LESSON LIII.

THE CHEROKEEE'S LAMENT.

O, SOFT falls the dew, in the twilight descending,
And tall grows the shadowy hill on the plain;
And night o'er the far distant forest is bending,
Like the storm-spirit, dark, o'er the tremulous main;
But midnight enshrouds my lone heart in its dwelling,
A tumult of wo in my bosom is swelling,

And a tear, unbefitting the warrior, is telling

That Hope has abandoned the brave Cherokee !

Can a tree that is torn from its root by the fountain,
The pride of the valley, green-spreading and fair,
Can it flourish, removed to the rock of the mountain,
Unwarmed by the sun, and unwatered by care?
Though Vesper be kind her sweet dews in bestowing,
No life-giving brook in its shadow is flowing,

And when the chill winds of the desert are blowing,
So droops the transplanted and lone Cherokee!

Loved graves of my sires! have I left you forever?
How melted my heart, when I bade you adieu !
Shall joy light the face of the Indian ?-ah, never!
While memory sad has the power to renew;
As flies the fleet deer when the blood-hound is started,
So fled winged Hope from the poor broken-hearted;
O, could she have turned, ere for ever departed,
And beckoned with smiles to her sad Cherokee!

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Great Spirit of Good, whose abode is the heaven,
Whose wampum of peace is the bow in the sky,
Wilt thou give to the wants of the clamorous raven,
Yet turn a deaf ear to my piteous cry?

O'er the ruins of home, o'er my heart's desolation,
No more shalt thou hear my unblest lamentation;
For death's dark encounter I make preparation,
He hears the last groan of the wild Cherokee!

LESSON LIV.

A GHOST STORY.

I HAD heard, in my youth, as I presume most of my readers have done, the usual quantity of marvellous tales of ghosts, and witches, and spirits; nestled closer towards the others in the room, when the fearful tale was telling-hardly dared to go to bed after it was finished and when there, covered my head closely with the bed-clothes, for fear some awful spectacle would blast my eye-sight, and lay shivering and trembling for very terror, until sleep furnished the welcome relief. These tales had a wonderful effect upon my imagination, and made me very timid when alone, especially at night.

I have had the usual experience, too, of fancying apparitions from the moonbeams falling upon the wall, my clothes hanging upon the chair, or any other thing which a little light and a great deal of imagination could readily convert into the semblance of a spirit.

But as I always had a proneness to investigate every thing, these appearances, upon examination, of course were satisfactorily accounted for; but many times I have made the examination when absolutely shivering with fear. Several such false alarms rather tended to restore my courage, and to convince me that spiritual apparitions were not quite as common as I had supposed.

When I was about fifteen years of age, I was low in health, and my nervous system was greatly deranged, requiring some care and change of scene to restore the tone of my physical frame. My father sent me to reside with an aged clergyman of a small parish in a quiet and secluded town in Connecticut.

I occupied a small and neat bed-room, the bed in which was hung with curtains of dark calico; and the whole room and furniture had a somewhat sombre and antique air, in perfect keeping with the house, the place, and the owner.

One night I awoke, and found myself lying on my back; and saw, sitting upon the side of the bed and just at the parting of the curtains, in a line between my eyes and the window, a very aged man. The spectacle struck me with some surprise at first, but no dread. I could see distinctly the bed-curtains, the furniture of the room, the old bureau of dark wood with its filigree-work, brass handles, my own clothes hanging on a chair, the window, and the stars shining through it, and that figure sitting upon the side of my bed. Every thing was well known and familiar, except the figure.

That was the figure of a very old man, clad in a Quaker garb, with a rusty broad-brimmed hat upon his head; rusty and threadbare suit of grey clothes, as if they had been much worn; large buttons upon his coat; a vest, with broad and wide flaps; small clothes upon his spindle legs, with large, old-fashioned buckles at the knees, which I could see just at the edge of the bed, below which his feet hung down out of sight.

I did not at first pay much attention to his face. Soon my eyes were attracted to that, when I perceived it was deeply wrinkled and ashy pale, with a beard of long, thin, white hair, which hung quite down to his bosom in straggling, snowy locks.

The eye was white, and lustreless, and immoveable, and was fixed upon me with a dead, stony gaze, but wholly devoid of vitality or expression. There was no movement of muscle, limb, or feature, but there seemed to be a fascination in that gaze, which riveted my own sight without the power of withdrawing it. Soon a sensation of fear began to creep over me, which by degrees amounted to terror and the very agony of horror. The blood absolutely froze in my veins, and I could feel my hair rising on end, while great drops of sweat stood on my forehead, and a sense of suffocation and dread pervaded my whole frame. The same stony gaze was riveted upon me, looking directly into my own eyes, which I could not remove from the revolting object.

I strove to breathe, speak, shout, raise my hand, or move my eyes. I seemed to struggle, but all in vain, while a breathless horror grew more and more oppressive. At length, in the violence of effort, I succeeded

in moving a limb, when the figure, without changing its position, without motion, and with the same look, posture, and attitude, gradually but rapidly grew thinner and more shadowy, until I could see the mere outline and the very stars through it, when it completely vanished- vanished into thin air, and nothing was visible but the familiar furniture of the room. The oppression and terror of feeling gradually disappeared, also; but it was long before I could compose myself to reflect rationally upon what I had seen.

I soon, however, became satisfied I had evidently been laboring under the influence of nightmare, when I was either actually awake, or when my dream had supplied all the well known objects, and imagination had conjured up this as one of the hideous visions of such disease. As soon as the paroxysm passed off, and the stagnant blood began again to flow, the terrible vision vanished. This is my ghost story, and it has satisfied me of the true theory of supernatural apparitions.

If I was a philosopher, I should urge that these visions were conjured up by physical disease, and that the disease itself accounts for the sensation of horror and dread attending the apparition. But I am no philosopher, and shall leave others to draw their own inferences. I have only related a simple and veritable fact which occurred to myself. I have seen no ghosts since, and fear none, except as they are harbingers or rather attendants upon a disease, which is at all times distressing, and doubtless sometimes fatal. I have related the tale to dispel, if possible, the idle terrors of supernatural apparitions, as unfounded in reason, philosophy, and religion.