CHAPTER II.

“She seldom smiled—and when she did, It was so sad, subdued, and brief, As though her mourning heart she’d chide, And strove to smile away its grief.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Her silvery voice was heard no more— She sang not, and her breathing late, Which never knew neglect before, Now lies alone—forgotten, mute! Or, if a passing strain she rang, So mournfully its numbers rose, That those who heard might deem she sang A lorn soul’s requiem to repose!”

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

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

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

“Yon willow shades a marble stone, On which the curious eye can tell That underneath there lieth one Who loved not wisely—but too well.”

* * * * *

WORDS OF WAYWARDNESS.

BY PROFESSOR CAMPBELL.

Hah! for the tide of the blood’s hot gush— Hah! for the throng or proud thoughts that rush, Reckless and riotous—why should they be Iced by thy frown, Reality?

Give, give me back the early joy Of youth’s warm hopes, of vows believed— Again, again a dreaming boy Let me be happy—though deceived.

Friendship, they say, is but a name, And woman’s love a meteor flame, That feedeth upon fancy’s breath A little while, then perisheth. Out, out upon thee—out on thee! Thou hideous hag, Reality.

Hah! tears again! dost ask me why The tear upon this burning cheek, The half repressed, yet bursting sigh? The tear, the sigh, themselves must speak; Must tell a tale of by-gone hours, A vision of all fair and bright— When my young path was strewn with flowers, And every throb was of delight. When joys were of each moment’s birth, Nor care, nor doubt, an instant stole From days of ever-changeful mirth, That changeless shone upon the soul. When hopes, that in mist-distance gleaming, In promise e’en outvied the past, Came ever, halcyon heralds seeming, Of peace and bliss for aye to last.

But where is now the sportive wile Of youth—so guileless and so gay— The soul of love, of fire—the smile, That spoke that soul—oh! where are they? Of days that could such joys impart What now remains? Their memory— A cheerless, blasted youth—a heart That breaketh fast, though silently. And those proud hopes so fondly cherished, Have they too proved, like Friendship, breath? Ay, one by one, they all have perished— Yet no—not all—there yet is death! There yet remains to choose some spot, Where, far from man and scorn, to lie— And there, unheeded and forgot, Alone—oh! God—alone to die.

Who talks of dying, while around The earth’s so fair, the sky so bright? With Folly’s wreath let day be crowned, And Mirth and Music rule the night. Another chord—the purple hills Are bowing to the yellow vales— The vales are smiling to the rills— The rills make music for the gales, That with the sunbeams twining hands, Through groves and meads and streams are glancing Adown the lanes, and on the sands Of brave old Ocean madly dancing. And brave old Ocean roareth so His honest laugh, to see those Misses, The pretty flow’rets bending low, As though to shun the wired-god’s kisses.

Kisses—hah! hah!—around this string Of other days what memories twine— Bring, merry comrades, quickly bring Youth-giving and song-making wine. Fill, fill—on the faithful brim Pile up the sparkling flood— Drink, drink, till the living stream Run conqueror through the blood. Drink to the hill, the vale, The stream and its jeweled brink, To the warming ray and the cooling gale, To earth and to ocean drink. Drink to each thing that seems Or loving or glad to be— Nor wait to ask if those joyous beams Be nature’s hypocrisy.

I’ve quaffed the brimming bowl In mirth’s and madness’ hours— And drenched my thirsty soul In goblets crowned with flowers. Of draughts so pure as this ’Tis luxury to sip, But draught of purer bliss Doth dwell on woman’s lip.

I’ve felt the glowing sun Steal warmly to my heart’s Faint throbs, when gazing on The skies of southern parts. But oh! a sun more bright, A purer, warmer sky, Of joy-embathing light, Is found in woman’s eye.

’Neath holy Music’s spell Hath lain each dream-rapt sense, While on my spirit fell Its gushing eloquence. But oh! a spell there is More potent to rejoice— The soothing lowliness Of woman’s whispered voice.

Then wonder not, if now To her I pledge this cup, To whom my earliest vow First sent its incense up— To her—the soul of verse, Our hope, when hope-bereft— Our blessing ’neath the curse— Our all of Eden left.

Give, give me back the early joy Of youth’s strong hopes, of vows believed— Again, again a dreaming boy Let me be happy, though deceived. For who hath caught the answering sigh Heaving sweet woman’s timid breast, His longing soul fed on her eye, And learned the rapture to be blest— In lingering dalliance now to sip, In boldness now of ardor roving, To drink from eye, cheek, forehead, lip, Of one beloved, and seeming loving. Upon the tell-tale cheek to breathe, Closer the clasping hands to wreathe, As if no earthly power could sever The bosoms met, as met forever— While each responsive fluttering heart, Beating as though ’twould gladly break To tell the joy that tongue ne’er spake, Longs from its heaving breast to part, Nearer and nearer still to press The soul of its soul’s happiness. Oh! who has felt around his soul The spells of this idolatry— And wished not that his days should roll Thus spell-bound to eternity.

Away with wisdom—’tis a cheat— Away with truth—’tis all a lie— Madness alone hath no deceit— Falsehood alone no mockery.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OLDEN TIMES.

BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The town or borough of Harrisburg, the political capital of Pennsylvania, lies on the _bank_ of the Susquehanna, about 107 miles west of Philadelphia. I say on the _bank_, not the shore; for here a bold bluff rises a few yards from the northern margin of the river, and the town is, therefore, from ten to fifteen feet above the stream—a fact of consequence to the inhabitants; as the Susquehanna, which, in summer, may be easily forded by children, will frequently, during the spring freshets, rise from six to eight feet, threatening all upon its borders. The houses are built only on the north side of this front street, so as to face the river and leave, besides the beautiful avenue, a handsome esplanade in front of the town, overlooking the river.

Few places can present a more delightful promenade than this _front_ of Harrisburg; and the writer hereof has more than once sought to express his appreciation of the walk and the gorgeousness of the views to be enjoyed therefrom. The scene is ever fresh—ever delightsome, to one who has an eye for the beautiful of nature, and a heart to be warmed into the enjoyment of that beautiful. No frequency of indulgence palls the appetite here—no change of season diminishes the attraction. Whether the stream murmurs round the projecting rock and over masses of pebbles that mark its bed and are visible in summer, or whether the current dashes deep and bold, fed by the melting snows of the upper mountains, it is beautiful; beautiful in its simple exhibition—beautiful in its terrible grandeur. Whether the setting sun steeps the current in liquid, tremulous light, or the wild, tempestuous blasts of January heap up the waters in dark and chaffing masses, all is beautiful; and men go forth to gaze in quiet enjoyment on the peaceful flow of July, or to enrich and stimulate their feelings with the all-conquering power of the down-rushing torrent of March.

Indulging in dreamy pleasure one morning late in June, while contemplating the loveliness of the scene, I cast my eyes away to the mountains through which the river forces its course a few miles above the town, and was delighted to see the first evidences of the rising sun in the yellow light that tinged the topmost peaks of those mighty promontories, while heavy wreaths of mist, engendered on the ground below, were rolling upward, like giants anxious to bathe early in the sunlight—an enjoyment that must have cost them existence, or, perhaps, only present _visibility_.

I can now recall some of the reflections to which the magnificent scene gave rise. Those children of the mist, that tended upward, were they only imaginary beings? only the workmanship of my fancy, upon the crude materials that sprung up from the fens? or were those misty shapes indeed the essential forms of spirits, whose tendencies were upward—who, though dragged downward by the grossness of their outward covering, which affected its home and would abide in its cold, dark birth-place, struggled upward to the light and heat, and were released from the clogging properties of the visible and the impure, while they put on the invisible and the purified?

I knew the law of physics, by which the ascensive power of matter is augmented by heat, and consequently felt that some of those who were sleeping in the vicinity, would have referred all those misty images of the mountains to well known and always occurring circumstances. I admit that natural causes produce just such effects as the ascension of these wreaths of mist. But may not He who enacts the laws by which all these events occur, connect also the state, habits and tendencies of some class of beings with the operation of those laws? Because the sun gives light and heat to the system of which it is the centre, because we know that it riseth and goeth down, and because we can calculate the influence of its light and heat upon our planet, does it follow that the same body may not be the home of millions of rational beings, who would laugh if told that we, mundane men, thought _that_ luminous body made for the convenience of the earth?

I was calculating the effect upon one who should, while standing on that mountain, venture to address these wreathy forms, and find himself understood and answered, when the presence of a person whom I had once or twice seen, at the peep of dawn,

“Brushing, with hasty steps, the dew away,”

renewed a resolution of putting to him a question as to the origin of a certain enclosure in the vicinity. There was, between the upper bank and the edge of the river, directly in front of the town, a small enclosure, perhaps fifteen feet square, surrounded by a decaying board fence, and having in it two miserably looking Lombardy poplars, touched with all the squalidness of decay which characterizes the _age_ of that short-lived tree. Brambles, too, had sprung up in the enclosure, and they covered a small rising of the ground, with some invisible emblems. My object was to know why such a place was allowed in front of the town; why it was made, and why thus continued.

“That,” said my friend, “is the grave of old Mr. HARRIS, for whom the town was named, long before they thought of building the capitol yonder. But there is a long story connected with the matter, and you can learn the whole of it if you will call, with proper motives and in a proper manner, upon a descendant of the old patriarch who resides in the neighborhood.”

Now, I saw in this man some signals of fancy, and I felt determined to get the story out of him. But he professed to be in too much haste; he had his day’s work to perform, and he had almost forgotten the story. But I persevered with him and obtained some account, which, after eleven years, I put on paper, not venturing to quote my friend for authority, telling the story not exactly as ’twas told to me, but as I recollect and reconstruct the narrative.

Mr. Harris was one of the pioneers of Pennsylvania. He saw the country rich and beautiful before him, and “went forth and stood and measured the earth” in and around the place where now stands the borough which bears his name. The beauty of scenery, the delicate softness of the valley contrasting with the towering summits of the mountains around, made the place exceedingly desirable. He, like the men of his times, had an eye for the beautiful, and a far-reaching ken that took in the future with the present; and so he sat down on the shores of the Susquehanna, on what was then perhaps an island, though now a part of the main land.

Mr. Harris was a man of the world—I mean what I say—he was emphatically a man of the world. Calmly and coolly had he, in his youth, sat down to reflect upon the policy which would best subserve the purposes which he had in view; and, after mature deliberation, he came to the conclusion that the precepts of his mother were well founded, and that however much the gay might ridicule, or the short-sighted neglect, the rules which she had prescribed, and which she had made him, in boyhood, follow—on the whole, “to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly,” would serve the affairs of a long life as well as they would produce effects after death. So, Mr. Harris sat down on the banks of the Susquehanna, an honest man from habit—an honest man from principle; a Christian by birth—a Christian by all his actions. He had nothing Utopian in his views, nothing impracticable in his plans. If he bought or sold, it was with a view to his own advantage in the transaction, and neither white man nor red man could outbargain him; but either white man or red man would be welcome to all that his wants required at his hands; and those who failed to get one quart of meal more than he would allow in trade, found no difficulty in procuring a peck whenever their necessities appealed to his feelings of charity rather than to his rule of business.

The means of the founder of the settlement had been somewhat diminished by an act of goodness, which few could appreciate at the time. A stout black man was about to be torn from his wife to be sent into slavery at the South. The ability of the slave enhanced his price, while his goodness of heart made the separation more intolerable to him. The wife was free—should she go into voluntary slavery in order to follow her husband? and if she did, who could tell her that the first inducement to the owner to sell her husband might not result in a separation, which no sacrifice on her part could prevent, nor could it mitigate the evils thereof. In this state Pompey appealed to Mr. Harris; he promised fidelity, industry and gratitude; Mr. Harris saw that he could prevent misery, and he paid the price of the man, and thus became his _owner_.

“Massa Harris,” said the delighted black, as he saw the accomplishment of his heart’s desire, “I’ll do something for this by and by.”

“What will you do, Pompey?”

“Don’t know, massa; but guess ’twill come sometime or other.”

Pompey formed a part of Mr. Harris’s establishment in his small settlement upon the Susquehanna, and by his light heartedness and his labor, seemed to repay all obligations which his purchase devolved upon him. He had a song for the youngsters who visited the place, and he could dance with the Indians that resided a short distance above; and whether in the field or at the mill, he was trustworthy, active, industrious, and never for a moment did his worthy master find cause to regret his purchase.

“Done enough for to-day?” would Pompey inquire.

“You have done more, Pompey, than I directed, and you have done it well; and excepting your habit of singing foolish songs, and dancing like a madman among the Indians and squaws that come down from the Juniata, I have been well compensated for your cost.”

“But I have not done _that_,” said Pompey.

“I tell you, Pompey, that I require only the discharge of ordinary duties; I do not expect you will meet with any occasion for any extraordinary effort in my behalf.”

“Well, well, massa—it will come, bym’by, I _tell_ you.”

The peaceful, gentle manners of Mr. Harris had their effect upon Pompey’s movements, but not to the extent which the master desired. The servant was honest, industrious, and did all the work that was required at his hands, but he could not pretermit his sport. The day of gloom closed with Pompey when Mr. Harris saved him from the sale to the South and the separation from his wife, and Pompey felt a sort of devotion in his wild, irregular dances and his loud, shrill singing. His spirits rose with every recollection of the kindness, and, as he broke into a verse of some favorite song or shuffled out upon the hard earth with bare heels the time of a quickly moving tune, he felt that he was only giving expression to gratitude for his kind master; and who shall say that the offering of the joyous black was not made acceptable above, by the sincerity of the feelings in which it was presented?

It was a clear star-light evening of July, the moon had not risen, and the planetary worlds above seemed to magnify themselves in the absence of the great source of day; a gentle draft of air down the stream was felt, and occasionally a rustling among the foliage was caused by the wind, augmented into a temporary breeze. The whole bank of the river was covered with tall forest trees, save where Mr. Harris’s little settlement was placed. On a bold bluff, now washed away, but which then jutted out into the stream, as if for the site of some defensive works, stood a female. She had been long looking up into the firmament, and then casting her eyes around, as if expecting some one to share with her the “contemplation of the starry heavens.”

The young woman stepped forward and looked down upon the waters below her for some time, and then murmured: “They are now, as in years past, above and below—the glorious constellations shining on, and year after year returning, with all their train rich in their lustre, and surveying themselves in the waters beneath. But _we_ change. Year after year passes, and my fathers’ race, if they appear at all, present themselves in diminished numbers and in wasting forms. The foot of the white man is on the soil, and he treats us as he does the forest trees. Where he finds our race convenient, he leaves them to perish for want of communion with their like; where he needs their lands, he strikes them down as cumberers of the ground; and I, who love the race—_I_ dwell among the pale faces, in peace; nay, I dwell among them of choice. I love their people, and I reverence the precepts by which some of them are governed—by which all profess to be guided. Oh, spirit of my fathers! must all pass away like the wreaths of mountain mist, and, as they fall, shall it be the disgrace of their name that vice, and not vengeance, swept them from the earth?

“Oh, what is this new principle which the whites have infused into my soul—the means and condition of future happiness? What is it that bids me forbear the wish that I was a man—a chief among my fathers’ people, that I might chase the intruder from our hunting-grounds, and restore to our nation the land which was purchased by trinkets and baubles, costless to the whites and useless to the red men? What is that principle that _bids_ me, nay _makes_ me, pray for the good of the whites around me, and look to the destruction of my father’s race as a means of that good?

“I cannot tell. And the teachings of the whites concerning the requirements of their own religion, become dark and confused when they attempt to reconcile their practice with their precepts; at least, those who teach most do most confound. But Father Harris, who has little to say, how good are all his _deeds_! how like the shining of those stars upon the water is his benevolence to my race! beautiful in itself, and reflected in the hearts of the red men with constant lustre. Oh, if all were like him! but then—”

“Then what, Dahona?”

The interruption was caused by a young man who had followed the speaker to a place of frequent resort.

“Then what, Dahona?”

“Nay, William, nay, do not call me Dahona; at least, do not call me thus in _this_ place—do not call me thus when you find me alone—when the wildness of the scene begets wildness of thought, and the breeze which comes down from the hunting-grounds of my fathers, seems to fan into a flame the lingering sparks of native fire which civilization, as yet, has not quenched. Do not, by such a name, call up my almost buried thoughts of those who owned these lands when the white men were enjoying that which they stole from their conquered enemies; do not tell me, in the midst of these returning pangs of pride and regret—do not by that name tell me, that I am the daughter of a chief killed upon his own hills; and when I would calm down those feelings of vengeance, which come with longer intervals, do not, with the name of Dahona, goad me on to those wishes which must be sinful, for they are unjust to Father Harris.”

“Well, then, my dear Rebecca, if all the whites were like Father Harris, what then?”

“They are not all like him. Those who taught me to read and write, and who tried to teach me to pray, are not like him. They talked of the equality of man, and yet treated me as the child of a monster. Father Harris knows that I am human, like himself, and he treats me as if I was immortal, as he is.”

“Well, should not the virtues of such a man redeem from censure a thousand offending whites?”

“Perhaps so, William—I think so now; but there are times—moments like some which I pass alone on this point of land—in which the virtues of that good man seem to me a motive for vengeance upon _him_. Were he like others, the red man could strike; were he like others, _I_ could strike; if, instead of kindness, which demands gratitude, and constant care and parental watchfulness, which beget affection, he had treated me as other whites treat my race, it might be long ere the hunting-fields of the tribe submitted to the plough. But the virtues of the whites subdue the feelings of the Indians, and the vices of the whites destroy the race. And yet, William, Father Harris, with all this virtue, forbids our union!”

“_Forbids_ it, Rebecca, but does not hinder it.”

“Not hinder it? Does he not hinder it by his refusal to sanction it?”

“May we not go down to the lower settlement and be married, as others are?”

“Will that procure his consent, William?”

“No; but, of course, it will be followed by his pardon.”

“Alas, William, even the poor theology of my native tribe forbids the hope of pardon for a sin committed in the hope of pardon.”

“But he has no right, Rebecca, to prevent our happiness by his refusal to sanction the union.”

“He has over me the right of a father, and shall never complain of a want of obedience. I may suffer by his refusal, but if he is wrong he must bear the consequences. No, William, no. I have told you that I would marry none other than you; but I will not marry you without the consent of Father Harris while he lives, with power to give or to withhold that consent.”

“His reasons are insufficient.”

“Nay, William, say not that; though he has not told me his reasons, I think I comprehend them. In the first place, you are the son of his old friend and relative; can the strong prejudices of your race be appeased, if you should marry the daughter of an Indian? It is true that I was a princess; and the whites whom I met at the school in the city, always appeared to worship those of royal blood, and I do not know that the crown of the parent country might not devolve upon the head of a man or woman as black and as curly as our Pompey, if such an one should, by the accidents of taste and the favor of the right _creed_, fall into the channel of succession by an admitted marriage. That strong prejudice, I am persuaded, influences Father Harris.”

“But it does not influence _me_, Rebecca; and why should it? Associated with the best of our people in the city, you have acquired their habits; you have, with all the delicacy of your sex, twice the learning that can be boasted of by many of ours; and if—”

“Yes, yes, William; you mean by ‘_if_,’ that if I had ceased to feel, and sometimes act, like an Indian, _then_—But I have not ceased to feel and to act, _sometimes_, like my father’s child; and all the learning which the whites have imparted, seems only to enable me to appreciate more correctly the sufferings and wrongs of my people; and if it were not for the gentle teaching of that Quaker woman—nay, the teaching rather of the _spirit_ by which she is influenced—I should, perhaps, make my knowledge a means of vengeance. But, William, there is another cause, founded on sound policy, for the refusal of Father Harris.”

“And what is that?”

“I am the daughter of a chief of a tribe that scarcely thinks of peace; and when my father was tortured by his conquering foes—tortured to death, but not to a groan—and my mother was struck down by the hatchet of a warrior of the tribe above us, I was redeemed from captivity by Father Harris—saved from a miserable death—treated, educated and loved by him as his child. While I am here, it may be that the warriors of my tribe will respect his settlement; if I should marry you, the tribe above, always friendly, might grow jealous of the connection.”

“There is more of worldly policy in that than Mr. Harris is wont to exercise,” said William.

“Let us be content,” said Rebecca “with his decision for the present. He who has always intended right, cannot long persist in wrong.”

The dialogue of the lovers became less and less argumentative, and was soon changed from that of an educated, high-minded woman and a deferential young man, to the gentle intercourse of two lovers—more pleasing to themselves, though perhaps less interesting to my readers. The moon had risen, and the light of its diminished form was dancing on the ripples of the river, and lay broad and lovely upon the side of the mountain above.

“What was that sound?” asked Rebecca, with evidence of fear. “Surely some one is abroad.”

“It was only a deer, or some such animal, on the other side of the river.”

“But, William, the deer does not move thus by night, unless alarmed by the hunter or some animal. Let us return; we may be injured, even on this side the river.”

The pair withdrew to the little settlement; and as they passed one of the out-houses, they discovered, through the interstices of the logs of which it was constructed, the white teeth and shining eyes of Pompey, who, not having any love affair on hand, was very willing to have a laugh at “Massa William,” or a little knowing wink at Rebecca, the next day.

Rebecca was soothed to repose by the quiet of her conscience and the healthful, gentle influence of the prayer with which she sanctified her little chamber—prayer that included blessings upon the head of her benefactor, her early friend and father—prayer that expressed confidence and love for Him who was her “Father in Heaven.” The noise of the river, hastening downward in its eternal course, was lulling, and in the strong light which the moon poured through the little window of her chamber, the enthusiastic girl seemed to find the forms of guardian angels; and she sunk to sleep in the confidence that she was in the care of Heaven.

And was she not? What but Heaven provided for her the ample affection of Harris? What but Heaven made his teachings operative upon her conduct? What threw across the dark mind of the Indian girl the light of Christian truth?—a light whose reflection was certainly tinged with a portion of the hues of the object which it reached, but which still was Christian light, doing its perfect work and effecting, by constant operation, the character, condition and habits of Rebecca.

It was but a short time before daylight that the young sleeper, who had retired to rest in the consciousness of Heaven’s guardianship, was alarmed by loud cries, and on looking abroad she saw that one building of the little hamlet was wrapped in flames, while the wild yells of the savages told the poor girl what was the cause of the danger, and left little doubt as to its extent; and she knew, too, that the savage intruders were the people of her own tribe. Scarcely had she thrown a few clothes around her, and wrapped herself about with a blanket from her bed, when the voice of Pompey, as he passed her window, was heard. One sentence only did the poor fellow utter:

“Save all the time you can, Miss Rebecca!”

In two minutes more the little settlement was surrounded by the savages. William, who had been aroused later than the black, sought to save Mr. Harris, but failed, and seeing no chance of escaping through the line of Indians, he rushed into the room of Rebecca, and opening a small door took refuge in a cellar beneath.

Rebecca, it was known, incurred little personal risk. She was of the tribe of the invaders; and vengeance upon the whites, and the spoliation of their goods, were the objects of the attack.

Scarcely had William reached his hiding-place when the chief of the small tribe of invaders presented himself at the door of Rebecca’s room, and demanded William.

“He is not in my room. Do you think men are to be found in my bed-chamber?”

“A white man may be found any where in time of danger,” said the savage. “But I do not care for the fellow; I want to know where Harris has hidden his goods—especially where he has concealed the rum.”

“I do not keep his goods nor hide his rum.”

“But you know where he hides them, and you shall tell me, or I—”

“Or you will kill me—kill a woman! Brave chief! Has the influence of the white man reduced our tribe to that?”

“I did not threaten you, Dahona; but I will strike where you can feel as keenly as on yourself. Tell me where these goods are secreted.”

“I will not; and you dare not take vengeance on me.”

“Look, Dahona, through yonder window!”

The girl turned her eye to the window, and by the broad blaze of the burning building she saw a stake erected, near the river, and numerous savages were heaping around it quantities of wood.

“Is that for me?”

“No—for Harris.”

The young woman checked the exclamation which was rising to her lip:

“And you will release him if I will point out to you the goods; you will do no personal injury to any one, and spare the rest of the property?”

The Indian hesitated; but the lie which seemed to struggle for utterance, against the habits of his race, was spoken:

“I will spare all—”

“And the people of the tribe—will they spare?”

Just then a band of savages was seen conveying Mr. Harris down to the stake.

The spirit of Rebecca was shaken. She did not know, indeed, _where_ any goods were concealed, and the small amount which had been put aside was then brought forward by some of the Indians, who were more occupied with the rum they had secured than with the other articles.

She looked through the window again, and Harris was at the stake, and, with impatient yells, the savages were making ready for the sacrifice.

“Spare him—only spare the life of Harris, and take all!”

“We _have_ all, and now we will consummate the work. Hark ye, Dahona! Harris must suffer the torments to which our captives are condemned. We have been injured by the whites. Your father was our chief—they destroyed him; and whose blood has flowed in revenge? You, the daughter of that chief, have been made to despise the people of your tribe, and to adopt the faith of the whites—a creed that makes one portion cowards—afraid of the life or the death of a warrior—and leaves the other portion to commit what crimes they choose upon the red men.

“Now, hear me, Dahona. It is the creed that makes the man, and not the man the creed; and the influence of your profession of that creed—the devotion which you pay to that book now lying at your feet—are weakening the attachment of our people to their chiefs, and giving power to the whites. Renounce the creed, spurn the book at your feet, and follow your brethren to their hunting grounds, and we will spare Harris.”

“I will follow you whither you wish—take me now; but first release that man.”

“Do you renounce the white man’s creed—will you spurn the Bible in presence of our men?”

A few hours before, the troubled spirit of Rebecca had been moved almost to doubt the truth of the religion into which she had been initiated; but when the question was its renunciation, she felt the hold which it had upon her mind—she showed the hold which it had upon her heart. Could she, with some mental reservation, make the renunciation, and thus save her benefactor’s life? She was not well versed in casuistry, but she knew that religion was of the heart.

“Speak,” said the chief; “the people are waiting my signal.”

“Give me a moment to think.”

“Take it. I will leave you until the messenger returns twice with new combustibles for the old man’s fire.”

The chief closed the door, and Rebecca turned to seek guidance in her troubles.

The savage crew had seized upon the person of Mr. Harris, and dragged him from the house to the place appointed for his torments. A slow fire was to be lighted around him, and his dying moments were to be embittered by their blasphemies, and his pains augmented by the torments which they would inflict before the flame should have done its work.

The good man looked around. William he had heard in the first of the attack, and he now believed him dead. He knew that he had little to fear for Rebecca; her captivity might be irksome, but beyond that they would not injure her. But Pompey, with all his professions, where was he at such a time? How useful he might have been—how consoling, even now, to have seen him near, and to have sent by him messages to his friends. But he was forsaken of all—of all but his enemies; and so he looked upward, to ONE that had ever been his friend. Release was not to be expected. Mercy, fortitude, resignation—and the good man breathed a fervent prayer.

“The time is up,” said the stern chief, as he opened the door of Rebecca’s chamber. “What say you—life or death to Harris?”

“Let me see my father, even as he is—let me commune with him for one moment, and I will answer.”

The chief led forth the girl; and as he passed two of his men he said, in his own language:

“Watch the house; and when the fire is lighted at the stake, set the house on fire—both the white and black are in it some where. See that none escape.”

Rebecca heard and understood the terrible order.

The young woman ascended the pile, and threw her arms around the neck of Harris.

“My father! my father! must this be?”

“There is no preventive,” said he, “short of a miracle.”

Rebecca sobbed into the ear of her benefactor, the condition of his release.

“They will never release me,” said he; “they may make you an apostate, but they will also make me a martyr.”

“My father, they have sworn the oath that has never yet been violated, when given from Indian to Indian, that they _will_ release you on those conditions.”

“Has that oath never failed?”

“Never—never, my father.”

“Let me not fall into the hands of man,” said the prisoner; “in this hour, God, be my guide and counsel.”

“What is the answer, my father? Remember, your life—your precious life, may be saved, and that of William,” she whispered softly in his ears. “Do not hesitate.”

“I do not hesitate for myself. How, my child, is thy faith?”

“Firm—fixed, my father.”

“Will you renounce it, if by that you could save the life of William and become his wife with my consent?”

“I would not renounce that faith to add one moment to _my_ life. Now, more than ever, do I see and feel its excellency. But you, my father, in whom it shines, may, by a protracted life, disseminate that faith to thousands.”

“Shall I insure the faith of others by my own apostacy? You have my answer.”

Rebecca gave one wild, frantic shriek, and was forced, almost lifeless, from the embraces of Harris.

“And what says Dahona now?”

“_I will not renounce my faith._”

The signal was given, and the men arranged themselves between the river and the stake, and two or three sprung forward and applied their torches to the dry wood; slowly the smoke ascended, and then the blaze crept upward, while the loud shouts of the exulting savages drowned the prayer and groans of Harris and the wild shrieks of Rebecca.

“Apply the tortures,” said the chief, and he sprung forward to give the example; when, suddenly, he pitched forward upon the fire, and the crack of numerous rifles told whence his death had come.

In one minute the ground was filled with Indians of another tribe, and the survivors of the invading band ware escaping down the river.

Through the mingled throng of living, and over the bodies of the dead, sprung one being upon the burning pile, and with a hatchet released the sufferer from his perilous position, as the fire was doing the work which the savages had left unaccomplished.

As the rescuer laid Mr. Harris on the ground, he exclaimed:

“_Hi!_ Massa Harris, didn’t I tell you, great while ago, ‘bym by come sometime or odder?’”

Pompey had escaped before the Indians surrounded the house, and knowing the attachment to Mr. Harris of a tribe a short distance above, and their hostility to those who had invaded the settlement, he was sure of aid if he could summons them in season.

The friendly Indians descended the river rapidly in their canoes, and were only in season to save the life of the whites.

William was brought forth wounded, but not dangerously, and the family assembled in prayer and thanksgiving, while their friendly deliverers were discharging some of the minor offices of their calling and celebrating their victory by some characteristic attentions to the wounded whom the enemy had left on the shores of the Susquehanna.

“Did you not hesitate, my child,” said Mr. Harris to Rebecca, “when death or apostacy was proposed?”

“When _your_ death was the alternative, I did.”

“Where, then, was your faith in Christianity—in its author?”

“Father, I am weak. I owe you obligations—I would sacrifice my life for your comforts; I knew you good—I knew you would decide correctly. My faith, then, was in _you_.”

“In me?”

“In _you_—in you, oh, my more than father. You are the embodiment of that _spirit_ by which I am guided. My faith in you, then—is it not my faith in the creed which you profess, and by which you live?”

No sooner had William recovered from his wounds, than Mr. Harris called Rebecca to him and signified his consent to the union between her and William, and his determination to make their circumstances as comfortable as the state of the neighborhood would allow.

“It is late, now,” said Rebecca to William; “let us separate. The morrow will require our early attention, and Father Harris will be astir early in the morning.”

“And he not the only one,” said William; “for some of us must go down and bring the magistrate up, to perform the ceremony. We will meet early to-morrow morning.”

Before the dawn of the day fixed on for her marriage, Rebecca left her chamber, and hastened along the banks of the river to the jutting promontory that she so much loved. Leaning there upon the side of a rock, she gave vent to all those feelings which spring up in the heart of a girl who stands upon the verge of marriage. Welling up from that heart were the waters of pure, holy affection for Harris, and of deep, abiding love for William. There was no want of all true feelings—no doubt of the high deservings of her lover. But Rebecca’s education was imperfect; it had never eradicated the strong feelings for her own people; it had led her to see how rapid must be their decay, but it had not made her cling with undivided love to those whose superiority in certain points was exhibiting itself in the destruction of the natives; for she saw that the friendship of the whites was as fatal to the Indians as was their enmity. The lands passed as fast by cession as by conquest, and vices were sent with the wampum of peace as readily as with the weapon of war. And while she felt that she could apply no remedy, or _become_ a preventive, she yet felt for those whose blood was in her veins—whose fathers’ fame had been her glory.

“Oh, children of the forest,” said she, as she bent her eyes upon mountains and table lands above, “ye are passing away like the leaves of autumn. The frosts and the sunshine are alike fatal to you, and ere long you will be known only by your decay. Men will _tell_ of your glories—but who shall _see_ them? Dim shadows yet linger on the forest edge, and I catch the view of half fading forms as I look along the valley of the stream. Are these the spirits of my fathers come to chide me, their daughter, for my apostacy? Alas! what an apostacy is that of their sons, who retain the customs of the tribes, and yet adopt the vices of the whites.”

“The light of another day is springing up, and a thousand shapes are visible; are these spirit-hunters of the red men—do they sanctify the night by their chase? They are not like the red men of those days. Mighty ones they are, and they pursue the mammoth for their sport. But how they depart before the coming light, as their descendants waste in the influence of the arts of the white men!”

“But ought I to wish it otherwise? Will not science make more happy, and religion repay by its influences all the evil which has been brought on its name? Has it done it? Alas! I am distressed. What is to be the effect of all? Are the white men, with their religion, to drive the red men from their possession only to have more ample scope for vice, only to waste each other by the fraud with which they, in most places, overcome the Indians? or is the establishment of both to produce the happiness to all which is promised by their leaders? And are these doubts, these apparent difficulties, the result of my inability to judge of what is to follow, as the vision is now disturbed by the uncertainty of the dawning light, whose perfection will restore all things to their proper appearance?”

“Oh, let me yet, as I shall abide with these conquerors of our people, let me at least acknowledge that it is not they but their religion that detains me. No, deeply as I reverence my Father Harris, and much as I love William, I would join the wasting, the decaying remnant of my tribe; and if I could not revenge their wrongs, I would die with them undisgraced by treachery. But that religion—ah, they hold me there; they have driven from my heart most of the creed of my childhood. Only here and there is found a belief, green, from its association with infancy, but still beautiful, still cherished. While they have erected in my heart the form of their own faith, unfinished yet, but still promising, still sheltering. They have dealt with me as with our forests, in which our tribes had their home, they cut them down, leaving here and there a tree to tell of the things that were, and placing incomplete edifices for their own shelter—edifices that they promise shall be sufficient and beautiful in time.”

The sun was rising above the horizon, and not a cloud stood in his whole pathway to the west. The tops of the mountain caught and reflected its first rays. As the warmth increased, the mists, which had fallen thick toward the base of the hills, began slowly to rise and roll in massive columns upward, or to pass off by the _gap_ through which the river rushes. Rebecca gazed at the scene until her fancy moulded these morning mists into the forms of cherished beings. The whole energies of her tribe seemed to revive within her, and all of the wild and the unearthly that distinguished the dreams of her childhood rushed back upon her mind.

“I see you all,” said she, “chiefs, warriors and women. I know ye now; every one has his form, and ye are returning from the hunting-field of spirits. Ye return mournful, though borne down with game; sad, for ye cross the fields which the whites have torn from your descendants; angry, for a child of a warrior is to be of those who are your enemies—and yonder group of little ones, they are my brothers and sisters, airy ones now, but happy in the mimic hunt, happy till they turn their faces on me, the last of all the household. And, father—oh, my father, the death-wound is yet upon thy breast, as thou movest onward in the air. Mother! mother! look not thus on thy child! Oh, turn not to me that breast whence I drew my life-nurture; that breast on which I rested when the life-drops were oozing forth from the wound which the enemy inflicted. But they are happy—happy in their union, happy in the smiles of the Great Spirit whom they adored in their homes and their hunting-grounds, whom they propitiated by terrible vengeance upon those who desecrated those homes and destroyed those hunting-grounds. They are happy, for the mist that gathers round my mother’s brow is resplendent with rainbow beams, and as she passes upward to the mountain’s summit, she waves her hand to me in peace. Thy pardon and thy blessing, oh, my mother—prostrate, I invoke them both.”

William, who had witnessed the last agonizing scene, then stepped forward and raised the girl from the deep earth. She scarcely noticed his presence, the wildness of her eye denoted thoughts differently placed; and it was several minutes before she recovered her usual self-possession.

“It is passed, William, and we will now return to the house.”

“But, Rebecca, why should you thus have exposed yourself and your health by such a yielding to the influence of your feelings and your imagination?”

“William, I am, or I would be, a Christian; and when I have given myself to _you_ and to God, I would have no reserve in my heart from either, and therefore, before the sacrifice was made, as the daughter of the Judge of Israel went forth upon the high-places of her land to mourn, so I came hither to weep for what I was to leave, and to leave that for which I wept. The last sacrifice upon the altar of my fathers and my fathers’ deities has been made. I have torn from my heart the flowers which grew upon the Indian’s belief, and have prayed that the tree of life may over-shadow the wild plants, that they blossom not again. I have taken down from the recesses of my soul, the gods which my mother enshrined there, and have taken leave of the living and the dead of my father’s race. And now, William, now my beloved one, I am thine—thine in all seasons and all changes—thine, loving and loved; but, oh, do not forget that my mind, though dedicated to Christianity now, has been the _home_ of the red man’s creed, and may yet while it is sanctified by the new altar, reflect something of itself, its other self upon the purer worship, as the temples dedicated to the pagan god seem to cast some air of their origin upon the new and sanctified rites which they now enclose; and in moments of feeling, or when some additional wrong to my fathers’ race is done in the name of our new creed, bear with me, if for a moment, I forget the blessed teaching of the gospel, and yield to the earlier influences of blood, of education and patriotism. It shall not be often, not for the world. Henceforth, my beloved one, I am thine; all of childhood’s home—all of a people’s wrongs—all of a nation’s faith and a nation’s gods, are given up—and all of thine adopted. Thy breast shall be my pillow in trouble, and thy smile my token of joy; thy welfare shall be my happiness, thy dwelling shall be my home, ‘thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’”

William pressed to his heart the confiding, beautiful girl; and they turned to leave the eminence upon which they stood, and to join the family below.

The exceeding beauty of the morning induced them to look once more and admire the scene. The whole broad river below them seemed one floating mass of light; and as the current passed on, its surface was disturbed by the boughs of the overhanging trees that dipped into the water, and created ripples that reflected all the hues of the moving light. The mountains in the west seemed clothed in gorgeous sunbeams, and nature appeared to have assumed her richest garb, to bless the nuptials that were about to take place.

“I love this scene,” said Rebecca, “it tranquilizes me—it soothes my spirit, it elevates without agitating my mind—such a morning is a teacher of religion.”

“The Spirit of God is teaching every where,” said William.

“True, true,” said Rebecca, “but I seem to lack some visible object, something upon which my eye may rest, something like the ladder of Jacob, by which I may ascend; the visible is necessary to me, to fix my thought upon and draw it up to the invisible. Is not your creed deficient in that?”

“Can there be a better man than Father Harris, and have you ever heard of one less influenced by the visible and tangible, and more guided by faith in the unseen?”

“True—but it is his goodness, his attainment in that grace which enable him to dispense with the visible. You white men cut and blaze the trees of the forest so that you may recognize the course by which you are to reach a desired point, but the Indian passes onward through the densest wood, with no visible sign, no outward evidence of the path.”

“But, Rebecca, the white men find that their cuttings and blazings are imitated, so that it is difficult to tell in time which is the right mark, and resort must be had yet to the invisible to correct the visible. The former deceives us often—the latter never.”

Hand in hand the pair returned to the mansion of Mr. Harris, and the day thus begun in sacrifice and prayer, was closed in festivity. And William received to his arms his Indian bride.

The little enclosure at Harrisburg is a frail but eloquent memorial of the virtue and sufferings of Mr. Harris, and the fidelity of Pompey. The former handed down his name and his virtues to a numerous posterity.

Pompey, undoubtedly, is represented by some of his own color even in the present day. The great reward which he claimed for his successful exertions to save his master’s life, was permission to introduce a fiddle into the settlement; and for years afterward the banks of the Susquehanna were made melodious by the joyful notes which Pompey drew from his favorite instrument, while blithely and strong was heard the footfall of the young at night, as they danced to the music of the Orpheus of their time.

William’s descendents are in and around Harrisburg, holding office when they can get it, and dividing themselves between the two, or occasionally among the many parties, so that the advantage of ascendency by either fraction may not be entirely lost by all. These are not the children of Rebecca; she died young—her frame of mind was not favorable to long life. She died a Christian, firm, consistent, active, growing always in faith, and full of good works; and yet it was remarked by the excellent clergyman whose teaching she followed, that her mind seemed never to have dismissed entirely the creed of her childhood—and all her pure faith, all her Christian zeal, all her holy life, appeared to have some tinge of the creed of her fathers—not to alter the body of her faith, but merely to give it, at times, a color. “And,” said a successor of that clergyman, “have not the teachings she adopted, teachings of Christianity, always been thus affected by the previous character of the community or individuals by which they have been received?” No requirement diminished, no duty changed, no obligation dispensed, but a sort of reservation of a non-essential, which served to reflect a separate ray upon the admitted and the requisite. Religious truth, though enforced by divine grace, must in general be conveyed by a human medium, which will impart a portion of itself or its accidents, as the color of the atmosphere through which light is conveyed to earth gives hue and tinge to the rays, without diminishing essentially their powers to guide by their light, or invigorate by their heat. Nay, when we concentrate these rays to convey them to particular objects, the light not only takes the tinge of the medium, but it has also the divergency and eccentricity consequent upon the inequalities of surface, or the impurities of the glass through which it comes.

Rebecca lived to bless her husband by her domestic virtues and her unfailing affection. Her death was mourned wherever her beautiful example of womanly virtue and Christian integrity was known.

[After the above narrative was prepared for the press, numerous letters that passed between Rebecca and her school-mates—one or two to Mr. Harris—and some to her lover, and two to her husband, near the close of her life, were supplied to the writer by the same person who furnished the materials for the story. They could not well be introduced with the narrative, but may be given hereafter, should it appear that they have interest enough for the pages of this Magazine.]

* * * * *

TRANSLATION

OF A RECENTLY DISCOVERED FRAGMENT[1] OF A POEM BY SAPPHO.

BY G. HILL.

Thou’rt like the apple—maiden young and fair— That sees its fellows gathered, one by one, While, on the topmost bough, though ripe and rare, It unmolested sits and blooms alone: Forgotten? No—a mark for every eye, But for the gazer’s longing hand too high.

[1] Published in Walz, Rhetor. Græc. 8. 883.

* * * * *

TWO HOURS OF DOOM.

BY MRS. JULIET H. L. CAMPBELL.

HOUR I.—_A Betrothal._

The princes of the night came, one by one, into the halls of Heaven, and each, from his refulgent throne, sped far and wide through space his beams of glory. The earth saw the regal train, and rejoiced, saying, “I am their sister;” then the shadows passed away from her bosom, and she stood in radiance amid her starry compeers, sending back ray for ray.

“My Lillian, let us look upon the night,” cried Kenneth—and he led her forth beneath the stars. They smiled upon the maid, and crowned her forehead with their beams, and her beauty grew as lofty and mysterious as their own.

The pair walked in silence, for each bosom throbbed heavily, with its burden of unspoken love; they walked in silence, for youth was in flushing, and they heeded not the speeding hours.

First Kenneth spoke, for man must _act_ while woman muses, and the spells of night oppressed him.

“Look, Lillian, on the shining orbs above us, circling their mysterious round! Knowest thou, the starry firmament is a vast prophecy of things to be? Yon burning record of the decrees of fate rolls its stupendous riddles in mighty round, and mock our earnest inquiry. The learning of the Magi, the ‘Persians starry wit,’ may catch but faint and far-off glimpses of the truths they blazon yet conceal. The boasted lore of the Chaldean, reads but imperfectly their dim revealings, while the Gheber, wiser in his ignorance than either, bows in worship to the celestial mysteries he presumeth not to compass or comprehend.”

There was a majesty and gloom in the boy’s conceptions that charmed and oppressed fair Lillian; and, as woman is prone to do, she turned from all the rolling worlds of which he spoke, to the deep, silent, and no less enigmatical world of her own heart.

He looked again upon the heavens on which was written, as he believed, the fate of nations, while her meek eyes followed his, striving to read from the jeweled scroll, her own doom.

“Kenneth,” she cried, abruptly, and in awe, “I feel that I am approaching a crisis in my fate!”

“Thy fate, sweet one, is also written in letters of light above us. I am not deeply versed in heavenly lore, but from thy presentiment and mine, I read a crisis is at hand. Seest thou yon pale orb,” he continued, raising his hand aloft, “my father told me once it shone upon _thy_ birth, and from that hour it has been the object of my vigil and study; so pale, so pure, it seemeth like thy fair face set in heaven. Of late methought it shone with sadder beam, and wandered from its track. See!” he cried with a shout, “it journeys the skies, side by side, with yon red-eyed planet.”

Lillian raised her soft eyes, and met the lurid glare of the blood-red star.

“What orb is that?” she inquired, with a shudder, clinging closer to Kenneth’s side.

“_The star of my nativity!_”

* * * * *

“Lillian! _my_ Lillian! tremble not, beloved! hath not kind Heaven given thee to me?” He wound his arms around her frail form, and laid her to his heart.

“Dark youth, I fear thee!” she shrieked, and bursting from his embrace, fled into the night. Suddenly she paused, and covering her face with her hands, crushed the big tears that were gushing from their fountains, “ay!” she murmured, “but I love thee also!”

“Thou dost, my fawn!” said Kenneth, as he regained her side, “swear, then, to be mine.”

The maiden hesitated, for the angel whose ward she was, whispered a warning.

“Swear not, for his brow is dark and his heart fierce—his path lieth through blood, and endeth in blackness!”

Then love lifted up his voice, crying, “What grief so great as parting from thy beloved! What wo so heavy as a disappointed heart!”

And the maiden said, “I swear! Whether for good or evil, for blessing or for blight, my doom is sealed, and I am thine.”

“The crisis is past, beloved,” whispered the wooer—“where is now thy fear?”

The maiden abode in the halls of her sires, while the youth rode forth intent on valiant deeds, for ’twas in the days when a hero’s laurels were his bridal gift. But his heart was not strong in hope—neither was it girt with patience—neither was it seasoned with denial; and temptation beset him by the way and endurance failed, and when he returned, his knightly spurs were dimmed, and tarnished his knightly honor.

“Oh, spurn me not, beloved!” he cried, in agonized abasement.

And the lady answered, “Through glory and shame I will be true to thee.”

Then was Kenneth comforted by her tenderness, and strengthened by her counsels—and he went forth with hope to retrieve the errors of the past.

But the glory of his youth had departed, and the fear of God dwelt no more in his bosom; and his heart was curdled by the scorn of men, and hardened against his kind; and his right hand became a hand of power, but it was red with wrath—and injustice, and oppression, and cruelty, and wrong, and rapine, and murder, stalked in his train. Then he returned to his lady, and stood before her with a sullen brow, saying,

“By my valor have I won my bride!”

“Ah, Kenneth!” she faltered, “thou hast despised my counsels, thou hast mocked at my love; thy path hath been a path of blood, and thy crimes rise mountain-high between thee and thy affianced! Oh, why hast thou done this?”

The scales fell from his eyes in that pure presence, and looking back over the guilt of years, he felt appalled by his own sins.

“The stars, in their courses, fought against me,”[2] he answered gloomily—“it was my destiny.”

“Oh, abandon that fearful error, and cease to burden Fate with thy misdeeds. Thy destiny hath been of thine own choosing. Didst thou not turn a deaf ear to the pleadings of all good angels? Didst thou not yield an easy prey to the devices of thine own heart? For the sake of the future, look back upon the past, and tell me if thou canst not recall the hour when two paths were spread before thee, and thou didst choose thy lot; tell me no more of destiny!”

“My lady hath forgotten her meekness as well as her love.”

“Kenneth, reproach me not! I have wasted my youth in vigils for thee; I have watched, and wept, and waited, now in hope, and anon in hopelessness, until sorrow shadowed my father’s halls, and mildew settled down on my heart. Now in the depths of my despair I love thee still, but I _dare not_ wed thee! Go in peace; if man may ever meddle with his fate, mine shall be of my own moulding.”

“Fashion it as thou wilt,” he answered fiercely, “_I will come to claim thee in the appointed hour!_”

* * * * *

Fair Lillian sitteth in her husband’s home, but a great shadow lieth athwart the hearth; ’tis the memory of an earlier, wilder, fonder love; and the fierce fame of her warrior, reacheth her ever, terrible as the roar of distant battle.

[2]

The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. JUDGES, chap. v., verse 20.

HOUR II.—_The Consummation._

The princes of the night mounted their flaming steeds and coursed through heaven. Lillian sat in widow’s weeds, and watched them from her great round tower. Suddenly the clang of a mailed heel rung on the winding stair, and her cheek paled—for those halls no longer echoed with martial sounds since Lord Ulric had been gathered home. Near and more near, loud and more loud, and a warrior strode into the apartment, and folded the lady in his embrace!

“_I have come!_”

Those old, familiar, long beloved tones, how they broke upon the loneliness, thrilling to its centre her sorrow-stricken heart. What marvel if she wept unresistingly on his broad breast, in her agony of surprise.

“I have come to claim my bride!”

Then was the spell broken, and her soul awoke to a sense of its stern resolves. She freed herself from that passionate embrace, saying,

“I may not wed thee, Kenneth.”

“But listen to my pleadings, my long lost one; canst thou not divinely forgive the past, and be my guardian angel for the future? Hast thou ceased to love, or hast thou learned to fear me?”

“Kenneth, thou art accursed of God, and abhorred of men, and yet I fear thee not. Thou wert the lover of my youth, ever fond, ever tender; and thy name, so dreaded in the land thou hast scourged, is to me but a talisman of gentle memories. I fear thee not. But I have walked through life with a strong hand on my heart, curbing its warm impulses, crushing its fond love. It hath plead passionately for thee, but I hearkened not, and by this bitter schooling have I learned to resist even _thee_.”

“And I, have I not, ’mid sin and sorrow, ’mid wreck of hopes and ruin of soul, preserved undimmed my one bright dream of thee? Have I not sat by a lonely hearth, while thy smile filled the home of my rival with joy? Have I not forborne to tear thee thence, because I would not offer violence to thee or thine? And now wilt thou reject the love which youth hath sanctified, and manhood ripened?”

“Oh, why hast thou not wedded and forgotten me?” she cried, in anguish.

“Because the hope of thy pale waning beauty was dearer to my heart than all the daughters of bloom. Because I would be ever ready for the hour when fate should say, ‘arise, make ready thy bower for thy promised bride;’ _that hour has come_! Mark the heavens where ’tis written, thou art mine. Once, long ago, we looked upon the night with all its circling stars; thou seest them now, as then, treading their solemn round, unchanged, unchangeable. Not one of all the starry hosts may wander from its appointed pathway; and canst thou, child of destiny, escape thy fate? The hand that guides _them_, governs _thee_, and the decrees of the Omnipotent have been, from all eternity, and are immutable.”

“Oh, tell me no more of thy stern, unpitying faith! thou hast imbued my mind with thy belief, until, like the scorpion girt with fire, I have almost turned on myself despairing. I would fain believe that the struggles and strivings of humanity are not without their fruits; that the fervent prayer, the earnest effort, are heard, and heeded; that man may wrestle all night with his Maker, and when the morning breaks, prevail.”[3]

Very touching was the fierce man’s tenderness, but the lady was strong in her heart’s martyrdom. Then he turned away, saying,

“Thou hast destroyed the hope of a lifetime, and my father’s lore hath failed me. How could I thus misread the stars!”

From the battlement he looked on heaven thus questioning, and the stars grew dim beneath his gaze.

The orb that beamed upon his lady’s birth, sent down its calm, cold ray; his own more fiery planet blazed in lurid light, while an ocean of space rolled between.

“Lost to me!” he murmured.

As he spoke, the red planet shot madly from its sphere, careering athwart the concave like a sword of fire, it rushed from being, and deeper darkness brooded o’er the expanse.

Again his eye sought the milder light of the star he worshiped, when lo! _it had been swept from the face of heaven_.

“Be it so, lost Pleiad!” cried the lover, and folding in his arms the pallid lady, leaped from the turret, into the abyss below.

[3] Exodus, chapter xxxii.

* * * * *

ERMENGARDE’S AWAKENING.

BY FRANCES S. OSGOOD.

Dear God and must we see All blissful things depart from _us_, or ere we go to THEE? E. B. BARRETT.

It was an altar worthy of a god! All of pure gold, in furnace fire refined; And never foot profane had near it trod, And never image had been there enshrined; But now a radiant idol claimed the place, And took it with a rare and royal grace.

And the proud woman thrilled to its false glory, And when the murmur of her own true soul Told in low, lute-tones Love’s impassioned story, She dreamed the music from that statue stole, And knelt adoring at the silent shrine Her own divinity had mode divine.

And with a halo from her heart she crowned it, That shed a spirit-light upon its face, And garlands hung of soul-flowers fondly round it, Wreathing its beauty with immortal grace, And so she felt not, as she gazed, how cold And calm that Eidolon of marble mould.

Like Egypt’s queen in her imperial play, She, in abandonment more wildly sweet, Melted the pearl of her pure _Life_ away, And poured the rich libation at its feet, And in exulting rapture _dreamed_ the smile That should have answered in its eyes the while.

And all rare gifts she lavished on that altar, Treasures the mines of India could not buy, Nor did her foot-fall for a moment falter, Though the world watched her with an evil eye, And sad friends whispered “Soon she’ll wake to weep, For lo! she walks in an enchanted sleep.”

Oh! glorious dreamer! with dark eyes upturned In wondering worship to that godlike brow, How the rare beauty of thy spirit burned In the rapt gaze and in the glowing vow, How didst thou waste on one thy soul should scorn The glory of a blush that mocked the _Morn_!

She turned from all—from friendship and the world— Only _Love_ knew the way to that dim glade, And calm her sweet, yet queenly lip had curled Had the world’s whisper reached her in that shade, But she was deaf and dumb and blind to all, Save to the charm that held her heart in thrall.

And Love, who loved her, flew at her sweet will, Bringing all gems that hoard the rainbow’s splendor, And singing-birds with magic in their trill, And what wild-flowers fairy-land could lend her, And flower and bird and jewel all were laid To grace that golden altar in the Shade.

Fair was that sylvan solitude I ween— The lady’s charmed and trancéd spirit lent The starlight of its beauty to the scene, And joy and music with the fountain went, While in a still enchantment on its throne The lucid statue cold and stately shone.

Love lent her, too, th’ enchanted lute he played And she would let her light hand float at will Across its chords of silver, half afraid, Like a white lily on a murmuring rill, Till Music’s soul, waked by that touch, took wing, And mingling with it hers would soar and sing—

“Dost thou see—dost thou feel—oh, mine idol divine, How I’ve yielded the soul of my soul for thy shrine? Dost thou thrill to the tones of my melody sweet? Does it glide to thy _heart_ on its musical feet? Dost thou love the light touch of my hand as I twine My passion-flower wreath for thy beauty benign?

“Dost thou know how I’ve gathered all gifts that I own To bless and to brighten the place of thy throne, How my thoughts like young singing-birds flutter and fly With a song for thine ear and a gleam for thine eye, How Truth’s precious gems, that drink sunbeams for wine, Are wreathed into chaplets of light for thy shrine?

“How Fancy has woven her fairy-land flowers To garland with odor and beauty thine hours, While Feeling’s pure fountains play softly and free, And chant in their falling ‘For thee! for thee!’ Dost thou feel—dost thou see—oh! mine idol divine, How I’ve yielded the soul of my soul for thy shrine.”

Thus sang the lady, but her waking hour Drew near; for when her passionate song was mute, And no fond answer thrilled through that hushed bower Into her listening heart, she laid the lute Within her loved one’s clasp and prayed him play Some idyl sweet to wile the hours away.

From his cold hand the lute dropped idly down And broke in music at the false god’s feet; Love’s lute! ah Heaven! how paled the peerless crown Above that brow when with a quick wild beat Of fear and shame and sorrow at her heart, The lady from her dazzling dream did start.

And the dream fell beside the broken lute, And the flowers faded in their fairy grace And the fount stopped its glorious play, and mute The birds their light wings shut in that sweet place, While the deep night that veiled the woman’s soul O’er shrine and idol cold and starless stole.

And in her desolate agony she cast Her form beside Love’s shivered treasure there, And cried, “Oh, God! my life of life is past! And I am left alone with my despair.” Hark! from the lute one low, melodious sigh Thrilled to her heart a sad yet sweet reply.

Then through the darkness rose a voice in prayer, “My Father! I have sinned ’gainst Thine and Thee. The idol, whom I deemed so grandly fair That its proud presence hid thy heaven from me, Shorn of his glory, shrunk to common clay, Behold for him and for my heart I pray.

“Take _Thou_ the lute—the shattered lute of love— And teach my faltering hand to tune it right To some dear, holy hymn—which, like a dove, From silver fetters freed, may cleave the night, And fluttering upward to thy starlit throne Die at _Thy_ heart with blissful music moan.”

* * * * *

THE CAPTIVE OF YORK.

BY STELLA MARTIN.

The winter of 1692 was no mild specimen of the climate of the New England wilds. The settlers on the inhospitable coast of Maine found its severity to exceed all their apprehensions. The few comforts which they had as yet been able to gather around them, were inadequate to the wants of that long and dreary season. Many fell victims of hardships and despondency; while not a few toiled on, cheerful and uncomplaining examples of endurance and suffering. It was perhaps more fortunate for the northern settlements than their pioneers, that they were commenced in summer, for the cold and inclemency of their early winters were enough to sadden the heart, and blast the hopes of the most visionary dreamer. The stranger who built his rude open hut in pleasant June, fanned by cool breezes during his summer toil, wot not that a few months would bring a bleakness of which he had little conception. The settlements on the Piscataqua are among the oldest in Maine; and to those who first selected the romantic site of the now beautiful village of York, it seemed enchanted land. Primeval forests covered the whole country through which the Piscataqua and its Naiad Sisters wound their way to the sea. The delicate foliage of the beech and poplar, the deep sombre green of the hemlock and fir, the pale, graceful willow, and the bright emerald maple, all blended to form a perfect forest robe, as yet untouched by the devastating hand of man. Bald peaks lent wildness to the scene, already diversified by the commanding banks of the rivers which lay calmly mirrored in their deep, clear waters. No wonder the early adventurers looked with rapturous delight upon the broad bays studded with islands, the green promontories and quiet harbors into which the streams widening their channels, gradually lost themselves in the Atlantic. The sea-fowl bathed its drooping plumage unmolested on the shores, the wild-cat ran at will, guided only by the impulses of its savage nature, and the graceful deer proudly reared its antlered head, and bounded away, the undisturbed inhabitant of the mighty wilderness.

To him who, tired with the bondage of the old world, sought refuge in the new, these were glowing emblems of that liberty he so earnestly longed for. He hailed the land spread out before him, in all the magnificence of nature, as that which would realize his most chimerical ideas of happiness. Imagination added to its charms, and converted what was truly wild and beautiful into a paradise. The toils and dangers of the frontier life vanished away; and with a buoyant heart the wanderer adopted the unknown soil, alike ignorant and unmindful of the ills that would cluster around his future path. When want shall have been encountered in every form, sickness endured, famine driven from the door, and “hope, the star that leads the weary on,” delusive hope, shall whisper of bliss to come, he is destined to find in the savage tribes of the country, enemies more formidable than the evils of his condition. Hard fate! to survive the strife of the elements, to escape pestilence and danger only to perish by a relentless _human_ foe.

The settlement of York had enjoyed several years of prosperity, the effects of which were perceptible in a considerable degree of neatness and comfort about its dwellings. This appearance of thrift made it a surer mark for destruction. In January, 1692, a band of Abenakis and French burst upon this defenseless village, “offering its inhabitants captivity or death.” A terrible storm had just covered the earth with snow, to a depth which would have proved a barrier to any but these intrepid barbarians. They had walked on snow-shoes, the long distance from the basin of the St. John’s, the difficulties of the way only serving to increase their insatiable thirst for bloodshed. It was a serene winter’s evening, when the Abenaki braves surrounded their council-fire, a few miles from the doomed village, to determine upon their mode of assault. The purity of nature in these snowy solitudes strangely contrasted with the sanguinary deeds plotted there. She witnesses in silence the offences of her children. She beholds the members of the great brotherhood of man rise up and destroy each other, yet thunders no warning to the victim, nor hurls the fire of heaven upon the destroyer.

Stealthily advanced the murderers, while the peaceful inhabitants of York were gathered around their happy firesides. Ah, never more will those family groups meet around the altar of prayer, never again together join the festive dance. That ringing war-whoop which strikes the ear is the death-knell of the unsuspecting villagers. Mother, take a last look at thy darling, ere its baby face is snatched forever from you. Husband, clasp thy wife to thy bosom, for that fond embrace shall be the last. Lover, thou art vainly striving to wrest thy cherished one from the barbarian’s grasp—thy agonizing efforts to save her, make her a prize in those savage eyes; and, unfortunate girl, instead of mingling thy blood with thy kindred, a captivity awaits thee a thousand times more horrible death.

This lot befell Amy Wakefield. She saw her mother fall lifeless from the first blow of the tomahawk. Her father, with the fury of a madman, sprung upon the assassin, and proved the avenger of his wife. Swift as thought, however, he was overborne by the comrades of the dead Indian, and he lay a mangled corse beside his beloved companion; one son and a servant girl shared the same fate. Poor, gentle, timid Amy! there she stood petrified by the awful sight before her, but she made no effort to escape. Vain indeed would have been the attempt; her nonresistance saved her life, and prolonged her sufferings. No scalping-knife was uplifted over her head, but as if her sentence was written on her brow, they proceeded without a moment’s hesitation to bind her hands behind her. Richard Russel rushed into the street at the first alarm, and ye who know a lover’s heart can tell why he flew with the speed of lightning, to seek Amy Wakefield—his betrothed bride. He entered the dwelling where he knew carnage and death were doing their dreadful work; but what was danger to him, with such an object at stake!

“Oh, Richard,” said Amy, opening her lips for the first time since her mother’s dying shriek had sealed them, in a tone which would have melted a heart less sensitive than his. He darted forward, seized the Indian who was binding her, and with a maniac’s gripe wrestled for the mastery. Young Russel, tall and athletic, was considered the most vigorous young man in the colony, but his strength was unequal to that of the sinewy son of the forest. A blow from a war-club felled him senseless to the earth. “Merciful God!” cried poor Amy in the anguish of her soul, as her last earthly hope was quenched within her. She was dragged from the spot where lay all she held dear. As she passed the door, a kindly stupor seized her; neither the screams of the villagers, nor the kindling flames of the cottages, roused her. She looked vacantly around, but heeded not what she saw. She felt no grief—she had no consciousness. The scenes of the past half hour had banished her senses, and bewildered her mind. They seemed like a terrific vision in a dream—hideously vivid, without the power of realizing or escaping from it. Why did not oblivion forever steal over the past, or delirium cheat the soul in future?

The work of death was done. The slain were sepulchred in the ashes of their cottage homes; the captives were divided as spoils among the warriors, and toward morning they started for the northeast. Amy Wakefield and three other prisoners were the especial care of two Abenakis and a Frenchman, Jean Mordaunt. The whole party moved rapidly, lest the neighboring settlements should see the light of the burning village, and pursue them; but this little company were the foremost. The other captives with Amy were men, but she kept pace with them and the Indians.

She hurried along as if she were fleeing from enemies. All that day she traveled on, taking no food, uttering no complaint; and at last, when night came, she sunk down unconcernedly to sleep. It was one of their former stopping places, and the Indians rekindled the fires, which had scarcely expired. The poor captives gathered around them and welcomed the burning heat, though hardly more comfortable than the chilling blasts to which they had been exposed. Oh, the sorrows of that weary journey—cold, hunger and thirst were among the least of them. The Indians returned by the trail in which they came; but the snow was untrodden and deep, and the path lay through forests and across rivers. Some drooped by the way and received beatings for their manifestations of fatigue, whilst many found snowy graves. For many days they traveled on together, but finally separated in little bands for the settlements where they belonged, each carrying with them their captives. This last sad comfort of friends and neighbors traveling together in their misery, was now denied them, and they looked each other a last adieu.

I said Amy slept. It was a blessed sleep, for it carried her back to childhood’s days; now she was gathering violets with her little brothers on the river’s bank; now she saw her brother’s angel face, and heard her father’s “dear little Amy.” Then time flew by, and she felt her lover’s warm kisses; years seemed moments, and moments years—and still she slept on. Would that she might have slept “that sleep from which none ever wake to weep.”

The sun was high in the heavens ere they roused them from their slumbers. The labors of the previous day were exhausting even to the Indian’s strong frame. Some of the wretched captives had passed a sleepless night from fear or excessive weariness; and to some their aching limbs forbade rest. But Amy still lay with her head thrown back, her hands clasped; her marble face and motionless lips rendered still more striking by the profusion of black hair lying disheveled about her. The Indian who advanced to awaken her, paused, as if he shrunk from such a personification of purity. He took hold of her shoulder and shook her; but it seemed as if her senses were bound by death’s icy chains. He struck her a rough blow on the side of her head. She opened her eyes, and tried to rise, but her limbs refused her support, and she fell back. She looked up—her consciousness returned. The sight of the Indian’s face brought back the scenes of that dreadful night, and she trembled like an aspen leaf. But another blow for her tardiness, brought a full conception of her situation, and a flood of tears. Her stiff, feeble movements, the tears running in torrents down her cheeks, were a strange counterpart to the day before. They started; she tried to proceed, but her limbs seemed paralyzed, and her heart died within her. She forgot all around, even her own wretchedness; she remembered only that cottage scene, Richard, and her parents—and she prayed for death. Her sobs were heart-rending, still the cruel savages urged her on. Oh, were there no friendly angels abroad in the earth; was mercy fled, and vengeance dead! At length the Indians, enraged at what they considered the girl’s obstinacy, raised a club to strike her, but Mordaunt, who, perhaps, had enough of humanity to be touched by the spectacle before him, leaped forward, averted the blow, and talking with them a few moments in their own rude, wild tongue, seemed to calm their anger. Soon after this there was a division of the company; Amy and some others, who were incapable of keeping up with the main party, were put together and allowed to proceed more slowly; still she went weeping on—that painful way was traced in tears, and the desert solitudes echoed with her sighs. After about three weeks, the Indians discerned their “smokes” in the distance, and saluted them with shoutings and expressions of great joy. Amy’s peculiar grief had awakened some little pity, even in the bosoms of her savage captors. To this, and the influence of Mordaunt, whose notice she had attracted ever since the first morning, when she lay an unconscious sleeper beside their fires, she owed her comparatively easy lot. She was given to Wiloma, the wife of Great Turtle, the last king, who kept her to do her menial drudgery, but treated her with some kindness.

Jean Mordaunt was a Jesuit missionary. He belonged to a class of whom mankind has drawn widely varying pictures. Pious, devoted, self-sacrificing, ambitious, crafty and revengeful, are, doubtless, all true descriptions of this fraternity, who have left no country without its representatives, and whose name is Legion. America, the “land of mountains and eagles,” early drew them hither, and here we see their character in all its phases. They penetrated nearly every recess on the northern part of our continent, and visited almost all of the Indian tribes, teaching them the name of Jesus and the Virgin Mother; some affirming in their enthusiasm, that “the path to heaven was as open through a roof of bark, as through arched ceilings of silver and gold.” “Not a cape was turned, nor a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way,” says the eloquent historian, Bancroft. “The cross and the lily, emblems of France and Christianity,” were carved on the trees, and inscribed on the rocks. Many, like Mesnard, or the gentle Marquette, found quiet resting-places in the wilderness; and the western waters which wash their graves, perpetually sing their dirge. But Gabriel Lallemand, Father Jaques, Jean De Brebeuf, René Goupil, and many others, sealed their labors with their blood. Their memory is precious to the mother church; and what wonder that her sons and daughters revere them as saints. But there were a vast multitude who claimed the same mission of love and mercy with these martyrs of holy zeal, whose lives and characters too plainly betrayed their hypocrisy. There were those whose religion cloaked their ambition, and others in whom intrigue had supplanted all the simplicity of the gospel. Instead of religious teachers, they often became artful politicians. That the French Jesuits participated in, and often instigated the attacks upon the English border settlements, is so well attested, that it cannot be denied. The enmity between the French and English nations was too deeply seated to be forgotten by their colonists, and often led them to rouse the merciless savage against their unguarded neighbors. It is difficult to conceive how a minister of that blessed religion which proclaims “peace and good-will to men,” should have so far forgot its precepts, as to be present at the bloody massacre of York; but Jean Mordaunt was there. Perhaps he did not stain his hands with blood, but he spotted his soul with guilt.

Amy Wakefield gradually recovered her spent energies. Her elastic constitution rebounded from the severe shocks it had received, but her sufferings left an indelible impress on her spirits. Time could not restore the loved ones sleeping in the dust, and smiles bade adieu to her once happy face. Like Egeria of yore, she forever mourned her heart’s lost treasures. Mordaunt dwelt upon that beautiful sorrowing face until it seduced him from his priestly vows; but it was a problem to the wary Frenchman how to approach Amy. Though a submissive slave, she was unapproachable; she answered no signs, nor noticed the broken English addressed to her. She shunned every one, and seemed to scorn sympathy with her foes. Months passed, and still she toiled on in Wiloma’s cabin, but her grief was not assuaged, nor the fountain of her tears dried up. As spring came, she would steal away by herself without the wigwam to admire the opening buds, which filled the air with their perfume, and with delight would listen to the carol of birds, as they hopped merrily from branch to branch, fit emblems of happiness. The cheerfulness and beauty of all around her, contrasted strangely with her own condition, but at times she would forget her sadness, and soothed by the wild music of the waterfall, lose herself in some day-dream of happiness.

Old Wiloma scarcely watched her captive. Indeed, the thought of escape never entered the mind of Amy. Where should she fly, when all she loved were in heaven. True, she did not _know_ that two of her brothers were dead. The eldest, Winthrop, was at a distant settlement at school; and little Johnny, the pet, was sweetly sleeping in the chamber when they were attacked, so it seemed certain that he was slain. But the chance of life vanished when Richard fell.

“Alas! the love of woman; it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing; For all of hers upon that die is thrown, And if ’tis lost, life has no more to bring To her, but mockeries of the past alone.”

Amy was one day sitting in the wigwam-door when she saw Mordaunt coming toward her, and rose to retire. “In the name of Jesus, tarry,” said he, in a manner so earnest and imperative, that she stopped involuntarily. “I have prayed for thee to the Holy Virgin and the Saints,” continued he, crossing himself. It was the first intelligible sentence in her own language that Amy had heard since she parted with her companions in misery. Some of the Indians spoke a broken English that she understood, but she had never heard Mordaunt utter a word before.

“I need not thy prayers to thy saints,” said Amy, after recovering from her astonishment, and recollecting the teachings of her infancy.

“Speak not lightly of prayers, child, thy soul hath need of them,” said Mordaunt.

“I know it, but those now sleeping in death, taught me that there is but One that heareth prayer,” said she, her eyes filling with tears, “and He is our Father in Heaven.”

“They were heretics, and knew not the communion of the true church,” said the Jesuit. “They taught thee wrongly, child; and I fear their souls are now suffering the pains of purgatory, but for thy sake I would gladly pray them out.”

Amy’s eyes flashed indignantly. “That may be thy portion, deceiver; but those of whom you speak, killed by your murderous bands, are angels in heaven. I know it,” said she, with an assurance that silenced Mordaunt. “I saw them last night, they beckoned me upward. Oh, Father, have mercy!” and she lifted her eyes and hands heavenward, with an expression, as if her soul were quitting its earthly tabernacle. Mordaunt was awed. He sat silently gazing at her, and she into the azure above. Old Wiloma, who had been asleep in the wigwam, at this instant awoke, and calling Amy, brought her wandering senses back to earth. She rose and obeyed the bidding. Mordaunt departed, but the expression of that upturned face haunted him. There was a touching serenity about Amy, as she gazed into the land of spirits, that commanded his admiration. Duplicity had indeed made him its disciple, but it had not entirely blunted his perceptions of the beautiful; his coarse heart was not impervious to a scene like that.

He sought another interview, but Amy avoided him more than ever after that conversation. Mordaunt often visited old Wiloma’s cabin, for she had learned the sign of the cross, but never could he gain an opportunity of speaking with her who now had his every thought. Cupid’s arrows were too deeply transfixed to be withdrawn, and the more he was foiled, the more necessary seemed the object he would gain. One day Amy was walking in the woods, when Mordaunt coming up hastily behind, surprised her with, “My dear mademoiselle.” She could not retreat, and had not time to reply, before his pent-up feelings found utterance in the best English he could command. He talked not of saints, or the “blessed Virgin.” He had been seeking this opportunity too long, another was too uncertain, and above all, he felt too deeply to allow of any delay.

In a broken and tremulous manner he told her of his love; how his thoughts had dwelt upon her night and day, and swore to be faithful forever, would she but bless him with her affection. Amy’s countenance indicated no participation in the confusion manifested by Mordaunt. The color came and went upon his cheek, as hope or fear predominated—a fitful anxiety pervaded his whole frame. Nothing could have astonished Amy more than the declarations of Mordaunt. She had felt a decided aversion to him, without knowing why, or having the slightest suspicion of his real state of feeling. Her features were rigid, and bespoke no emotion, her voice calm, and her whole manner self-possessed.

“I have given my heart to my own dear Richard, and though he lives no more, I will not, I wish not to recall it. Where he lies, there lie buried my earthly hopes and affections.”

“But,” said he, “you are pining in this captivity—love me, and I will rescue you. I will fly with you. We will make our home amid the vine-clad hills of France; I will be thy deliverer and protector, and happiness shall crown thy days.”

“I am pining,” said Amy, “but it is not captivity that makes me sigh; I grieve for that which thou canst never restore; happiness has fled from my sad heart. The world is desolate. This wilderness is lonely, but even here nature has left witnesses of her loveliness,” said she, pointing to the flowers at her feet.

“But be my bride,” continued the impassioned lover, “and forget thy troubles.”

“Never! never! I _cannot_ forget, I _would not_ be thy bride.”

Mordaunt saw in her firm, determined manner, the death-blow to his bliss; but in her refusal there was something so pensive, so mournfully beautiful, that it set his soul on fire; he could not be refused—he begged on, as wretches do for life, for one assurance of her affection, but in vain. Flatteries, promises and entreaties were alike to her—she spurned them all. Mordaunt really loved Amy as purely as he was capable of doing, and could he have gained her by persuasion, the base passions of his soul might not have been roused from their lethargy; but the object was too precious to be abandoned until every expedient was exhausted. Desire prompted him—there was one art untried; principle deterred him not—he had no honor to forbid. He knew Amy’s shrinking nature; he had observed her tremble when the Indians approached her, as if she dreaded contamination.

“Proud girl,” said Mordaunt, “thou must marry me or an Indian.”

“Terrible alternative, but rather the savage than thou, and rather death than either.”

“Well,” responded the Jesuit, seeming to be satisfied; “thy fair form will pander to the appetite of Manuki. He will exultingly gloat over his pale-faced bride. _Thine is a good taste._ Mordaunt or the savage.” The last sentence fell from his lips livid with anger; but Amy noticed it not. Had a thunderbolt flashed out from the clear sky above, she would not have been more terrified than at this disclosure. She had been more kindly treated than the other captives—but was it for this? Was it that Manuki, he who had torn her from her home, and murdered her lover, should press her to his bosom? Once, indeed, the appalling idea, that she might be forced to become her captor’s wife had crossed her mind, but it was only a momentary suspicion. Manuki had been gone for weeks on a hunting excursion, and the thought had never returned until now—but now all was clear; Mordaunt had confirmed her worst fears; it must be so—he had all the Indian’s secrets. The announcement was awful. A ghastly paleness overspread her face, and cold sweat stood upon her brow. She was a picture of misery and despair. She uttered not a sigh, but a crushing heart-sickness came over her, and she resigned herself to her fate. The keen eye of the priest marked the change. He thought the victim was within his grasp, and slowly advancing with an air of fiendish triumph, he took her gently by the hand,

“Poor girl,” said he, “while Mordaunt lives thou art safe. Love me, I will save you from that you so much dread.”

“No,” she returned, “the Indian’s embrace would be less terrible than thine, thou hollow-hearted seducer.”

This was too much for Mordaunt. The two passions, love and anger, drove him to desperation. Firmly grasping her arm, he said through his clenched teeth, “Heretic! thou canst not escape me!”

At this Amy seemed transformed; her eyes rolled wildly in their orbits, and she quivered with anger. In an instant Manuki and every thing connected with her captivity was forgotten. One only thought took possession of her soul, and that was of the priest before her. Hitherto she had feared and hated, now she despised him. She shook him from her, as if he had been a viper, saying, as she drew herself up to her full height, “Back, vile wretch, back! call upon thy saints, count thy beads, and pray poor souls out of purgatory, but touch me not—I know thee.”

This was said in a tone so imperious and commanding, that Mordaunt, accustomed as he was implicitly to obey superiors, shrunk involuntarily back, and Amy, turning slowly around, walked away. But there was so much of the heroic in her despair, so much loftiness of spirit in her defiance, that he dared not follow. He knew not why, but there was something in that poor girl that awed him.

On that night, memorable to York, when so many closed their eyes in death, Amy and the Indians left Richard Russell senseless, and, as they supposed, lifeless. But He who holds the springs of life, had ordered otherwise, and reserved him for future purposes. The blow which prostrated, stunned him so completely, that it effectually deceived his enemies. Mr. Wakefield’s house was one of the first attacked, and some time elapsed before the pillagers had finished their work, and were ready to fire the village. Richard lay in an oblivious insensibility for a while; but when partially recovered, he opened his eyes, and discerned by the flickering firelight the devastation around him. He comprehended his situation, sprung to his feet, and running out the back way, and creeping behind fences, he escaped unobserved just as the flames were blazing out from the neighboring cottages. A large hollow tree stood near the fence back in the clearing, and Richard bethought himself of this asylum. He crawled until he reached it, and gave a long leap into its capacious trunk, sinking into the snow, and heaping it over his head. By this artifice he saved himself. He staid there long after the sounds of savage warfare ceased, until he was nearly frozen. At length exhuming himself, he looked toward the village, but he saw nothing save the consuming habitations—he heard nothing but their crackling timbers. He soon ventured out, and was going to warm himself, but when the scorching heat struck his chilled body, it caused intense pain. This, and the fear of some lurking foe, induced him to direct his steps toward the nearest settlement. He ran most of the way, rubbing and striking his almost torpid limbs, else he had never survived to tell the woful tale of his sufferings. Half dead from fear and pain, he reached the neighboring colony. The kind settlers bound up his wounds, and ministered to his wants. He now, for the first time, began to feel his loss, and exposure added to injuries and dejection, threw him into a violent fever. For weeks he lay upon the borders of the grave, the prey of racking pains and fierce delirium. Sometimes he seemed struggling with an unseen foe; at others he would call wildly upon Amy, and anon beckoning, seemed to fancy her by his side, and fall gently to sleep. At last the disease left him, but he was helpless as an infant. Gradually he recovered his strength, but months had passed, when he again stept upon the earth. Health returned to Richard, and with it came thoughts of Amy. From his best recollection of her it seemed certain she was made a captive. _She must be redeemed._ But was she alive? Could she outlive the dangers of the journey she must have taken, when he sunk under the few trials he endured? Long months had elapsed. Had she been burnt at the stake, or more probably, had she not been sacrificed to the passions of the Indians? All these were painful suspicions, which constantly forced themselves upon his mind. But Hope, the “lover’s staff,” as Shakespeare truly says, stayed him up. As soon as he was able to ride on horseback, he started to find Winthrop Wakefield, who was about fifty miles distant, and the only one of all the inhabitants of York whom he knew to be alive. By riding slowly he performed the journey in a few days, and found Winthrop, who was quite overjoyed to see him, and learn that there was any reason to believe that Amy was still alive. From what he had gathered from the uncertain reports of the destruction of his native village, he supposed himself both orphan and friendless. This seemed confirmed by the fact that no tidings of any of his family later than that fatal night had ever reached him. Winthrop needed no persuasion to enter into a plan for rescuing his only sister from her deplorable condition. It wanted more eloquence to enlist others. All pitied the misfortunes, and were interested in the deliverance of the unhappy girl, and the other captives, if yet living: But there were so many difficulties attending the project, that to most it seemed entirely impracticable. The general direction of the Abenakis they knew; but it was a long and difficult expedition; the tribe was large, and scattered over an extensive tract of country, and they would be a feeble, unprotected band, without knowing to what particular point to direct their efforts. It was late in the spring—just the season when it was absolutely necessary for every man to be upon his little plantation to provide for the coming year.

But Peter the Hermit was not more indefatigable or importunate than Richard. To him the crusade was imperative, and the importance of the end to be secured exceeded the perils of the enterprise. He at last succeeded in inducing eight men from the different settlements to accompany Winthrop and himself. Providing for, and arming themselves as well as possible, they started on their hazardous excursion. It was the beginning of summer, and nature had on her gayest mantle. Fragrant blossoms strewed their path, and the groves were vocal with the melody of birds. As they advanced new objects called forth their admiration. The weather was fine, game was plenty, and they met with no insurmountable obstacles. Their march was much less tedious than they had anticipated. A different history theirs from that of the gloomy passage made by the captives the winter previous. When they had arrived at the Penobscot, they were surprised to find a man, whom they soon ascertained to be one of the captives of York. Escaped from the Indians, he had traveled many days, living on plants, twigs or roots, without a gun or knife, with which to procure food or defend himself. The poor man evinced the greatest joy on meeting them, and offered to return and guide them near where he conjectured Amy might be, though he had not seen her during his captivity, and had no positive knowledge concerning her. With more confidence and renewed courage, they now pressed forward rapidly, not a little stimulated and incited by the melancholy narrations of their guide. He led them until they heard the sound of the waterfall, when he prudently concealed himself, knowing that he would be a sure mark for the missiles of the vindictive savages.

After the last interview with Mordaunt, Amy was distracted with tormenting fears. The more she thought the more painful became her apprehensions of coming evil. She knew she had made a bitter enemy of the Frenchman, and his lowering visage, and uneasy, troubled appearance, boded no good. She was each day more strongly convinced of the truth of the frightful intelligence he communicated. She knew the warriors were to return during that moon, which was a festival time with the Abenakis, and she felt assured Manuki would then carry his designs into execution. Her misery was now complete. Distressing surmises by day, only gave place to horrid dreams during her unquiet sleep at night. Amy resolved to attempt an escape. She knew not where to go; she had a vague hope, but no expectation of reaching the haunts of civilized men. But, thought she, “I would welcome death in the wilderness, with no covering but the leaves of the forest, and no memorial save the flowers that would spring from my dust, rather than life and pollution with the Indians.” In this state of mind she left old Wiloma’s cabin, as if for her customary walk, intending never to return. She looked back toward the wigwam where she had passed so many wretched hours, and breathed a prayer for its old occupant, whom she had seen for the last time. She had none but feelings of good will toward Wiloma. She had suffered her to go and come when she pleased, and treated her kindly in her own way, and Amy felt something akin to regret on leaving her. She bent her steps toward the waterfall, for as she often walked there, it would excite no suspicion. It was a beautiful afternoon in the latter part of June; every thing animate, save herself, seemed rejoicing. Since the day Mordaunt overtook her in the woods, she had ventured but a few steps away from their hut. For two or three days she had missed him, and presumed he had gone to meet the returning party; nevertheless, she wound her way along, cautiously, and afraid, starting back from the springing partridge and flying hare, timorous, as if each rustling leaf portended danger. The cascade which Amy often visited, was, indeed, a charming sight. It was produced by a little mountain-stream, which came tumbling impetuously down a ledge of rocks, and lost itself in foam. By the distance and vehemence of its fall, rather than the volume of water, it made the hills resound with its mimic thunder. The predilection which the red men have ever manifested for the roar of water, was probably the reason why the principal rendezvous of the Abenakis had been selected within the echo of this little cataract. Amy seated herself upon the rocks, where she could look into the sea of bubbles and diamonds below. The roar of the cataract contrasted strangely with the quiet of every thing around, but it was in harmony with her own agitated heart, and its dashings drowned the tumult of her spirit, and calmed its perturbations. She gathered the rich hanging moss which grew in profusion about her, and felt irresistibly enchained to the spot. Thus spell-bound by the simple grandeur of the place, she forgot for a time her perplexities, and even her original intentions. Ah, little did she think danger or deliverance were so near.

After leaving their guide, Richard and his party proceeded in the direction indicated by the sound of the waterfall. Their plan was to secrete themselves in the cliffs about there, until they could discover if the chief part of the Indians were away. If so, they would fall upon the villages and secure the captives; but should the “braves” be there, they must await some more favorable opportunity. Advancing noiselessly, they came up within sight of the cascade, when a female figure attracted their attention. She was loosely clad; a robe of hair, dripping with spray, hung wildly down her shoulders, and, as she sat on a projecting rock, seemed the genius of the place. The keen eyes of Richard and Winthrop failed to recognize Amy. Her dress was devoid of every thing characteristic of civilization, and they thought her an Abenaki maid; still, something led them to doubt it. They halted, and Richard proposed to go forward alone and ascertain who it was. He could not see her face, but felt assured, as he advanced, that hers was no Indian form. Could it be Amy, thought he, proceeding less cautiously. Hearing his footsteps she turned her head. One wild scream of joy, and she was in Richard’s arms. That meeting! who could describe its smiles and tears? “Absence, with all its pains, was by that charming moment wiped away.” To Amy it was a resurrection from the dead; to Richard a long lost jewel found again. Winthrop’s affectionate heart was not long in comprehending the scene before him, and following Richard, he embraced and kissed his sister again and again. Tears of joy choked his utterance as he sobbed forth his delight. Amy and Winthrop had passed the morn of life joyously with each other; they “grew together, slept together, learned, played, ate together,” sharing their childish happiness and wo; and when Winthrop heard the tidings of his family’s misfortunes, it was the loss of Amy that brought forth his bitterest tears. This meeting brought back the associations of days gone by; but the past, as well as the present, was clouded by the recollection that all those near and dear had passed away, save only this, “his first love and his last.”

Amy was not mistaken. Mordaunt _had_ gone to meet the returning Abenakis. They advanced with shoutings, as usual, but the noise of the cataract overpowered every thing beside, and the unguarded trio were too much absorbed by their unexpected happiness to think of safety. The reserve party heard the yellings of the Indians, and foresaw the threatening danger, but tried in vain to arrest the attention of Richard and Winthrop. One of them bravely started forward to warn them; but he had not advanced more than a hundred paces when he saw the Indians emerging from a little ravine opposite the falls, and sunk down into the thicket. A shower of arrows was the first premonition of their approach to the unfortunate dreamers. One bruised Amy’s arm, one entered Richard’s hat and grazed the top of his head, and one sunk deep into the breast of Winthrop. “I am killed,” cried he, as the fatal shaft pierced his vitals. Richard caught the gun that lay at his side, and, fleeing, discharged it toward their enemies. Amy, following him, ran until the sounds of the Indians grew faint and distant, and convinced them they were not pursued.

Poor Winthrop had run but a few steps when he fell dead into the bushes, unobserved by his forward associates. “Where is Winthrop?” asked Amy, as soon as recollection returned. The last few moments had too much happiness crowded into them—evil spirits looked down with malignity, and a blight came over the scene. But who shall tell the frighted Amy that Winthrop is no more? They listened—there seemed a howling joined with the roar of the falls. A thrill of horror passed over Amy as she thought that her poor brother might have fallen, wounded, into the hands of their foes. Exasperated at her loss, he would find far less humanity than she had experienced. Still that moaning sound continued and increased. Richard climbed a tall tree, thinking he might hear more distinctly, and perhaps discern what it was. What was his amazement when he found that his position enabled him to see the Indians—for in their hasty flight they had not noticed their ascent of a hill. He saw them crossing the stream below the waterfall. There were a multitude of them near together, winding their way upon the rocks. Richard had an acute, far vision; he never exerted it more than now. The howling swelled upon the breeze—what were they doing? “Oh, Heavens!” murmured he, “it is Winthrop.” They seemed carrying a man, and occasionally he could distinguish the face of a white person. He looked again and again—it was not a red man. But then, thought he, would they be mourning over a slain enemy? It must be for a captive lost. They were crossing from the same side on which they had first seen them. There had not been sufficient time, and there could be no motive for crossing and recrossing with a dead enemy; more probably they would leave him to the wolves. But one thing was certain—Amy and himself were in danger, and would be pursued. He quickly descended, and taking her concealed themselves in a clump of cedars growing thick and full from the ground. So close was the covert that a pointer could scarcely have found them. “Where is Winthrop?” said Amy, imploringly. Richard dared not—could not tell her his fears, but spoke cheerly, and whispering of love she soon forgot every thing but her lover and her joy in seeing him once more. But the more Richard considered upon what he saw from the tree, the more inexplicable it appeared, and he resolved to relate it to Amy.

“Ah,” said she, “it was Mordaunt, that dead body; and for him they were mourning. That random shot of yours killed their priest, wicked, miserable Mordaunt. You, Richard, have avenged my wrongs,” continued she, bursting into tears at the remembrance of her insult.

“Yes, that accounts for all—their carrying the body, their howling, and not pursuing us,” said Richard, still dwelling upon the sight and sounds of the afternoon. “But dry up your tears, my sweet Amy; deliverance and happiness have come at last,” and he strained her in ecstasy to his bosom. But the transport of her lover’s embrace soon gave way to grievous apprehensions for the welfare of her favorite and now only brother. “We will go and seek him and our party,” said Richard. “The Indians will scarcely follow us now; the burial of their priest will occupy them too much to think of pursuit.” It was dim twilight when they crept forth from their hiding place. They had gone but a little distance when they heard a whistle, which started Mary, but which Richard understood was from one of his comrades, and soon they saw a moving figure near them. This proved to be the man who had vainly endeavored to warn them of their peril before their attack.

“Have you seen Winthrop?” asked Amy.

“Alas! my poor young woman,” said the kind, honest man, “I hate to grieve you, if you do not know it, but I saw the dear lad fall by the way.”

“Tell me where he lies,” said the shocked, terrified girl.

“May be I can,” said the man. “I was looking for some one to come with me, when I heard you and whistled.”

He led the way and they followed silently, except the exclamations of grief that ever and anon broke from Amy. They had nearly reached the falls, the sight of which recalled the few delightful moments spent with Winthrop, when their leader, stooping down into a bunch of alder, said—“Poor, brave boy, here he lies.” It was not yet dark; the pale twilight just revealed his pale, dead face, his garments dyed with blood, and the murderous arrow still deep in his breast. Amy kissed his cold, pallid cheeks, and bathed them in tears. “My ransom was too dearly paid,” said she bitterly. “Why was Winthrop, so happy, so noble and so young, the one to fall by savage hands, when death would have been sweet to me, their wretched slave?”

“Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight,” ejaculated their pious companion. “Clouds and darkness are about His throne, but He doeth all things well. We must not linger here.”

He and Richard bore the dead body, and Amy followed, until they heard a signal, which told them they were in the vicinity of their party. They halted, and their friends gathered around them. The object before them disclosed the tragical history of the afternoon, and they mingled their tears for one whom they all loved. The full moon rose, and looked down through the forest trees upon that weeping band. The head of the dead Winthrop rested upon Amy’s lap. He was even yet beautiful—the lustre of his eye was gone, but the clustering curls still lay life-like upon his placid brow, and his features were tranquil as if he were sleeping. There they sat, surrounding him, “dumb as solemn sorrow ought to be.” At last a low voice fell upon the air, and prayer arose from that stricken group—such prayer as only ascends from the dependent, helpless and bereaved wanderer in the wilderness. Comforted and refreshed, they removed the fatal dart, brought water from a spring and washed the body of poor Winthrop, wrapped it in a blanket, and buried his bloody garments. They resolved to relieve each other by turns, and carry the body with them until morning.

“I know they cannot hurt his corpse,” said Richard, “but let us take it out of the enemy’s country. He would have performed the like service for any of us.”

An affecting sight was that funeral train. That solitary female, bent like a drooping flower by the tempest of grief that had swept over her, the chief mourner, followed close behind the dead, borne without coffin or bier. All that night they walked in slow procession, the stillness only broken by the occasional sobs of Amy, when her overwhelming grief burst its barriers afresh. There was a “mournful eloquence” in that mute sorrow. It bespoke deeper emotion than the clamorous wailings of the Indians over their dead. The moon sunk behind the hills, and the quiet stars shed their mild radiance upon them, until their twinklings were lost in the light of the breaking morn. Weary and sad, they were cheered by the signs of returning day, and by faith the pilgrims hailed it as the blest harbinger of the resurrection morn, when, after the long night of death has passed, the final trump will awake the righteous to “life immortal in the skies.” Just as the silver clouds began to streak the east, they reached a beautiful green slope, with but few trees and a gentle streamlet bounding two sides of it. They stopped—every one seemed impressed with the fitness of the place for the burial. Amy first broke the silence, exclaiming, “It is a lovely spot!” but as they proceeded to lay down their unconscious burthen, she commenced weeping, and said, “Will you leave Winthrop here?” She uncovered his head and again pillowed it in her lap, kissing and caressing it, as if, perchance, she might awaken a smile upon that ghastly face, then mourning as if her heart would break when attracted toward the grave they were preparing for him. It was under a spreading oak that they chose his resting place. The earth around was carpeted with flowers, the rivulet gliding below, and the place was in unison with the young and beauteous form they were about to entomb there. They finished their work—they brought shrubs and flowers and sprinkled in the grave, and wrapped their cherished one in his rude pall and laid him in the narrow bed. They knelt around, Richard supporting Amy, who seemed to forget every thing but that form so soon to be buried forever from her sight. The same good man who led their supplications the evening before, was now their chaplain, and his prayer brought holy consolation to the hearts of the afflicted. He spoke of the blessedness of the dead, who had passed from the cares of earth and entered “the mansions of rest above.” He prayed most fervently for the living, who would, if faithful, soon partake of the same glory. When they arose death seemed disarmed of his terrors, and Heaven appeared _very_ near. They covered their companion with boughs and fresh earth, and Amy cheerfully brought honey-suckles and strewed over his grave. The sun had begun to pour his mellow beams over the wakening world when, with grateful and subdued hearts, they bade a final farewell to the burial place of Winthrop.

What though they left him without guard or memorial, alone in the wilderness! Kind hands had laid him there, prayer had hallowed the spot, tears of affection bedewed his grave, and guardian spirits would watch with jealous care his “sleeping dust.” “Rest, thee, my brother, last of my kindred,” said Amy, sending a lingering look backward.

“There softly lie, and sweetly sleep, Low in the ground, The storm that sweeps the wintry sky No more’ll disturb thy deep repose, Than summer evening’s latest sigh, That shuts the rose.”

* * * * *

KUBLEH.

A STORY OF THE ASSYRIAN DESERT.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

Sofuk, the Sheik of the Shammar Arabs, was the owner of a mare of matchless beauty, called, as if the property of the tribe, the Shammeriyah. Her dam, who died about ten years ago, was the celebrated Kubleh, whose renown extended from the sources of the Khabour to the end of the Arabian promontory, and the day of whose death is the epoch from which the Arabs of Mesopotamia now date the events concerning their tribe. Mohammed Emir, Sheik of the Jebour, assured me that he had seen Sofuk ride down the wild ass of the Sinjar on her back, and the most marvelous stories are current in the desert as to her fleetness and powers of endurance. Sofuk esteemed her and her daughter above all the riches of the tribe; for her he would have forfeited all his wealth, and even Amsha herself.

LAYARD’S NINEVEH.

The black-eyed children of the Desert drove Their flocks together at the set of sun. The tents were pitched; the weary camels bent Their suppliant necks, and knelt upon the sand; The hunters quartered by the kindled fires The wild boars of the Tigris they had slain, And all the stir and sound of evening ran Throughout the Shammar camp. The dewy air Bore its full burden of confused delight Across the flowery plain, and while, afar, The snows of Koordish Mountains in the ray Flashed roseate amber, Nimroud’s ancient mound Rose broad and black against the burning west. The shadows deepened and the stars came out, Sparkling in violet ether; one by one Glimmered the ruddy camp-fires on the plain, And shapes of steed and horseman moved among The dusky tents, with shout and jostling cry, And neigh and restless prancing. Children ran To hold the thongs, while every rider drove His quivering spear in the earth, and by his door Tethered the horse he loved. In midst of all Stood Shammeriyah, whom they dared not touch— The foal of wondrous Kubleh, to the Sheik A dearer wealth than all his Georgian girls.

But when their meal was o’er—when the red fires Blazed brighter, and the dogs no longer bayed— When Shammar hunters with the boys sat down To cleanse their bloody knives, came Alimar, The poet of the tribe, whose songs of love Are sweeter than Balsora’s nightingales— Whose songs of war can fire the Arab blood Like war itself: who knows not Alimar? Then asked the men: “O Poet, sing of Kubleh!” And boys laid down the knives, half-burnished, saying: “Tell us of Kubleh, whom we never saw— Of wondrous Kubleh!” Closer flocked the group, With eager eyes about the flickering fire, While Alimar, beneath the Assyrian stars, Sang to the listening Arabs:

“God is great! O Arabs, never yet since Mahmoud rode The sands of Yemen, and by Mecca’s gate That wingéd steed bestrode, whose mane of fire Blazed up the zenith, when, by Allah called, He bore the Prophet to the walls of Heaven, Was like to Kubleh, Sofuk’s wondrous mare: Not all the milk-white barbs, whose hoofs dashed flame In Bagdad’s stables, from the marble floor— Who, swathed in purple housings, pranced in state The gay bazars, by great Al-Raschid backed: Not the wild charger of Mongolian breed That went o’er half the world with Tamerlane: Nor yet those flying coursers, long ago From Ormuz brought by swarthy Indian grooms To Persia’s kings—the foals of sacred mares, Sired by the fiery stallions of the sea!

“Who ever told, in all the Desert Land, The many deeds of Kubleh? Who can tell Whence came she, whence her like shall come again? O Arabs, like a tale of Sherezade Heard in the camp, when javelin shafts are tried On the hot eve of battle, is her story.

“Far in the Southern sands, the hunters say, Did Sofuk find her, by a lonely palm. The well had dried; her fierce, impatient eye Glared red and sunken, and her slight young limbs Were lean with thirst. He checked his camel’s pace, And while it knelt, untied the water-skin, And when the wild mare drank, she followed him. Thence none but Sofuk might the saddle gird Upon her back, or clasp the brazen gear About her shining head, that brooked no curb From even him; for she, alike, was royal.

“Her form was lighter, in its shifting grace, Than some impassioned Almée’s, when the dance Unbinds her scarf, and golden anklets gleam Through floating drapery, on the buoyant air. Her light, free head was ever held aloft; Between her slender and transparent ears The silken forelock tossed; her nostril’s arch, Thin-drawn, in proud and pliant beauty spread, Snuffing the desert winds. Her glossy neck Curved to the shoulder like an eagle’s wing, And all her matchless lines of flank and limb Seemed fashioned from the flying shapes of air By hands of lightning. When the war-shouts rang From tent to tent, her keen and restless eye Shone like a blood-red ruby, and her neigh Rang wild and sharp above the clash of spears.

“The tribes of Tigris and the Desert knew her: Sofuk before the Shammar bands she bore To meet the dread Jebours, who waited not To bid her welcome; and the savage Koord, Chased from his bold irruption on the plain, Has seen her hoof prints in his mountain snow. Lithe as the dark-eyed Syrian gazelle, O’er ledge and chasm and barren steep amid The Sinjar hills, she ran the wild ass down. Through many a battle’s thickest brunt she stormed, Reeking with sweat and dust, and fetlock deep In curdling gore. When hot and lurid haze Stifled the crimson sun, she swept before The whirling sand-spout, till her gusty mane Flared in its vortex, while the camels lay Groaning and helpless on the fiery waste.

“The tribes of Taurus and the Caspian knew her: The Georgian chiefs have heard her trumpet neigh Before the walls of Teflis; pines that grow On ancient Caucasus have harbored her, Sleeping by Sofuk in their spicy gloom. The surf of Trebizond has bathed her flanks, When from the shore she saw the white-sailed bark That brought him home from Stamboul. Never yet, O Arabs, never yet was like to Kubleh!

“And Sofuk loved her. She was more to him Than all his snowy-bosomed odalisques. For many years she stood beside his tent, The glory of the tribe. At last she died. Died, while the fire was yet in all her limbs— Died for the life of Sofuk, whom she loved. The base Jebours—on whom be Allah’s curse!— Came on his path, when far from any camp, And would have slain him, but that Kubleh sprang Against the javelin points, and bore them down, And gained the open Desert. Wounded sore, She urged her light limbs into maddening speed And made the wind a laggard. On and on The red sand slid beneath her, and behind Whirled in a swift and cloudy turbulence, As when some star of Eblis, downward hurled By Allah’s bolt, sweeps with its burning hair The waste of darkness. On and on, the bleak, Bare ridges rose before her, came and passed, And every flying leap with fresher blood Her nostril stained, till Sofuk’s brow and breast Were flecked with crimson foam. He would have turned To save his treasure, though himself were lost, But Kubleh fiercely snapped the brazen rein. At last, when through her spent and quivering frame The sharp throes ran, our hundred tents arose, And with a neigh, whose shrill excess of joy O’ercame its agony, she stopped and fell. The Shammar men came round her as she lay, And Sofuk raised her head and held it close Against his breast. Her dull and glazing eye Met his, and with a shuddering gasp she died. Then like a child his bursting grief made way In passionate tears, and with him all the tribe Wept for the faithful mare. They dug her grave Amid Al-Hather’s marbles, where she lies Buried with ancient kings; and since that time Was never seen, and will not be again, O Arabs, though the world be doomed to live As many moons as count the desert sands, The like of wondrous Kubleh. God is great!”

* * * * *

A MEMORY.

BY MRS. JANE TAYLOR WORTHINGTON.

The shadows are dark on thy soul, And thoughts of the lost will throng, For a voice hath vanished from the earth, Sweeter than the spring bird’s song.

Thou lookest on the still blue sky, And pinest ’mid its peace to be, For the grass springeth green on a grave, And the world hath a grief for thee.

The flowers may be bright as they were, And a fragrance as soft may fling, But the verdure hath faded from thy life— And the heart hath but one sweet spring!

I was a transient dweller in a strange land—one distant from my childhood’s home, and far away from those who knew me first and loved me best. Gradually, as the vivid excitements of life had surrounded me, as new ties had sprung up and old hopes faded, I had lost the intimate knowledge of the welfare or the afflictions of many who had formerly been familiar friends, and a lengthened separation had produced that ignorance of the details of their destiny frequently occurring, even where affection still lingers unaltered. But there are periods when, as it were, remembrance irresistibly presses upon us, and we all have seasons when old times and buried associations crowd around us with inexplicable distinctness—when the actual loses for a while its absorbing interest, and the past, with all its radiant dreams, its rainbow illusions, is enchanting reality once more.

I was sitting alone, at the close of a lovely autumn afternoon, before an open window, my fancy busy with the throng of older associations, and inattentive to the beautiful view stretching beneath me, strikingly fair as were its features, now glowing through the crimsoning sunlight. But something—I know not what, for such glimpses are among the spirit’s mysteries—had recalled other times, and my soul communed with itself and was still. The mind has its own restless and concealed creation—its hidden world of active silentness; and to those who have battled with the depression attendant on human experience, there is untold luxury in reveling amid the crowding memories that “longest haunt the heart.” Even as I sat thus idly reflecting, a paper reached me, sent by some friendly hand from my early home, and earnestly as I would have read a loving letter, I pored over the contents of that every-day record. It spoke to me as a messenger from the absent; each well-known name mentioned in its columns, held a thousand clustering reminiscences for me; the trivial local news was like welcome household tidings; and I spoke aloud the old familiar names I had not heard for years, as if a spell lay in their sound. Last of all I turned to the page where, side by side, were chronicled marriages and deaths. The first were those of strangers; among the last was noticed the final departure of one whom I had once loved, as we only love in the purity of youth. The announcement was worded in the usual form with which we herald to the careless world that a soul has gone to the mysterious future. Nothing was there to arrest the contemplation of the reader—to speak of inevitable human destiny to a throbbing human heart—to reveal the agony of mortality, the bitterness of death, or the trials of the wearily burdened and loving ones, perchance well-nigh borne down by that one event. “Died at sea, during her homeward voyage, Mary Vere, aged 24, for three years a resident missionary in Persia.” And this was all! The ending of the saddest life I ever knew, the knell of as pure a spirit as was ever bowed and fettered by earthly cares—this was the cold, brief recording of the history of a warm nature, that had patiently toiled and uncomplainingly suffered—that even in its youth had been old in grief—that had wandered abroad and found no rest, and then, like a wounded bird, had winged its way homeward to die! Ah, Mary! little dreamed we, in our sunny days, that mine eyes should ever trace the chronicle of such a destiny for thee!

We had first met, in childhood, at the country residence of a friend, where we were both spending the summer months. She accompanied her mother—her only surviving parent, then slowly declining in the last stage of consumption. Mary and myself, thrown continually together, without other companions, speedily became warm friends, though her pensive, irresolute disposition, had little in common with my natural impetuous animation. She had been the attendant on suffering from her earliest recollection, for her father had died after a lingering illness, during which he had desired the constant enlivenment of his only child’s society, and her mother had for years been a resigned but hopeless invalid. All who have closely observed children, are aware of the influence such things half-unconsciously exert over minds susceptible to every impression, and it was not strange that one so used to look on sorrow, should have learned at last to doubt the very existence of happiness.

Mary was a strikingly beautiful child, with dark, soul-revealing eyes, bright with the mystical fire of the burning thoughts within. I well remember their rapturous expression when she was excited by some tale of heroism—for she was full of a strange, quiet enthusiasm, that wasted itself in fruitless sympathy with the moral greatness of others, but shrank with painful distrust from reliance on its own impulsive guidance. She was quick of feeling, and easily touched by the most trivial deed of kindness, and her being was too sensitive for her ever to be thoughtlessly happy. Her look and manner were peculiarly winning in their tranquil, subdued gentleness; and when this was, occasionally, though rarely, laid aside for awhile, amid the irrepressible mirth of childish amusement, her laugh had the ringing, silvery melody which seems the musical essence of enjoyment. For two successive summers we met and were inseparably intimate, and then four years elapsed before we were again together. During this interval Mary’s mother died, and she went far from my home, to reside with a distant relation. We had, from our first parting, corresponded regularly, and her letters were, like herself, poetical and visionary. I know not wherefore, for she wrote no murmur, but they left the impression that she was not satisfied with her new home, and my heart yearned to comfort her, to remove from her lot its loneliness, from her soul its dimness. But she shrunk, with what then appeared to me morbid delicacy, from all approach to confidence on this subject, and gradually grew in all things less communicative regarding herself, as if doubting the response of sympathy. There was evidently a constraint placed on her spontaneous emotions—a quiet concealment of her deeper interests, which to me spoke mournfully, and recalled that silent, dejected consciousness of mental and spiritual solitude, which is the saddest portion and the most touching consequence of an orphan’s unshared and melancholy destiny. It was not until long afterward that I learned the domestic trials and annoyances to which she had been subjected, and the dreary, joyless routine in which she dragged on the years that should have been her brightest ones.

It was with many a sweet anticipation of friendly, unreserved intercourse and affectionate solace—such dreams as are borne by loving angels to hearts strong in youth and rich in tenderness, that I looked impatiently forward to my next meeting with my old playmate, for now we had both glided from childhood to womanhood, and the firm bond was between us that links those who remember together. I shall never forget my astonishment when, after our first fond and impetuous greeting, I turned, with tearful eyes, to mark the alteration time had wrought in the appearance of my companion. She was calm and composed, almost to coldness, and there was no visible exhibition of the agitation struggling beneath, or of all the afflicting reminiscences which I knew were recalled by looking on my face again. She had grown from the timid, irresolute girl, to the proud, self-possessed woman, and her manner had the tranquil air of one aware of her own moral strength, and of the existence of impulses and feelings too pure and sacred to be lightly displayed to a world which had nothing in common with them. She was more beautiful than ever, and I have never seen a being whose polished, intellectual tranquillity was so faultlessly graceful. She had acquired the early maturity of mind given in kindness to those who are tried in their youth; for she had evidently “thought too long and darkly;” her feelings were still from their intensity, and hers was the reflective repose which, wearied and desponding, folds its drooping pinions and sleeps on the bosom of darkness.

Ah, me! it is a dreary thing to feel alone in the world—to have no eye brighten at our coming, no voice ever ready with its eager welcoming, nothing to tell us we are beloved, and that fond thoughts and wishes are around our onward pathway. O, ye who have never felt this worst of desolations—ye whose best affections bind ye still, who have no link broken, no yearnings unfulfilled, fold to your hearts the precious blessing that lives in domestic ties and speaks in household love, and greet kindly and gently those whose life is lonely—who look around them and find no answering gaze, who pine with many tears for one glimpse of the tenderness whose living light is daily yours, who go forward sadly and silently, with none to love them, save those who are angels in Heaven.

But there is a romance in every one’s experience, evanescent though it be; and at length its bright change rose upon Mary’s existence. I heard she was soon to be married, to a young clergyman, of whom all spoke in terms of approval and admiration. I sincerely rejoiced at an event so calculated to relieve at once her perplexities and regrets, and to summon sweet visions for one who had too long lived without affection in the world. I wrote to her, expressing all I felt—all my fervent hopes for her dawning welfare. I longed impatiently for her answer, anxious to discover if she realized as I wished the brighter career opening before her; but several weeks wended on, and brought me no reply. It was from another source I learned the dangerous and protracted illness of her lover, and a paper, tremulously directed by Mary’s hand, at length informed me of his death.

Finally a letter came, with its black seal. It was the last farewell of one who loved me—the last pouring forth of tenderness from a heart that was broken; and yet, sorrowful as those lines were, they spoke of hopes unshadowed and immortal—of a pilgrimage troubled and toilsome, but full of reward, and of all an enthusiast’s delusive anticipations in the sacred enterprise before her.

She wrote on the eve of her departure from her native land, and with her singular, acquired shrinking from the avowal of her feelings, she made no allusion to the connection recently broken; and not a word revealed the grief that clouded over her fairest prospects and sent her forth an exile. Frequently afterward I saw her name mentioned as one of unwavering zeal in her adopted cause, and faithfully devoted to the laborious responsibilities of her mission. But between herself and her early friends a gulf seemed to be, perhaps because she did not wish to revive the over-powering recollections of the past. The absence of all communication with those once dear to her, must have been intentional, for she was not one to forget. Three years of this unbroken existence of care and labor had gone by, and then I had thus accidentally learned the mournful doom of a being endowed with all earth’s purest impulses, yet so soon recalled from its wanderings. Hers is no uncommon history—for many such are on our daily annals. O! give them kind thoughts and words, for these are the sad heart’s treasured gems!

* * * * *

THIS WORLD OF OURS.

BY S. D. ANDERSON.

This world of ours is beautiful—right beautiful, I ween, Are all its mountains tipt with gold, its valleys tinged with green, Its thousand laughing streams that sport, half sunshine and half shade, Like love’s first herald seen upon the rosy cheeked maid. The springing flowers are beautiful that open to the day, And spread their perfume far and wide along the sunny way; The vine-clad rocks and shady dells that bask in beauty’s sheen; This world of ours is beautiful—wherever it is seen.

This world of ours was beautiful in those good olden days When knights would battle valiantly for ladies’ smiles and praise; When in the list and on the turf, with lance and spear and sword, These iron-handed men would meet no bond but plighted word. Each castle was a fortress then; each man could bend the bow, Or lead the dance, or join the song with voice as soft and low, As maidens when at night they hear their lovers’ whispered praise; Oh! was not the world beautiful in those good olden days?

This world of ours was beautiful, when troubadours first sang, And castle hall and cottage roof with love and glory rang; When high-born damsels clustered round—perhaps to hear of one Who joined the armies of the Cross, to fight ’neath Syria’s sun; How he had borne the banner high amid the thickest fight, And placed his name where it will shine like stars amid the night; And then bright eyes would brighter beam, despite the truant tear; Oh! was not the world beautiful when minstrelsy was here?

This world of ours was beautiful when Rome was great and free, And proudly shone her mountain-bird, the type of Liberty; When Freedom found a resting-place within those trophied walls, And circled with her eagle wing its temples and its halls; When on the yellow Tiber’s wave the shouts of victory came, And pride and glory mingled with the conqueror’s lauded name; Then came the proud triumphal march, the heroes crowned with bays; Oh! was not the world beautiful in those her palmy days?

This world of ours was beautiful when Venice ruled the tide, And thousand voices rose to greet the old man’s ocean bride; The waters gladly danced around the castles old and proud, And from the latticed balconies, upon the passing crowd, Gleamed forth the light of beauty’s eye—Venetia’s daughters fair, With hearts as pure as were the gems that glistened in their hair; As bold in danger, true in love, as brave men’s brides should be; Oh! was not the world beautiful when Venice ruled the sea?

This world of ours was beautiful when ’neath Italia’s skies Her passion sons, like meteor stars, flashed on their wondering eyes. Born in that sunny clime of love, where beauty tints the air, And earth and ocean, sun and shade, are more divinely fair; No marvel that their minds upgrew full freighted with each tone, And Love and Beauty sheltered them within their magic zone, Till all they saw and all they felt found in each work a birth; Oh! was not the world beautiful when Genius walked the earth!

This world of ours was beautiful when by fair Arno’s stream Sweet Florence lay bedecked with gifts, like beauty in her dream; So soft her skies, so mild her suns, such perfume in each breeze, Such songs of gladness from her plains, such flowers upon the trees; And then her dowered children stood like jewels in her crown, Or sun-clad monuments on which Time’s rays come proudly down, To gild with beauty e’en decay—but what decay hast thou? Oh! was not the world beautiful when Florence decked her brow?

This world of ours was beautiful in England’s palmy times, When merrily from church and tower pealed out the sportive chimes, When deep within the greenwood haunts dwelt honest men and free, With hearts as gay and minds as light as birds upon the tree; Right honestly the day was passed; at night, upon the green, All joining in the merry dance the young and old were seen, And many a jocund song was sung, and many a tale was told; Oh! was not the world beautiful in those good days of old?

This world of ours was beautiful when valiant men and true Spread their white sails, and sought a home beyond the waters blue— They found it ’neath the forest old, ’mid wild and savage men, Beside the ocean’s rocky shore, within the mountain glen; And there was heard the childish laugh, and there the mother’s tone, Brought joy and gladness in their sound to many an altar-stone; Men toiled and strove, and strove and toiled, through all the weary hours, Oh! was not the world beautiful, this western world of ours?

This world of ours was beautiful, when Freedom first awoke, Its cradle song the trumpet call, its toy the sabre stroke, Full armed, like Pallas, then she stood amid the deadly fight, And man by man stood boldly up, and clenched their hands of might, The tempest came, no cheek turned pale, no heart unnerved with fear, They grasped their swords more tightly then—’twas victory or a bier; Long was the struggle, hard the fight, but liberty was won; Oh! was not the world beautiful beneath fair Freedom’s sun?

This world of ours was beautiful in times long, long ago, When those good men of earnest souls dwelt with us here below; Large was their faith in human kind; their mission seemed to be To teach man all his duties here—Love, Faith and Energy, To link each man to brother man, with links of firmest steel; Then touch the spark of sympathy, and all the shock will feel; Stamp the nobility of truth upon each deathless soul; Oh! was not the world beautiful beneath such pure control?

This world of ours _was_ beautiful, and still is so to me; Since boyish days I’ve clung to it, with wildness and with glee; Have laughed when others talked of wo beneath so fair a sky, When time, like flights of singing birds, with melody went by, Have roved amid its fairy bowers, and drank of every stream Of joy and gladness, till I lived within a blissful dream, And life, deep ladened with its fruits, slept like a weary child; This world of ours is beautiful as ’twas when Eden smiled?

This world of ours is beautiful despite what cynics say; There must be storms in winter time as well as flowers in May; But what of that?—there’s joy in both the sunshine and the shade, The light upon the mountain-top, the shadow in the glade. Be free of Soul, and firm of Heart, read all life’s lessons right, Nor look for roses in the snow, nor sunbeams in the night. Up! up! to action, armed with Love, Faith and Energy; And then this world is beautiful, as beautiful can be.

* * * * *

MY SPIRIT.

BY HENRY MORFORD.

Spirit, my own proud spirit! We may not sleep in dust, There is a path marked out for us Of a high and a holy trust; Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born, To die as cravens die, With no proud niche for the wreathed urn, No record on the sky.

We came up life together, We have lived but a few short years, We have tasted well at the fountain head Of human hopes and fears; Yet life is young, shall we not be so? Shall we not drink and sing Of the many glorious hopes that flow From many a hidden spring?

Ay, and the streams shall gather In a broad and open sea, The laving of whose crystal tide Is immortality; There shall be a time when we shall rest, Some gentle summer even, With a calm content, upon its breast, And an opening view of heaven.

Storms will be wild around us Before that time shall come, And the thunder of blame will fill the air, And the voice of praise be dumb; Yet as we draw from the glorious stars Beauty and light and love, Hope’s wing shall gild the closing bars That shut us from above.

Spirit, my own proud spirit, Thou wilt not fail me now, Thy hands shall wreathe the chaplet well And place it on my brow; Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born To die as cravens die, With no proud niche for the wreathed urn, No record on the sky.

* * * * *

WILD-BIRDS OF AMERICA.

BY PROFESSOR FROST.

THE CONDOR. (_Sarcoramphus Gryphus._)

This bird is one of the largest of the vultures. The early Spanish writers on America gave the most exaggerated accounts of its size and strength; and its true history and dimensions have been only recently ascertained. The bird was compared with the Roc of the Arabian romance writers. Acosta says that the bird called Condor is able singly to eviscerate and devour a whole sheep or a calf. Garcilaso de la Vega makes them measure 16 feet from tip to tip of the extended wings; he says their beaks are sufficiently strong to perforate and tear off a bull’s hide, and to rip out its entrails; and that a single Condor “will set upon and slay boys of ten or twelve years;” which last exaggeration, though now exploded, has found its way into our common school geographies.

Investigation has shown that the Condor is merely a large, perhaps not the largest of the vultures. “The Condor,” writes Mr. Bennett, “forms the type of a genus, a second species of which is the _Vultur papa_ of Linnæus, the king of the vultures of British writers. They are both peculiar to the New World, but approach in their most essential characters very closely to the vultures of the Old Continent, differing from the latter principally in the large, fleshy, or rather cartilaginous, caruncle which surmounts their beaks, in the large size of their oval and longitudinal nostrils, placed almost at the very extremity of the cere; and in the comparative length of their quill feathers, the third being the longest of the series. The most important of these differences, the size and position of their nostrils, appears to be well calculated to add to the already highly powerful sense of smell possessed by the typical vulture, and for which the birds have been almost proverbially celebrated from the earliest ages. There is also a third species, the Californian vulture, two noble specimens of which, the only pair in Europe, are preserved in the London Zoological Society’s Museum, rivaling the Condor in bulk, and agreeing in every respect with the generic characters of the group, except in the existence of the caruncle, of which they are entirely destitute.

“In size the Condor is little, if at all, superior to the Bearded Griffin, the Lämmergeyer of the Alps, with which Buffon was disposed conjecturally to confound it, but to which it bears at most but a distant relation. The greatest authentic measurement scarcely carries the extent of its wings beyond fourteen feet, and it appears rarely to attain so gigantic a size. M. Humboldt met with none that exceeded nine feet, and was assured by many credible inhabitants of the province of Quito that they had never shot any that measured more than eleven. The length of a male specimen somewhat less than nine feet in expanse was three feet three inches from the tip of the beak to the extremity of the tail; and its height, when perching with the neck partly withdrawn, two feet eight inches. Its beak was two inches and three quarters in length, and an inch and a quarter in depth when closed.

“The beak of the Condor is straight at the base, but the upper mandible becomes arched toward the point, and terminates in a strong and well curved hook. The basal half is of an ash brown, and the remaining portion, toward the point, is nearly white. The head and neck are bare of feathers, and covered with hard, wrinkled, dusky reddish skin, on which are scattered some short brown or blackish hairs. On the top of the head, which is much flattened above, and extending some distance along the beak, is attached an oblong firm caruncle or comb, covered by a continuation of the skin which invests the head. This organ is peculiar to the male. It is connected to the beak only in its anterior part, and is separated from it at the base in such a manner as to allow a free passage of the air to the large oval nostrils, which are situated beneath it at that part. Beyond the eyes, which are somewhat elongated, and not sunk beneath the general surface of the head, the skin of the neck is, as it were, gathered into a series of descending folds, extending obliquely from the back of the head over the temples, to the under side of the neck, and there connected anteriorly with a lax membrane or wattle, capable of being dilated at pleasure, like that of the common turkey. The neck is marked by numerous deep parallel folds, produced by the habit of retracting the head, in which the bird indulges when at rest. In this position scarcely any part of the neck is visible.

“Round the lower part of the neck both sexes, the female as well as the male, are furnished with a broad white ruff of downy feathers, which forms the line of separation between the naked skin above and the true feathers covering the body below it. All the other feathers, with the exception of the wing coverts, and the secondary quill feathers, are of a bright black, generally mingled with a grayish tinge of greater or less intensity. In the female the wing coverts are blackish gray; but the males have their points, and frequently as much as half their length, white. The wings of the latter are consequently distinguished from those of the female by their large white patches. The secondary quill feathers of both sexes are white on the outer side. The tail is short and wedge shaped. The legs are excessively thick and powerful, and are colored of a blueish gray, intermingled with whitish streaks. Their elongated toes are united at the base by a loose but very apparent membrane, and are terminated by long black talons of considerable thickness, but very little curved. The hinder toe is shorter than the rest, and its talon, although more distinctly curved, is equally wanting in strength, a deficiency which renders the foot much less powerful as an organ of prehension than that of any other of the large birds of the raptorial order.”

The Condor is found in various parts of the vast mountain chain on the western border of the American continent, but it is most common in Peru and Chile. Its habitation is most frequently at an elevation of 10,000 or 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, and there these birds are seen in groups of three or four, but never in large companies like the true vultures. Some of the mountain peaks bear names which in the Indian tongue mean Condor’s Look-out, Condor’s Roost and Condor’s Nest. Two of them will attack a vicuna, a heifer or even a puma, and overcome it by repeated strokes of their beaks and talons. When gorged, says Humboldt, they sit sullen and sombre on the rocks; and when thus overloaded with food they will suffer themselves to be driven before the hunter rather than take wing. They do not attack men or even children, although it is admitted that two of them would be a match for a powerful man without weapons. Sir Francis Head gives an amusing account of a contest between one of his Cornish miners and a gorged Condor, which lasted an hour, and terminated in the escape of the bird.

* * * * *

EDITOR’S TABLE.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

MY DEAR JEREMY.—I presume you are shaking the spray from your locks, and are over head and ears in love with salt water, while I am among the weeping willows in these days of hydrophobia, when water—that we cannot get at—provokes a feeling of madness. You glory in a proprietorship over which your plough passes, turning up soil that is all your own, while the nodding grain, golden and pulpy, ripens in your absence for your abundant granaries, while I cultivate this, my small patch, “a tenant at will,” whose harvest of gleaning would be blown to the winds without a painstaking care and watchfulness. You are the lord of acres, while I wander around forbidden enclosures, and look upon many a Castle of Indolence longing but for a yard of ground all my own, upon which to plant a firm foot, to sound the challenge and cry—war! The very utterness of poverty is grandeur and riches, compared to the feeling of having the pent-up energies which have found a full outlet in enterprise, growing fiery in inaction, and panting for room, continually battling at the heart, and knocking in vain for freedom and exercise. But if you have ever felt the utter insignificance of wealth and high advantage combined with indolence and inactivity, and forever do-nothingness, before the godlike attributes of persevering energy and indomitable will, you have felt the pride of manhood in its full force and power. You have reaped in anticipation the rewards of high courage, of manly resolve, of personal industry and victory. You have enjoyed in your day-dreams the full fruition of assured success—and awoke to hope on, to resolve and to conquer. Consider me, my dear Jeremy, as winding myself up for the next seven years, after having run down—as having stopped, if you please, to blow; and while you are luxuriating in the surf, and shaking the briny water from your shoulders, as throwing off surfdom, with a defiant air, and a determined purpose of taking a few strides forward, to meet that “good time a coming.”

Who does not love the sound of the breakers at Cape May, who has once listened to their wild melody? What a chance for love-making is the evening stroll upon the beach. On the one side the rugged bank, on which the white houses sit like a flock of wild-birds suddenly alighted, and the faint twinkle of rush-like lights dancing like fire-flies in the night air; on the other, the wild waters—sad emblem of the wild unrest of the human heart—their huge waves reflecting from their sides the quiet light of the moon, while the white-caps come trooping in, like a squadron of dragoons, with their plumes dancing, and a roar, as if the tread of an army were near, and a thousand park of artillery were booming in the distance. The music of rich voices hushed amid the uproar—the light of kind eyes sparkling with a subdued eloquence—the loved face impressively thoughtful, indicating that God has laid his hand upon the heart, and whispered amid the tumult of its worldly thoughts, “be thou still!”

It was my good fortune to see both Cape May and the Falls of Niagara, for the first time, by moonlight, and whether the hush of evening naturally associated in the mind with twilight, deepened the impressions of awe and wonder with which I gazed upon them, or to the greatness of the novelty was added through the misty twilight, a dim religious sanctity to the impression, I know not, but they have never since charmed me so much in the broad glare of day, as in the evening, with a quiet moon looking placidly down upon the flashing foam, seemingly rebuking the uproar.

The bathers, too, at mid-day, screaming like sea-birds amid the surf, with their many-colored garments dancing amid the foam—beauty floating upon the breakers as calmly as if reposing upon the virgin snow of her own pillows. Manhood breasting the billow, and riding securely far out where the huge porpoise rolls lazily along, while tiny feet go patting, and tiny hands go clapping along the shore, the very idleness and luxury of the sport impressing upon the beholder a sense of enjoyment, a feeling of relief from the work-day world, a consciousness of manhood and freedom above the value of dollars—a heart eased of the oppressiveness of brick and mortar, and open to a sense most acute of the very luxury of being idle.

If Philadelphians had made half as much of Cape May as the New Yorkers have of Saratoga, or the Yankees have of Newport, its visiters from all parts of the country would number tens of thousands; but I question whether its present character of being Philadelphia in holyday dress, let loose for a romp, does not add much to its charms. The relief from absurd ceremony, where every face is familiar. The easy, unrestrained life, the freedom of remark and retort, and the exuberant gayety of the whole company, add to the enjoyment of the place, and make it a home in a family circle greatly enlarged and full of good humor.

But, my dear Jeremy, you must have observed that at Cape May we got along comfortably, without the towering and overshadowing influence of the “upper ten thousand,” which stands up to be worshiped by the people without money or _brains_. It might be a serious question, how long a man may exist, with great self-complacency, without _heart_, or intellect, yet with a purse well lined with gold—regarding the world of men and of matter as especially made for him—the lord paramount of the soil, and of the sinews, which of right belong to his betters. Cannot some one curious in nature and philosophy, analyze one of this genus, and tell the world how the appearance of humanity can be preserved without a single attribute of it, existing life-like and active in his breast. The whole effort of this air-drawn animal appears to be to rise, to get up in society, to overlook the pigmies who toil and sweat for bread—to loose his identity in the upper circle, that he may forget his grandfather, the soap-boiler, upon whose bubbles he has been shot upward—as we expel a pea from an air-gun. Prick the bubble, and the thing vanishes into air, without leaving behind him a trace of existence of the value of a pepper-corn, and _so_,

——“Grows dim and dies All that this world is proud of.”

The gifts of GOD are equal. He sheds upon us all the same glorious sunlight, and gives us the same heritage of dew and showers. The air has no monopolist, but its balmy odors as kindly kiss as well the beggar as the king. The mountain stream and the mountain flower acknowledge no master but the hand that formed them. The very beast that roams over the boundless prairies, and tosses his wild mane to the breeze, snuffs in an atmosphere sanctified by its freeness. God, over all his own works sheds the benignant light of universal benevolence and goodwill. The hues of a heaven-tinted charity blend kindly together the world over—the laws of a love undistinguishing are impressed upon all nature.

It is _man_—but a handful of his mother earth—that wrongs her kind bosom, and says to his brother, stand aside, the heritage is mine—we are not equals in birth-right. I claim by pre-emption a supremacy which makes me thy master. The very purple I wear, when contrasted with the faded russet of thy poor garb, makes me thy lord. The jeweled rings of these fingers clasp thy neck, and make thee bondsman. Thou shalt go at my bidding and come at my call. Thou shalt toil until thy weary bones crack, to pamper to my luxurious desires! Thou shalt not even _think_ but at thy peril! By the high authority of what is called LAW, thou art enslaved!

By this right of _law_, how many wrongs are done, which the cold eye of day gazes on in silence, whilst hearts wrung with anguish weep on unpitied. This strong arm, when its fist clutches dollars, how terrible is it in its willingness to crush and overwhelm the unsheltered, the unbefriended, the poor, unpitied victim. But if a breast sparkling with diamonds interposes, how palsied and feeble becomes the blow—_the justice, the equity of the law_, how considerate and kind!

Yet law, according to the lawgiver, “is the perfection of reason,” which must account, I suppose, for the difficulty which the learned counsel experiences in expounding it to an “intelligent jury.” The poor thief therefore remains in profound ignorance of the equity of the decision, by which he is consigned to three years of penitence is solitary confinement, while his gayer brother in crime dashes through the streets with his carriage and scarlet housings, basking in the worship of wondering and approving eyes, _his_ penalty for having started a bank, _and stopped it_, by which thousands of poor men lost the dollars which paid for the equipage, and furnished the viands for his pampered appetite, the meanest of which would have driven starvation from their doors. He is beyond the law. Let an hundred operatives agree in thinking that the wretched pittance for their daily labor will not suffice to feed the mouths of a half dozen famishing children, the law has its kind and protecting eye upon them at once—and if they _dare_ express so infamous a sentiment, it immediately takes care of them as conspirators. But the masters of an hundred mills may openly avow their determination to close their doors and send starvation into a whole village, the law instantly closes its watchful eye, and dozes over the scene, deeming it right and proper that capital should be indulged in its absurdities.

Should John, upon the box of a gentleman’s carriage, come in contact with the hub of the humble cab of Jehu, and thereby disfigure the carriage and irritate the temper of the great owner, his honor, who may have had _dealings_ with him, deals with Jehu, who is glad to get off for his five dollars, and thinks it a kindness that he is not imprisoned for the intolerable crime of John not giving an inch of the road to a vulgar cabman. When diamonds are trumps, take care of knaves.

It is a fiction of law—for even “perfect reason” has her fictions, it seems—that people who are standing at a distance in a riot, are as culpable as those who are throwing the brickbats—and it is certain they are the more likely to be killed, probably from a humane feeling of not wishing to irritate those who are too near—and it is for this reason, we presume, that after the riot is over, a number of citizens, against whom nothing can be proved, are arrested, to assert the majesty of the law, while the real rioters and murderers are perfectly unknown to the police. The law being discriminative thus administered, as well as stringent when necessary.

Great names, which provoke a riot, or lack the nerve and manliness to suppress it, have an overshadowing influence, which awes even the majesty of the law—it would be indecorous in the law to meddle with greatness, even when it is impertinent.

“La-w me!” exclaims an old lady, who has upset the contents of her frying-pan into the fire. But the poor soul little knows the calamity she invokes. It is doubtful whether fire and frying-pan would not follow, if her request were complied with. The law being at times both expensive and speedy.

“_So wags the world along._”

But, my dear Jeremy, I have rambled somewhat in this letter, so without more ado, I’ll CUT this.

G. R. G.

LENDER’S BOOKS.—NO. II.

By my right hand, Graham! by my right hand, which for —— odd years hath traveled and travailed over much foolscap, (and under much fool’s-cap quoth the fiend,) I am more and more convinced of the truth of the words of the preacher, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” I have just laid aside “Mardi,” (the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C., of the Knickerbocker,) it lies atop of old Du Bartas and some withered budlets of forget-me-not, and in like manner _I_ sit with a few fragmentaries of old literature at bottom for my _primiter_, some tender remembrances for my _secondary_, and for the _alluvial_ stratum of my pericranicks (as gentle Charles hath it) these fripperies by the Author of Typee. Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities—it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine _gold_ shining through the interstices.

Let us turn over the leaves a little—hear ye now—

“And what to me thus pining for some one to page me a quotation from Burton on Blue-Devils.” V. I. p. 15.

What is _paging_ a quotation?

“Anoint the ropes and they will travel deftly through the subtle windings of the blocks.” p. 33.

Why not say—“apply some oleaginous substance to the ambulatory cords, and prevent the inarticulate dissonance caused by the inharmonious attrition of the flaxen fibres against the ligneous particles?”

But this passage I especially commend:

“Good old Arcturion! Maternal craft, that rocked me so often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep. (‘Maternal craft—maternal old oaken-hearted craft—maternal old oaken-cradle hearted craft’ is good!) So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islands, whose heathen babble _echoing through thy Christian hull must have grated harshly on every carline_.” p. 38.

“Many there are who can fall,” says Martinus Scriblerius, “but few can arrive at the felicity of falling gracefully.”

How beautifully he embellishes the most commonplace ideas:

“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair _the savage would disdain to recline_.” p. 96.

“At Ravavai I had stepped ashore some few months previous; and now was embarked on a cruise for the whale, _whose brain enlightens the world_!” p. 1.

Jarl steals a keg of tobacco—

“From the Arcturion he had brought along with him a small half-keg, at bottom impacted with a solitary layer of sable Negrohead, fossil-marked, like the primary stratum of the geologists.” (Ahem! primary stratum _fossil_-marked!) p. 68.

He surmiseth that Samoa likes to get swipesy—

“Nor did I doubt but that the Upoluan, like all Polynesians, much loved getting high of head; and in that state would be more intractable than a Black Forest boar.”

Sometimes he breaks into hexameter:

“In the verdant glen of Ardair, far in the silent interior of Amma, Shut in by hoar old cliffs, Yillah the maiden abode.”

This reminds one of Evangeline—

“In the Acadian land, on the shores of the basin of Minos, Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pré Lay in the fruitful valley.”

Let us hexametrize another passage, and we will have done with these fopperies:

“’Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado On lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alli- Gator dies in his mail, and the sword-fish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epam-Inondas.” p. 46.

I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that “there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of _diving_ as well as flying,” and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge _on purpose_, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper.

* * * * *

Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped—and passed away—

“How fair was then the flower—the tree! How silver-sweet the fountain’s fall! The soulless had a soul to me! My life its own life lent to all!

“The universe of things seemed swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering fancy found a dwelling In every shape, thought, deed and sound. Germed in the mystic buds, reposing, A whole creation slumbered mute; Alas! when from the buds unclosing, How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!”

Alas! alas! young life, and young hopes are not perennials; even in the lofty conservatories and crystal hot-houses of wealth and station they flush into a sickly existence, and then perish like the meanest flower by the wayside. Did it ever strike you how much we are alike in this particular? Every one looking back upon his past life as the shipwrecked merchant looks upon the broad sea that hath swallowed up irretrievable treasures. Do you believe that if one had the power of investing his new created babes with a course of life, that he would say, “Do as I have done—pass through my joys and my afflictions, and in the experience of my experience you will be happy!” Do you believe that any one—even the wisest, the purest, the best could say this? By my faith, I do not! And the great focal-glass of a common destiny brings down prismatic, many-hued humanity to a point hue, as a convex lens gathers and concentrates prism-bundles of light and heat from the broad disk of the sun. Human suffering is the chord universal that swells from the vibration of numberless strings.

“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy; This vast and universal theatre Contains more woful pageants than the scene Whereon we play—”

But, “Mardi” and forget-me-nots have spoiled three good sheets of foolscap, and I fear that I am too much i’ the sentimental vein; let me therefore conclude with quoting a sweet little piece of philosophy, and lay aside these _lender’s books_ for a period.

“A swallow in the spring Came to our granary, and ’neath the eaves Essayed to make a nest, and then did bring Wet earth, and straw, and leaves.

“Day after day she toiled, With patient heart; but ere her work was crowned Some sad mishap the tiny fabric spoiled, And dashed it to the ground.

“She found the ruin wrought, But, not cast down, forth from the place she flew, And, with her mate, fresh earth and grasses brought, And built her nest anew.

“But scarcely had she placed The last soft feather on its ample floor, When wicked hand, or chance, again laid waste, And wrought the ruin o’er.

“But still her heart she kept, And toiled again; and last night, hearing calls, I looked, and lo! three little swallows slept Within the earth-made walls.

“What truth is here, O man! Hath hope been smitten in its early dawn! Have clouds o’ercast thy purpose, trust or plan? _Have_ FAITH _and struggle on_!”

Here endeth the second fifth.—RICHARD HAYWARDE.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_Characteristics of Literature. Illustrated by the Genius of Distinguished Men. By Henry T. Tuckerman. Phila.: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1 vol. 12mo._

Mr. Tuckerman has written many interesting books, but we think the present volume is his most attractive if not his best production. It is characterized by his usual refinement of analysis, wealth of illustration, felicity of allusion, and mellow richness of style, while in the range it evinces over widely varied provinces of thought and character, it indicates more versatility than any of his other compositions. The volume includes a discussion and representation of eleven departments of literature, through a searching examination of as many authors, each of whom is taken as the exponent of a class. Thus Channing stands for the Moralist, Sir Thomas Browne for the Philosopher, Swift for the Wit, Shenstone for the Dillettante, Charles Lamb for the Humorist, and Macaulay for the Historian. The selection of men to illustrate the subjects is, of course, not free from cavil. We should say that Burke was not exactly the man to stand as an expression of the Rhetorician, for his rhetoric, though matchless of its kind, is secondary to his philosophy. He appears to us, even as analyzed by Mr. Tuckerman, in the character of a profound, vigorous and vital thinker, and is no more a rhetorician, in any exclusive sense of the term, than Bacon, Hooker, Taylor, or even Milton. Where style is the _incarnation_ of thought, the visible image of the mind that employs it—and this is its nature in all the greatest authors—the word rhetoric is hardly applicable to it. Macaulay is more emphatically the rhetorician than Burke.

* * * * *

_Select Comedies; Translated from the Italian of Goldoni, Giraud and Nota. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

A volume like the present, giving the English reader a good idea of the spirit and form of Italian comedy, has long been wanted, and we have little doubt that it will be successful. To the lover of the English drama the plays may seem to lack solid character and unctuous humor; but they are still distinguished by a fertility in the invention of ludicrous incidents and positions, and a mischievous quick-footed spirit of intrigue, that no person with a sense of the comic can read them without exhilaration. The translations are, we believe, from an American pen, and appear to be well executed. Six complete comedies are given, and the translator has been fortunate in his selections both in respect to merit and variety. The two comedies of Goldoni are alone richly worth the price of the book.

* * * * *

_Kaloolah, or Journeyings to the Djebel Kumri. An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer. Edited by W. S. Mayo, M. D. 1 vol. 12mo._

It is something strange for a writer to present himself for the first time as a candidate for public favor with a volume indicating so much power and originality of mind, and such practiced talents of composition as the present. The book is a regular tale of adventures, as interesting as exciting incidents racily told can make it, and inweaved with the story are many graphic descriptions of scenery and keen delineations of character. Considered in respect to the originality of its conception, the new vein of romance it opens, and the admirable method of the narration, we think the volume cannot fail to attract the attention which it will certainly reward.

* * * * *

_The Earth and Man: Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography, in its Relation to the History of Mankind. By Arnold Guyot. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this valuable Manual is Professor of Physical Geography and History in the same institution to which Agassiz is attached, and originally delivered the present lectures in French to an audience in Boston. They have been elegantly translated by Professor Felton, of Harvard University, and are very warmly recommended by the New England Savans for their union of profundity and simplicity. The subject is one of the most important in the whole range of science, and is one in which all can take an interest, and all obtain information, as popularized by Professor Guyot. Agassiz says of the book and its author: “Having been his friend from childhood, as a fellow student in college, and as colleague in the same university, I may be permitted to express my high sense of the value of his attainments. Mr. Guyot has not only been in the best school, that of Ritter and Humboldt, and become familiar with the present state of the science of our earth, but he has himself in many instances drawn new conclusions from the facts now ascertained, and presented most of them in a new point of view. Several of the most brilliant generalizations developed in his lectures, are his; and if more extensively circulated, will not only render the study of geography more attractive, but actually show it in its true light, namely, as the science of the relations which exist between nature and man, throughout history.”

* * * * *

_The Life of Maximilien Robespierre. With Extracts from his Unpublished Correspondence. By G. H. Lewes. Phila.: Casey & Hart. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this biography is but little known in this country, and has hardly received his deserts from the critics on either side of the water. He is a clear, close, vigorous thinker, an accomplished scholar, and a nervous, condensed and brilliant, though slightly aphoristic writer. Though his ideas and style occasionally betray the influence of Carlyle, and though his English nature has been a little modified by an infusion of French metaphysics, he generally appears as an independent as well as a forcible thinker. In the present volume, though he appears largely indebted to the works of Lamartine, Michelet, and Louis Blanc, he has still produced a book original in the main, and has been especially happy in steering a middle course between those writers who have represented Robespierre as a monstrosity of malignity and cruelty, and those who have tried hard to make him appear a persecuted and virtuous patriot, whose most questionable acts sprung from exalted motives. The reader closes the book with the feeling that he has gained a better insight into the character of the immortally infamous revolutionary leader than he had before. The letters of Robespierre, which the author obtained in MS. from Louis Blanc, and the extracts from his speeches in the Convention, add much to the interest and value of the volume.

* * * * *

_History of Maria Antoinette. By John S. C. Abbott. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

This is another of Mr. Abbott’s beautiful series of pocket histories, having for its subject a story so exciting and so mournful that the novelist or dramatist could hardly treat its incidents with more pathetic effect than the chronicler who confines himself to the literal facts. The characteristic merit of Mr. Abbott’s books is the knowledge they display not merely of their subjects but of the exact nature of the ignorance of the general class of readers, and this merit is well illustrated in the present volume. The French Revolution is to most minds a confused mass of terrible events without any connecting principles; but few can read its history, as far as it is presented in Mr. Abbott’s simple and orderly narrative, without obtaining clearer ideas of the whole matter.

* * * * *

_A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. By William Gammell, A. M., Professor in Brown University. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo._

We like the present volume for the indication it gives of the rich materials for history and biography which lie almost unused in the various records of Christian missions. All the heroic qualities developed in man and woman by religious principles and religious passions, are visible in those records to the initiated eye, but they are commonly so submerged in the affected phraseology and sectarian jargon of mediocre compilers, that they are commonly set aside as vulgar and fanatical by the general reader. Professor Gammell has written a volume in which all the worn and wasted terms of the pedants of cant are discarded, and the subject, as far as the Baptist missions are concerned, is treated in a style intelligible to all who have any perception of beauty, holiness or heroism. The work, apart from its theological character, is one of great interest and excellence.

* * * * *

_Sacred Rhetoric; or Composition and Delivery of Sermons. By Henry J. Ripley. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo._

This treatise should be carefully pondered by all clergymen who have a contempt for the graces and proprieties of composition, arising from their apprehension of being interesting to their congregations. Professor Ripley has produced a searching treatise, in which, with a true critical remorselessness, he lays bare the defects of arrangement and composition most likely to beset the productions of his profession, and gives a clear statement of those principles which should guide the brain and pen of the preacher. The volume also includes Dr. Ware’s admirable “Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching.”

* * * * *

_History of Wonderful Inventions. Illustrated with numerous Engravings on Wood. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

The publishers of this elegantly printed volume have included it in a series called the Boy’s Own Library, but its interest and value are hardly confined to youth. It is a book containing carefully written accounts of the invention of the Mariner’s Compass, Gunpowder, Clocks, Printing, the Telescope and Microscope, the Steam-Engine, the Electric Telegraph, and many other wonderful events in the history of the intellect. We never read a volume of this sort without giving a new and vivid impression of the grandeur of human nature, considered as possessing the powers of creation and combination.

* * * * *

_Manual of Ancient Geography and History. By Wilhelm Putz. Translated from the German. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

Professor Green, of Brown University, is the American editor of this valuable manual, and his name is a guarantee that it has been revised and corrected with scrupulous care. To the general student of history the volume will be of great service, as it maps out the whole ground of historical study, gives the names of the authorities for the history of each nation, and in the smallest possible space consistent with dearness, presents a view of the history, geography, religion, literature and art of all the ancient nations, European and Asiatic. The work indicates an erudition as minute as it is vast.

* * * * *

_The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground. By the Author of The Pilot. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._

Longevity is no characteristic of novels, and Old Parr is the last name which could be applied to a hero of fiction. The romances which flare in the parlors of one year are pretty sure to repose in the cemeteries of the next. To this empirical law, Cooper’s Spy is one of the honorable exceptions. It at once attained popularity, and it has kept it, surviving all those mutations of the public taste which, since its first appearance, have consigned so many brilliant fictions to oblivion. As an old friend in a new dress, we welcome this volume. Its value is enhanced by the revision of the author, and the addition of an introduction and notes.

* * * * *

_A Visit to Monasteries in the Levant. By the Hon. Robert Curzon. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this volume is careful to write himself down an “honorable” on his title page, and the whole tone of the composition evidences that self-satisfaction which is so apt to accompany social position. Though the reader is inclined to be prejudiced against an amateur author who assumes so confident a tone, the feeling wears away as he reads the volume. It contains a great deal of information pleasantly told, has some capital sketches of curious character, and ranks among the sprightliest of recent books of travels. The American edition is illustrated by numerous wood-cuts.

* * * * *

_The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West. Digested from his Journal and Illustrated from various other sources. By Washington Irving. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._

This delightful work forms the tenth volume of the revised edition of Irving’s works, and has for its subject a theme especially interesting at the present time, when more than ever, “westward the course of empire takes its way.” We hardly know of a more felicitous partnership than that of Bonneville and Irving—one to perform the deeds of adventure which the other records.

* * * * *

_Life in the Far West. By George Frederic Ruxton. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this volume died at an early age, but not before he had partly fulfilled the destiny to which his talents and adventurous spirit pointed. “His adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains,” and the present work, indicate not merely the courage and enthusiasm of a traveler, but much felicity in transferring to other minds the objects and incidents which filled his own.

* * * * *

_Pottleton Legacy._

This is the title of a novel, by Albert Smith, published in the cheap form of the present day, by Carey & Hart. It is a pleasant, readable, and interesting work, and will be found caustic as well as funny. The characters are well sustained and the plot well developed.

* * * * *

* * * * *

YES, LET ME LIKE A SOLDIER FALL

AS SUNG, IN THE OPERA OF “MARITANA,”

BY MR. FRAZER.

MY FATHER HE WAS NOT A KING.

WRITTEN AND ADAPTED TO THE FOLLOWING AIR,

BY E. R. JOHNSTON.

My father, he was not a king, A soldier brave was he. He fell responding to the call That made his Country free. Yes! let me like a Soldier fall, Upon some open plain. This breast expanding for the ball, To blot out ev’ry stain.

No prouder title I would claim, No prouder boast! ’tis well, The blood that courses thro’ my veins No brighter birth may tell, The blood that courses thro’ my veins No brighter birth may tell. No brighter birth may tell.

Brave manly hearts confer my doom That gentler ones may tell, Howe’er forgot, unknown my tomb, I like a Soldier fell. Howe’er forgot, unknown my tomb, I like a Sol-dier fell, I like a Sol-dier fell!

1

My mother she was not a queen! Nor titles graced her brow; But hers a free and noble heart, In heaven rests ere now. And I in Freedom’s mould am cast, No prouder boast! ’tis well, The blood that courses thro’ my veins No brighter birth may tell.

2

I only ask of that proud race Which ends its blaze in me, To die the last and not disgrace Its ancient chivalry. Tho’ o’er my clay no banner wave, Nor trumpet requiem swell, Enough, they murmur o’er my grave, He like a Soldier fell.

3

There is a land where Freedom dwells A land where all are blest, A land that holds the glorious tombs Of heroes now at rest; That land I love, it is my home, Of it I boast, ’tis well! The blood that courses thro’ my veins No brighter birth may tell.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some spellings peculiar to Graham’s. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals used for preparation of the eBook.

page 75, In the mornining ==> In the morning page 76, derelection of Hubert ==> dereliction of Hubert page 77, up the close-pins, ==> up the clothes-pins, page 77, over the close-fold, ==> over the clothes-fold, page 78, its apprisal, and then ==> its appraisal, and then page 85, persistance in whatever ==> persistence in whatever page 87, ere I had had heard ==> ere I had heard page 91, with an unfaultering and ==> with an unfaltering and page 93, sprained ancle. Gentle ==> sprained ankle. Gentle page 93, world was you doing ==> world were you doing page 93, the bed of Dalhias ==> the bed of Dahlias page 93, Your beautiful Dalhias ==> Your beautiful Dahlias page 95, the battle of Corrunna ==> the battle of Corunna, page 96, harrass that honorable ==> harass that honorable page 107, was brought fourth wounded, ==> was brought forth wounded, page 107, some characteristic attententions ==> some characteristic attentions page 109, the day thus began in ==> the day thus begun in page 118, played, eat together, ==> played, ate together, page 122, I poured over ==> I pored over page 122, a strange, quiet enthuasm, ==> a strange, quiet enthusiasm, page 126, beak was too inches ==> beak was two inches page 127, common in Peru and Chili ==> common in Peru and Chile page 131, betray the ininfluence ==> betray the influence page 132, By William Gammel ==> By William Gammell music page 2, But her’s a free ==> But hers a free