"How much am I indebted to you both for the unremitting kindness that cheers the evening of my days."

'" Oh, dear Mrs. Carlton, you have no imagination of the treasure I now possess in her. She is so gentle, so radiant with intellectual life, so earnest to efface the memory of the past, so full of all good works, that I can never adequately speak her praise, or my happiness."

"Heaven be praised! She is indeed a lovely, talented being, and most dear to us both. May her feet ever stand firm upon the unfailing Rock." "Did you ever perfectly explain to me the cause of that sudden transition from aversion to delight in your society which occurred during my painful absence?"

66 Possibly I may need your pardon for the course pursued in this particular, though certainly not for the motive that prompted it. Her antipathy to me was so great, and the stupor in which she lay so continued, that I was ready to despair of gaining any opportunity to serve her. I cast about for the best means that remained to me, and not without misgiving, made a selection. None can be much with her and not perceive that imagmation is a prominent feature in her mind, and as the reasoning powers were almost constantly dormant, I seemed driven to make an appeal to that. A little device with the magic lanthorn, which, had her intellect been unclouded, she would have detected in a moment, wrought effects surpassing my anticipation. It gave me access to her presence, from which I had before been excluded, and pitying Heaven did the rest."

"How far do you suppose she is aware of the measure to which you resorted?"

"I doubt whether she has more than a dreamy remembrance of the scene. Sometimes I have thought I would confess the whole to her and implore her forgiveness. But she has never made any allusion to it, and I have thought it better to fortify her virtue than to stir up the dregs of indistinct and harrowing recollection. Possibly my conscience has not always been perfectly satisfied

tò have thus invoked stratagem, but the case was a peculiar one, requiring peculiar measures. Forgive me, if I have erred through excess of zeal to arrest the erring and save the lost."

"We can never thank you as we ought for all you have done for us."

"If I have been the means of any good, thank not me, but Him from whom all good proceedeth. But the whole of this life is warfare, my dear young friend, and it is never safe to lay aside that fear which drives us to trust in Omnipotence."

"All your counsel is to us most precious."

You are both to me as children; you seem to stand in the places of those whom our Father has taken from my house and heart, to whom I hasten. Your beautiful wife is truly attractive, highly endowed, and full of love to you; but in this our state of discipline and danger, possibly she is not armed with that strong heart which foils temptation by perfect trust in an arm Divine. Teach her to expect difficult duty, and let it be your care to gird her up for it by deepening her piety."

"I feel the force of all you say, our blessed mother; so we speak of you to each other. Indulge us in that sweet appellation.”

Pressing his hand between both of hers, she added, solemnly and affectionately

"None may boast, my son, the seeds of evil habit are dead, never more to quicken; yet is there something almost converting in maternal love, that, watching over a helpless being, nourishing and guiding an heir of immortality, feels its own infirmity, its own inadequacy to the great work, and pours itself out in utter abandonment, seeking refuge where only it can be found, above. I rejoice that at length such hopes are hers, are yours; may God crown and render them effectual. I have been led to say more than I intended, for advancing age warns me that this birthday may be my last. Should it so prove, let this be my parting charge to our dear one, to put forth all her energies, to guard every avenue of danger, to resist every wile of the tempter; yet not to rely on any earthly helper, but cling ever closely to the Hand that was pierced."

Little could it then have been supposed, while there was such a lingering of the health and even the beauty of early years around this inestimable friend, that her parting intimation would so soon be verified. Yet ere" another moon had filled its horn" Frederick Wilson, himself deeply mourning, was called to console his weeping wife, who bent over the lifeless form of one who had been to both as a mother.

"She has gone to the angels," he said.

"To the angels, husband, in whose joy even on earth she partook, over the sinner that repenteth."

After the funeral obsequies, it was to them a mournful satisfaction to devise and erect a monn

ment which should consult both the simplicity of her taste and the impulse of their gratitude. The green turf whe re her form reposed was surrounded by a beautiful enclosure, and planted with her favorite flowers. At its entrance a willow swept the ground with its long, drooping wands, and over the arched gate crept the ivy and the clematis with its blue pendulous blossoms. In the cen tre rose a plain stone of the purest marble. Its only inscription was the name, with the simple dates of birth and death; and beneath, cut deeply into the heart of the stone,

GONE HOME.

On the reverse, two hands exquisitely sculptured, sprang from the marble, sustaining a vase with the words "Bring flowers" enwreathed with acanthus leaves, while its frequent supply of fresh water and the fairest flowers attested the constancy with which the memory of the dead was cherished.

The loss of the hand that had steadily probed her follies and fostered her virtues was sincerely deplored by Louisa. Scarcely had the sadness in some measure passed away ere she was called to become a mother. When she saw her husband press long and earnestly the velvet lip of their firstborn, and divide between it and herself his tearful, enraptured blessings, she felt more than repaid for all the apprehension and agony with which a Being of Wisdom hath encompassed the entrance of that holy relationship.

The ruling desire of Frederick Wilson's heart was consummated in the first wail of that feeble infant. Not only had his native love of children led him to repine that their union for years had been thus unblessed, but he had secretly depended on the force of maternity to dispel the only shade that darkened the history of his wife. Often had he said mentally, while conflicting with her depraved habit,

"Were she but a mother! those cares and joys would be her salvation."

And now the blessing was granted, he was never weary of watching the tender nursling of their hopes, regarding every movement of the tiny limbs, and anticipating the volitions of a mind that was to live forever. It gave him pleasure to believe that it would have the mother's eye of sparkling blue, and to trace the rudiments of his own noble forehead amid its imperfectly developed features. It was interesting to see him so absorbed by this new affection. He was peculiarly gratified that it was a daughter, that its companionship with the mother might be more entire and its influence more permanent. He hailed it as the little angel that had stepped into the troubled pool, to heal the hearts that waited to be whole. It was his first thought at waking, his last when he lay down, and it even had part in his dreams, tinging them

with the hue of its own sweet helplessness. The only alloy to his felicity was the physical weakness of Louisa. Some infirmity of constitution left her longer languid and a prisoner than was expected. Both physician and nurse recommended the free use of tonics to restore her decaying appetite and strength. Tonics involving stimulants!

Did they not understand or perceive the baleful fires they were rekindling? But he who did both understand and perceive interposed, though at the eleventh hour. He forbade all use of what could intoxicate, or its entrance into his house.

Louisa was astonished at the spirit which he manifested. She felt it great unkindness to withhold what she believed she needed as a restorative to health and the means of affording nourishment to her babe. She became silent and resentful, and was unappeased by his anxious inquiries or affectionate treatment. One evening, while she supposed him to be absent from home, she imagined herself to be alarmingly feeble and in danger of syncope. She therefore directed the nurse to go forth silently and purchase some of the prohibited beverage, while, propped in her easy chair, she lulled the infant on her bosom.

"Poor innocent!" she murmured, "hard that thou must pine for thy natural food, and thy sick mother suffer, because cruel father denies the medicine that would restore us."

Ere the return of the nurse, her husband entered. What met his horror-struck eyes?

His darling child in the fire, and the mother hanging over the arm of her easy chair-asleep!

It seems that after the departure of the nurse she had drawn nearer the fire, resting her feet upon the fender. But as the opium-trance deepened, they had slidden from their support, and the precious burden from her arms. Fortunately, the wood was nearly consumed, and being closely wrapped in flannels, its clothes had not ignited. One fair cheek was scorched by the hearth where it lay, but a hand and arm which it had thrust forth from its envelope, came in contact with red coals and decaying brands and was burned to a crisp.

The agony of the father, as he caught the child to his breast, was indescribable.

"Woman! see your own work! the fruit of your accursed, wilful wickedness."

A consultation of surgeons pronounced amputation above the elbow indispensable to life, and it was done. The sufferings of the poor babe, and the hazardous illness that followed, taught the bitterness of remorse to the wretched mother. Its cries of anguish and her husband's stern adjuration, "Woman! see your own work!" haunted her perpetually.

It was long ere that child was out of danger, or

the offended husband propitiated. But as health returned to its pallid brow, he began to look on the wasted form of his wife with commiseration. His heart was touched with pity and alive to tender remembrance, but the respect that is essential to true love had fled forever. This she perceived, and no longer desired to live. The idea that he despised her took possession of her imagination and poisoned the springs of life. The love that had for years been the pole-star of her existence had shrouded itself. She was not content to gather up the scattered coals from its forsaken altar and be thankful they were not wholly extinguished, and quicken them with the breath of the patient heart, and pour incense upon them that might have ascended to Heaven. No; she could be satisfied only with its first fervor, and that could return no more. She no longer put forth any effort to resist, scarcely to disguise her infirmity. She desperately strove to drown her sorrow in the blood of the grape; to consume it in the fire of distilled liquors; to stagnate it in the sleep of the poppy. Her husband ceased to oppose the current of her depraved appetite. This, also, appeared to her unkindness, for she construed it into indifference. Maternal love in her nature seemed an element of secondary power. Its seed had fallen on an ill-prepared, perverted soil. It had come up like a plant under the storm-cloud, blighted ere it could take deep root. The lisping word "mother," that talisman of all tender emotion, sometimes awoke a thrilling, delicious tear, but

that lost arm was a perpetual reproof, bringing anew the sound of those terrible words, " Woman, see your own work! "

Short and sad was the remaining annal of her days. One morning, in the midst of her lofty parlor, she fell and rose not. She was borne to her chamber and bed, where she breathed heavily, but spoke not. Long did her coach, which she had ordered, stand in waiting at her gate, for none of those who had hurried in and out, physicians, neighbors or domestics, remembered to say to the coachman-"The mistress is dead!"

In an inner room, haggard with grief, sat the disconsolate husband, his mutilated child upon his knee. At the deep sound of the funeral bell, he put the little one from him, that he might kneel for the last time amid the voice of prayer, by her side whom prayer would no longer avail, and look for the last time on that bloated, discolored face, once so beautiful.

As years passed on, it was touching to see that melancholy man, in his rich saloon, his spacious garden or his favorite library, ever holding by her only hand his only child, ever breathing into her ear precepts of wisdom, ever pouring, as it were, the whole wealth of a sorrowing, loving spirit into her tender bosom. From no effort of duty or work of benevolence did he withdraw himself, but the brightness of existence was gone forever; and in his most cheerful moments, he was as one who had seen the idol of his youth borne away by some black-winged monster into outer darkness.

WELL, it is a kind offer, Melinda; but why not stay here and learn a trade?"

"And, at every other stitch, take a scolding from some fretful old seamstress or milliner! No, no, Mrs Murdock; I hate sewing, and above all things the idea of learning a trade. Up there, I can at least do as I please."

66 Perhaps so; I would not discourage you, my dear; but it will surprise me if you are contented there three weeks, not to speak of a longer time."

"If I were, it would be something new," replied the laughing girl; "but tell me why you think so. Grand'ma always said they were rich."

"

"Oh, in the first place, they live quite out of the world. D—— is a little, back-woods sort of town, and your old relatives live away in one corner of it, among the trees and rocks. I went there once with your mother. The place and people gave me a notion of the world before the flood. You will see nobody there. Aunt Eunice is nothing like your poor grand'ma. I doubt if her ideas ever wandered beyond the limits of their farm, excepting when we were there," continued the lady, laughing. In passing through one of their clumsy gates, your mother tore her dress. Aunt Eunice examined the rent, inquired the cost of the dress, and then gave a sweeping lecture on the extravagance and degeneracy of the times. It was quite original. Your mother listened with great meekness, and was well repaid, for the old lady loaded our carriage with presents. I think she is kind, though she has queer ways. There is one thing in your favor-they are rich, and will not live forever."

This is but a fragment of a conversation that occurred one morning, between Mrs. Murdock and her young friend, Melinda Dutton. Melinda was an orphan. At her mother's death, she fell to the care of a doating grandmother, who did what grandmothers have done before-spoiled her. She was untrained and ignorant-not from want of facilities for education, for the fashionable town of C— - had a fair sprinkling of high schools and low schools; and Melinda had also been sent away to one or two genteel boardingschools. Nor would I intimate a doubt of grandmamma's veracity, who exultingly maintained that VOL. VIII. No. 4.

her darling" had been through all the branches." She had been through them-yet she had failed to be educated. With respect to all that was useful and necessary to one in her condition of life, she was ignorant. Nature had given her a quick, bright mind, and a loving heart-but education had proved a sad failure. The grandmother thought her darling was very delicate and frail. She petted and indulged her, until, at sixteen, she was self-willed, indolent and discontented.

Melinda's father had spent most of his time at the South. His business was lucrative, but he contracted extravagant habits, and at his death, there was nothing left for his child. The grandmother did not long survive him, and the girl was left nearly portionless, as well as friendless. The old lady had a brother and sister still living. They were unmarried, and had always resided together in their native town, in a distant part of the state. When informed of her death, they were also told of the destitute condition of the orphan. Their letter in reply was somewhat quaintly expressed, but they willingly offered their young relative a home. This letter gave rise to the preceding conversation.

Mrs. Murdock has given her account of Eunice, and now, kind reader, let me give you mine. She was indeed, nothing at all like Melinda's " poor grand'ma," but a shrewd, strongminded, energetic woman, who knew little and seemed to care less about that portion of the world which could not be seen from the old farmhouse, where she dwelt with uncle Jonas. Her prepossessions and prejudices were very strong, and not easily changed; they were also seldom opposed or contradicted, for she did not often leave home, and none of the neighbors cared to get into a "snarl with aunt Eunice." Her tongue was rather nervous, swift and sharp, and her manners seemingly rough-yet she had a good, kind heart, though the way to it often seemed somewhat intricate. There was about her a kind of rude dignity, a marked individuality of expression and manner, which sometimes appears in those whose position has saved them from the stereotyping processes of society. She was peculiarly one of those who, to use the significant