God, whom he had not seen. Perhaps he had escaped the usual effect of his rough trade, in hardening the manners, at least, by the influence on him of his only child, a little girl, now six years old, who was his constant companion, even in his voyages. Little Emily Durbin had lost her mother when she was only two years old. The circumstances of her own childhood had wrought into the mind of the dying Mrs. Durbin, the conviction that only a parent is a fitting guardian for a child. To all argument on this subject she would reply, "It seems to me that God has put so much love into a parent's heart, only that he may bear with all a child's waywardness, which other people can't be expected to bear with."

True to her principles, she had exacted a promise from her husband, in her dying hour, that he would never part from their Emily. The promise had been sacredly kept.

"I will retire from sea as soon as I have enough to buy a place on shore, for Emily's sake; but till then, her home must be in my cabin. She is under God's care there, as well as on shore, and perhaps it would be better for her, should I be lost at sea, to share my fate." Such were the remarks of Captain Durbin, in reply to the well-meant remonstrances of his friends.

Emily had a little hammock slung beside his own—the books in which he taught her made a large part of his library; and he who had seen her kneel beside her father to lisp her childish prayer, or who had heard the simple, beautiful faith with which she commended herself to the care of her Father in Heaven, when the waves roared and the winds howled around her floating home, would have felt, perhaps, that the most important end of life, the cultivation of those affections that connect us with God and with our fellow-creatures, might be attained as perfectly there as elsewhere.

The astonishment of Captain Durbin and the pity of his gentle child may be conceived, at the sight of the poor boy, who was brought up from the boat by his captor and owner, as he considered himself, and laid at their feet, while they sat together in their cabin—he writing in his log-book, and she conning her evening lesson. To the proposition that he should give the prize so strangely obtained a free passage, and share in the advantages to be gained by its exhibition in America, Captain Durbin replied by showing the disappointed seaman the impossibility of the object of these speculations being some product of Nature's freaks—some hitherto unknown animal, with the form, but without the faculties of man.

"Do you not see that he has clothes——"

"Clothes do ye call them!" interrupted the blunt sailor, touching the pieces of cloth that hung around, but no longer covered the thin limbs.

"Rags, perhaps I had better say—but the rags have been clothes, woven and sewn by man's hands—so he must have lived among men—civilized men—and he has grown but little, as you may perceive, since those clothes were made—therefore, he cannot have been long on the island."

"But how did he get there? Who'd leave a baby like this there by himself?"

"That we may never know, for the boy must either be an idiot—which he does not look like, however—or insane, or dumb—but let that be as it will, we will do our duty by him, and I thank God for having sent us here in time to save him."

The master of the ship usually gives the tone to those whom he commands, and Captain Durbin found no difficulty in obtaining the help of his men in his kind intentions to the boy so strangely brought amongst them. By kind, yet rough hands, he was washed, his hair was cut and combed, and a suit of clean, though coarse garments, hastily fitted to him by the best tailor among them—fitted, not with the precision of Stultz certainly, but sufficiently well to enable him to walk in them without danger of walking on them or of leaving them behind. But he showed no intention of availing himself of these capabilities. Wherever they carried him he went without resistance—wherever they placed him he remained—he ate the food that was offered him—but no word escaped his lips, no voluntary movement was made by him, no look marked his consciousness of aught that passed before him. He had again assumed his only shield from violence—cunning. He could account in no way for his being left unmolested, except from the belief, freely expressed before him, that nature, by depriving him of intelligence, or of speech, had unfitted him for labor, and he resolved to do nothing that should unsettle that belief. But he found it more difficult than he had supposed it would be to preserve this resolution, for he was subjected to the action of a more potent influence than any he had yet encountered—kindness. All were ready to show him this in its common forms, but none so touchingly or so tenderly as the little Emily Durbin. It was a beautiful sight to see that gentle child, with eyes blue as the heavens, whose pure and lovely spirit they seemed to mirror, gazing up at the dark boy as though she hoped to catch some ray of the awakening spirit flitting over the handsome but stolid features. Sometimes she would sit beside him, take his hand in hers, or stroke gently the dark locks that began again to hang in neglected curls around his face, and speak to him in the tenderest accents, saying, "I love you very much, pretty boy, and my father loves you too, and we all love you—don't you love us?—but you can't tell me—I forgot that—never mind, I'll ask our Heavenly Father to make you talk. Don't you know Jesus made the dumb to speak when he was here on earth? Did you ever hear about it? Poor boy! you can't answer me—but I'll tell you all about it:" and then in her sweet words and pitying voice she would tell of the Saviour of men—how he had made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, and she would repeat his lessons of love, dwelling often on her favorite text, "This is my commandment, that ye love one another—even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

Thus by this babe, God was in his love leading the chilled heart of that poor, desolate boy, back to himself—to hope—to heaven. It was impossible that the dew of mercy should thus, day by day and hour by hour, distil upon a spirit indurated by man's cruelties, without softening it. Edward Hallett began to love that sweet child, to listen to her step and voice, to gaze upon her fair face, to return her loving looks, and to long to tell her all his story. Emily became aware of the new expression in his face, and redoubled her manifestations of interest. She entreated that he should be brought in when her father read the Bible and prayed with her, night and morning. "Who knows, it may be that our Heavenly Father will make him hear us," was her simple and pathetic response to Captain Durbin's assurance that it was useless, as he either could not or would not understand them. Never had Edward Hallett's resolution been more severely tried than when he saw her kneel, with clasped hands and uplifted face, at her father's knee, and heard her pray in her own simple words that "God would bless the poor little dumb boy whom he had sent to them, and that he would make him speak, and give him a good heart, that he might love them." Captain Durbin turned his eyes upon the object of her prayer at that moment, and he almost thought that his lips moved, and was quite certain that his eyes glistened with emotion. From this time he was as anxious as Emily herself for the attendance of the strange boy at their devotions.

For many weeks the ship had sped across that southern sea with light and favoring breezes, but at length there came a storm. The heavens were black with clouds—the wind swept furiously over the ocean, and drove its wild waves in tremendous masses against the reeling ship. Captain Durbin was a bold sailor, as we have said, and he had weathered many a storm in his trim barque; but Emily knew by the way in which he pressed her to his heart this night, before he laid her, not in her hammock, but on the narrow floor of his state-room, and by the tone in which he ejaculated, "God bless you, and take care of you, my beloved child!"—that there was more danger tonight than they had ever before encountered together; and as he was leaving her she drew him back and said, "Father, I can't sleep, and I should like to talk to the little dumb boy; won't you bring him here, and let him sit on my mattress with me?"

Captain Durbin brought Edward Hallett and placed him beside Emily, where, by bracing themselves against the wall of the state-room, they might prevent their being dashed about by the rolling of the vessel. Emily welcomed him with an affectionate smile, and taking his hand, which now sometimes answered the clasp of hers, told him that he must not be afraid, though there was a great storm, for their Father in Heaven could deliver them out of it if it were His will, and if it were not, He would take them to himself, if they loved Him, and loved one another as the blessed Saviour had commanded them. "And you know we must die some way," continued the sweet young preacher, "and father says it is just as easy to go to Heaven from the sea as from any other place." She paused a moment, and then added in a low tone, "But I think I had rather die on shore, and be buried by my mother in the green, shady church-yard—it is so quiet there."

Emily crept nearer and nearer to her young companion as she spoke, with that clinging to human love and care which is felt by the hardest breast in moments of dread. His heart was beating high with the tenderest and the happiest emotions he had ever known, when a wave sweeping over the deck of the ship, and breaking through the skylight, came tumbling in upon them. It forced them asunder, and the falling of their lantern at the same moment left them in darkness amidst the tossing of the ship, the rolling of the furniture, and the noise of the many waters. Edward Hallett's first thought was for Emily;—he felt for her on every side, but she was not in the state-room; he groped his way into the cabin, but he could not find her, and he heard no sound that told of her existence. In terror for her, self was forgotten—love conquered fear, as it had already obtained the empire over hate, and he called her—"Emily—dear Emily!—hear me—answer me, Emily?"

He listened in vain for the faint voice for which he thirsted. Suddenly he bounded up the cabin steps and rushed to the post at which he knew Captain Durbin was most likely to be found in such a scene, crying as he went, "Emily! Emily! oh bring a light and look for Emily!"

The shrill cry of a human heart in agony was heard above the bellowing of the winds and the rush of the waves, and without waiting for a question, without heeding even the miracle that the dumb had spoken, Captain Durbin hastened below, followed by his agitated summoner. As quickly as his trembling hands permitted, he struck a light and looked around for his child. She had been dashed against a chest, and lay pale and seemingly lifeless, with the red blood oozing slowly from a cut in the temple. Edward Hallett had lifted her before Captain Durbin could lay aside his light, and as he approached him, looking up with a face almost as pale as that which lay upon his arm, he exclaimed, "Oh, sir, surely she is not dead!"

It was not till Emily had again opened her soft eyes and assured her father that she was not much hurt, that any notice was taken of the very unusual fact of Edward Hallett's speaking.

"Father, how did you know I was hurt?"

"He whom we have thought a dumb boy called me, and told me he could not find you," said Captain Durbin, looking earnestly, almost sternly at Edward, who colored as he felt that eyes he dared not meet were upon him. But the gentle, loving Emily took his hand, and said, "Did our good Heavenly Father make you speak?—I am so glad—please speak to me!"

Edward could not raise his eyes to hers, but covering his face with his other hand, he fell on his knees, saying to her and Captain Durbin, "I am afraid it was very wicked, but indeed I couldn't help it. I could speak all the time, Emily, but I was afraid of being beaten as I used to be, if I seemed like other people—now if they beat me I must bear it—better for me to be beaten than to have Emily lie there with no one to help her."

"But who is going to beat you? Nobody will beat you—we all love you—don't we, father?" cried Emily, bending forward and putting her arm around the neck of her protege.

"We must hear first whether he is worthy of our love, my dear," said Captain Durbin, as he attempted to withdraw his daughter's arm, and to make her lie down again—but Edward had seized the little hand and held it around his neck, while he exclaimed in the most imploring tones, "Oh, sir I let Emily love me—nobody else except my poor mother ever loved me. Beat me as much as you please, and I will not say a word, but oh! pray, sir! don't tell Emily she must not love me."

"And, father, if he were wicked, you know you told me once that we must love the wicked and try to do them good, because our Father in Heaven loved us while we were yet sinners," urged Emily.

That gentle voice could not be unheeded, and as Captain Durbin kissed her, he laid his hand kindly on the boy's head, saying in more friendly tones, "I hope he has not been wicked, but we will hear more about it to-morrow—I cannot stay longer with you now, and you must lie still just where I have put you, or you may roll out and get hurt. We shall have a rough sea most of the night, though, thank God! no danger, for the wind had shifted and slackened a little before that great wave swept you away!"

"May I not stay by Emily, sir, and tell her what made me not speak? I will not let her sit up again."

"Oh, yes! do, father, let him stay till you come down again."

Captain Durbin consented, and when he came down again at midnight from the deck, the children had both fallen asleep, but their hands were clasped in each other's, and the flushed cheeks and dewy lashes of both showed that they had been weeping. The next morning Captain Durbin heard the story of the orphan boy. Emily Durbin stood beside him while he told it, and he needed the courage which her presence gave him, for his cowed spirit could not yet rise to confidence in man. The mingled indignation and pity with which Captain Durbin heard the simple but touching narrative of his life—the earnest kindness with which, at the conclusion, he drew him to his side, and told him that he would be his father, and Emily his sister, adding, "God gave you to me, and as His gift I will love you and care for you," first taught him that his friend Emily was not the one only angel of mercy in our world. As time passed on, and Captain Durbin kept well the promise of those words, instructing him with care and guarding him with tenderness as well as with fidelity, his faith became firm, not only in his fellow-men, but in Him who had brought such great good for him out of the darkest evil. His long repressed affections sprang into vigorous growth, his intellect expanded rapidly in their glow, his eye grew bright, his step elastic, and his whole air redolent of a joy which none but those who have suffered as he had done can conceive. In the handsome youth who returned two years afterwards with Captain Durbin to Boston, and who walked so proudly at his side, leading Emily by the hand, few could have recognized the wild boy of that western Island.

Such was the transformation which the spirit of love, breathing itself through the lips of a little child, had effected. "Verily, of such" children "is the kingdom of heaven."



CHAPTER VI.

The entertainment of the evening gave its character to our conversation on the following morning. It was a conversation too grave for introduction into a work intended only to aid in the entertainment of festive hours: it commenced with the English "poor-laws," and ended with a discussion of the tenure of property in that land, and the wisdom of our own republican fathers in abolishing entails—a subject affording a fair opportunity to us Americans, to indulge a little in that self-glorification which we are accused of loving so well.

"What a curious book would a 'History of Entails' be!" exclaimed Mr. Arlington, "how full of the romance of life!"

"Romance!" ejaculated Annie.

"Yes, romance; for under this system, the poor man, whose life seemed doomed to one unbroken struggle with fortune, for the necessaries of existence, finds himself, by some unexpected casualty, the possessor of rank, and of what seems to him boundless wealth."

"Ah, yes!" said I, "but you have given us only the bright side of the picture. To make room for this stranger, whose only connection with the house of which he has so unexpectedly become the head is probably that preserved in genealogical tables, the daughters of the house, or their children it may be, reared in luxury, must go forth to a life of comparative privation. I met, some years ago, in one of my visits to the Far West, a young Englishman, who—but I will read you the story of his life, as I wrote it out soon after parting with him."

"Have you a picture of him, Aunt Nancy?" asked Robert Dudley.

"Yes, Robert," I replied with a smile, "but you must have patience, for I shall neither show the picture nor tell the story till evening."

When we were assembled in the evening, Annie, with much ceremony, led me to the high-backed arm-chair, which she called the Speaker's Chair, and placed before me the small travelling desk, in which she knew my manuscripts were kept. I unlocked it, and soon found the scroll of which I was in search.

"But the picture, Aunt Nancy—where is the picture?" cried the eager Robert.

"Here it is," I cried, as I loosened the ribbon with which the manuscript was bound together, and produced a small engraving; a fancy subject, however, rather than an actual portrait, and of no general interest. The print was eagerly caught by Robert, and handed around the circle, with exclamations of, "How handsome!" "What an exquisite picture!" Mr. Arlington looked at it a moment, then, with a smiling glance at me, handed it, without a word of comment, to Col. Donaldson.

"The impertinent puppy!" ejaculated the Colonel, "engrossed with his hawk and his hound, and wearing such an insolent air of self-absorption in the presence of a lady" (for the artist had introduced a lovely young maiden in the scene). "Poor girl!" continued the Colonel; "if she were in any way connected with him, I am not surprised that she should look so sad and reproachful."

Mr. Arlington's smiling glance was again turned on me; and I met it with a hearty laugh.

"Indeed, Aunt Nancy," said the Colonel, who seemed strangely annoyed at my laughter, "I think your friend does you little credit, and I can only hope that he had some of these lordly airs drubbed out of him at the West."

As Col. Donaldson spoke he threw down the engraving which he had held, and pushed his chair from the table.

"I assure you, sir," I replied, "my friend has as few lordly airs as it is possible to conceive in one born to such lordly circumstances. It was not my intention to impose on you that picture as an actual likeness of him—though had you ever seen him I might easily have done so, as it really resembles him very much in his personal traits."

"Well, I am glad he did not sit for this picture," said Col. Donaldson; "now I can listen to your story with some pleasure."

"Thank you; you must first take some reflections suggested to me by the incidents I have here narrated. Of the character of these reflections, you will form some conception from the title I have given to the tale into which I have interwoven them. I have called it

"LIFE IN AMERICA."

"Men and Manners in America" was the comprehensive title of a book issued some fifteen or twenty years ago, by a gentleman from Scotland, to whom, we fear, Americans have never tendered the grateful acknowledgments he deserved for his disinterested efforts to teach them to eat eggs properly, and to give due time to the mastication of their food. This benevolently instructive work was the precursor of a host of others on the same topics, and others of a kindred character. America has been the standard subject for the trial essays of European tyros in philosophy, political economy, and book-making in general. Society in America has been presented, it would seem, in all its aspects—religious, educational, industrial, political, commercial, and fashionable. Our schools and our prisons, our churches and our theatres, have been in turn the subject of investigation, of unqualified censure, and of scarcely less unqualified laudation.

The subject thus dissected, put together, and dissected again, has not been able to restrain some wincing and an occasional outcry, when the scalpel has been held by a more than usually unskilful hand—demonstrations of sensibility which have occasioned apparently as much disapprobation as surprise in the anatomists. We flatter ourselves that there is peculiar fitness in the metaphor just used, for the outer form only of American life has been touched by these various writers. Its spirit, that which gives to it its peculiar organization, has evaded them as completely as the soul of man evades the keenest investigations of the dissecting room. Even of the seat of the spirit—of the point whence it sends forth its subtle influences, giving activity and direction to every member—of the HOMES of America, they have little real knowledge. The anatomist—the reader will pardon the continuation of a figure so illustrative of our meaning—the anatomist knows that not only can he never hope to lay his finger upon the principle of life, but that ere he can pry into those cells in which its mysterious processes are evolved, they must have been dismantled of all that could have guided him to any certain deductions respecting its nature and mode of action. And seldom is the eye of the stranger, never that of the professed bookmaker, suffered to rest upon our homes till they have undergone changes that will as completely baffle his penetration. Nor is this always designedly. It is from a delicate instinct which shrinks from subjecting its most sacred and touching emotions to the rude gaze and ruder comment of the world.

We have been led to these observations by certain events of which we have lately become informed, and which we would here record, as illustrative of some peculiarities of social life in America, and especially of the new development of character manifested by women under the influence of these peculiarities.

The ringing of bells, the firing of cannon, the huzzaing of the assembling multitude on the announcement in London of the victory of Waterloo, must have seemed a bitter mockery to many a heart, mad with the first sharp agony of bereavement. "The few must suffer that the many may rejoice," say the statesman and the warrior while they plan new conquests. It may be so, but we have at present to do with the sufferings of the few.

On the list of the killed in that battle appeared the name of Horace Danforth, Captain in the 41st Regiment of Infantry. It was a name of little note, but there was one to whom it was the synonyme of all that gave beauty or gladness to life; and ere the bells had ceased to sound, or the eager crowd to huzza, her heart was still. With her last quivering sigh had mingled the wail of a new-born infant.

Thus was Horace Maitland Danforth ushered into life. He had been born at the house of his maternal uncle, Sir Thomas Maitland, and as his mother had been wholly dependent on this gentleman, and his father had been a soldier of fortune, leaving to his son no heritage but his name, he continued there, as carefully reared and tenderly regarded as though he had been the heir to Maitland Park and to all its dependencies. Though Sir Thomas had, for many years after the birth of his nephew intended to marry, it was an intention never executed, and when Horace attained his twenty-first birthday, his majority was celebrated as that of his uncle's heir, and as such he was presented by Sir Thomas Maitland to his assembled tenantry. Soon after this event, the Baronet obtained for his nephew a right to the name and arms of Maitland—a measure to which, knowing little of his father's family, Horace readily consented. Sir Thomas Maitland died suddenly while yet in the prime of life, and was succeeded by Sir Horace, then twenty-four years of age. In the enjoyments of society, of travel, and of those thousand luxuries, mental and physical, which fortune secures, three years passed rapidly away with the young, handsome, and accomplished Baronet.

One of the earliest convictions of Horace Maitland's life had been, that the refining presence of woman was necessary to the perfection of Maitland Park, and when Sir Thomas said to him, "Marry, Horace—do not be an old bachelor like your uncle"—though he answered nothing, he vowed in the inmost recesses of his heart that it should not be his fault if he did not obey the injunction. Yet to the world it seemed wholly his own fault that at twenty-seven he had not given to Maitland Park a mistress, and even he himself could not attribute his continued celibacy to the coldness or cruelty of woman; for, in truth, though he had "knelt at many a shrine," he had "laid his heart on none." If hardly pressed for his reason, he might have said with Ferdinand,—

"For several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she own'd, And put it to the foil."

He who after the death of his uncle continued to urge Sir Horace most on the subject of matrimony, was the one of all the world who might have been supposed least desirous to see him enter into its bonds. This was Edward Maitland, a distant cousin, somewhat younger than himself, to whom he had been attached from his boyhood, and who had been saved by his generosity from many of those painful experiences to which a very narrow income would otherwise have subjected him. It had more than once been suggested to Edward Maitland, that should his cousin die unmarried, he might not unreasonably hope to become his heir, as he was supposed to be uncontrolled by any entail in the disposal of his property, and had few nearer relations than himself, and none with whom he maintained such intimate and affectionate intercourse. Nor could Edward Maitland fail to perceive that his own value in society was in an inverse ratio to the chances of the Baronet's marrying, as a report of an actual proposal on the part of the latter had more than once occasioned a visible declension in the number and warmth of his invitations. These considerations appeared, however, only to stimulate the young man's activity in the search of a wife for his cousin. Had he been employed by a marriage broker with a prospect of a liberal commission, he could hardly have been more indefatigable.

"Well, Horace," exclaimed the younger Maitland, as the two sat loitering over a late London breakfast one morning, "how did you like the lady to whom I introduced you last evening?"

A smile lighted the eyes of Sir Horace as he replied, "Very much, Ned—she is certainly intelligent, and has read and thought more than most ladies of her age."

"She will make a capital manager, I am sure."

"And an agreeable companion," added Sir Horace.

"And a good wife—do you not think so, Horace?"

"She doubtless would be to one who could fancy her, Ned; for me her style is a little too prononce."

"Well, really, Horace, I cannot imagine what you would have. One woman is too frivolous—another wants refinement—one is too indolent and exacting—and when you can make no other objection, why her style is a little too prononce"—the last words were given with ludicrous imitation of his cousin's tone. "If an angel were to descend from heaven for you, I doubt if you would be suited."

"So do I," replied Horace, with a gay laugh at his cousin's evident vexation.

And thus did he meet all Edward's well-intended efforts. The power of choice had made him fastidious, and his life of luxury and freedom had brought him no experiences of the need of another and gentler self as a consoler. But that lesson was approaching.

A call from his lawyer for some papers necessary to complete an arrangement in which he was much interested, had sent Sir Horace to Maitland Park, in the midst of the London season, to explore the yet unfathomed recesses of an old escritoire of Sir Thomas. He had been gone but two days when Edward received the following note from him, written, as it seemed, both in haste and agitation:—

"Come to me immediately on the receipt of this, dear Edward. I have found here a paper of the utmost importance to you as well as to me. Come quickly—take the chariot and travel post.

"Yours, H. D. MAITLAND."

In less than an hour after the reception of this note Edward Maitland was on the road: and travelling with the utmost expedition, he arrived at Maitland Park just as the day was fading into dusky eve.

"How is Sir Horace?" he asked of the man who admitted him.

"I do not think he seems very well, sir. You will find him in the library, Mr. Edward—shall I announce you, sir?"

"No;" and with hurried steps and anxious heart Edward Maitland trod the well-known passages leading to the library.

When he entered that room, Sir Horace was standing at one of its windows gazing upon the landscape without, and so absorbed was he that he did not move at the opening of the door. Edward spoke, and starting, he turned towards him a face haggard with some yet untold suffering. He advanced to meet his cousin, and with an almost convulsive grasp of the hand, said, "I am glad you have come, Edward,"—then, without heeding the anxious inquiries addressed to him by Edward, he rang the bell, and ordered lights in a tone which caused them to be brought without a moment's delay. As soon as the servant who had brought them had left the room, Horace resumed: "Now, Edward, here is the paper of which I wrote to you; read it at once."

Agitated by his cousin's manner, Edward took the old stained paper from him without a word, and seating himself near the lights, began to read, while Sir Horace stood just opposite him, eyeing him intently. In a very few minutes Edward looked up with a puzzled air and said, "I do not understand one word of it. What does it all mean, Horace?"

"It means that you are Sir Edward Maitland—that you are master here—and that I am a beggar."

"Horace, you are mad!" exclaimed the young man, starting from his chair, with quivering limbs and a face from which every trace of color had departed.

Hitherto the tone in which Sir Horace had spoken, the alternate flush and pallor on his face, and the shiver that occasionally passed over his frame, had shown him to be fearfully excited; but as Edward became agitated, all these signs of emotion passed away, and with wonderful calmness taking the paper in his hand, he commenced reading that part of it which explained its purpose. This was to secure the descent of the baronetcy of Maitland and the property attached to it in the male line. Having made Edward Maitland comprehend this purpose, Sir Horace drew towards him a genealogical table of their family, and showed him that he was himself the only living descendant in a direct line through an unbroken succession of males from the period at which this entail was made.

"And now, Edward," he said in conclusion, "I am prepared to give up every thing to you. That you have so long been defrauded of your rights has been through ignorance on my part, and equal ignorance, I am convinced, on the part of my uncle. You know he paid little attention to business, leaving it wholly to his agents. I have often heard him express a wish to examine the papers in the old escritoire in which I found this deed, saying that they had been sent home by old Harris when he gave up his business to his nephew—the old man writing to my uncle, that as they consisted of leases that had fallen in, or of antiquated deeds, they were no longer of any value except as family records. It was a just Providence that led me to that escritoire, to search for the missing title-deeds of the farm I was about to sell."

Edward Maitland had sunk into his chair from sheer inability to stand, and for several minutes after his cousin had ceased speaking, he still sat, with his elbows resting on the table before him, and his face buried in his clasped hands. At length looking up, he said, "Horace, let us burn this paper and forget it."

"Forget! that is impossible, Edward."

"Why?—why not live as we have done? You speak of defrauding me, but what have I wanted that you had? Has not your purse been as my own? Your home—has it not been mine? It shall be so still. We shall share the fortune, and as to the title, you will wear it more gracefully than I."

"Dear Edward! Such proof of your generous affection ought to console me for all changes, and it shall. I will confess to you that I have suffered, but it is past. My people——" his voice faltered, his chest heaved, and turning away he walked more than once across the room before he resumed—"they are mine no longer—but you will be kind to them, Edward, I know."

"Horace, you will drive me mad!" cried Edward Maitland. "Promise, I conjure you, promise me to say nothing more of this."

He threw himself as he spoke into his cousin's arms with an agitation which Horace vainly sought to soothe, until he promised "to speak" no further on this subject at present to any one. Satisfied with this promise, and exhausted by the emotions of the last hour, Edward soon retired to his own room. It was long before he slept, and had he not been in a distant part of the house, he would have heard the hurried steps with which, for many an hour after he was left alone, Sir Horace Maitland continued to pace the floor of the dimly lighted library. The clock was on the stroke of three when he seated himself and began the following letter: