and the old routine had a more formal and chilling grandeur. But though miserable, I affected cheerfulness; and ventured upon many pleasures which had in them no real attraction, merely to try my strength. No questions arose; no further disputes: nothing but the formalities of speech necessary to keep up appearances ever passed be

tween us.

The excitement of studying her pleasure, and avoiding her displeasure, kept me from the listlessness and indefinite longings I afterward experienced; and that in these life's object was not entirely fulfilled, scarcely occurred to me.

But very suddenly came the change that was to introduce me to new scenes, though no evil ever happened to lead me to recur to the past with a sigh for its return.

It is almost as wicked to make a gloomy home as a wicked one,' says a wise man: and may those who have it in their power to fill with clouds or sun-shine the place where young hearts are to expand, be careful that light and not darkness surround them.

After the first stroke of paralysis, there was ever a terrible fear in the mind of the sufferer that it would be repeated, and the third would certainly dethrone her reason or cause her death. She did not wait for this the second prostrated her upon a dying-bed, and ere my father could obey the summons which called him to her, life had ebbed.

She died, and made no sign! Every waking moment I hovered over her couch to watch for a gleam of returning consciousness, that I might speak the grief I felt, and hear the words of reconciliation; but in vain. Neither eye nor lip acknowledged the presence of living being

more.

I wept; there were many reasons why I should, though I did not pretend to the sorrow of those who mourn that

'TRUE hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown.'

I wept for it is always sad to look on death always suggestive of broken ties and change; of 'passing away.'

A pompous funeral, according to the fashion of the olden time, gave all outward indications of honoring the dead; the arrival of friends and relatives, a few days of bustle and confusion engaged us, and we were again alone. Though she was gone, I could not overcome the terror I had felt so many years at the lifting of a latch, or the sound of a footfall. But I had good reason for burying the long and bitter past when I found the remembrance which had been made of me in the last will and testament. She had constituted me sole heir of all she possessed; and during all that period of estrangement, she had not blotted out this proof of her confidence and love. She had, indeed, considered me capable of self-reliance, and unlimited trust; yet not till her death would she manifest it.

It was not a princely fortune of which I was made mistress; yet it was mine; and while she lived, not a penny did my purse ever contain with the permission to spend it at my discretion.

6

Now came the question of settlements and arrangements; what I should do, and where I should go; and I began again to realize

'How vain are all things here below,

How false and yet how fair.'

I had really been so foolish as to plan to remain in the house where I had lived so long, and constitute myself sole mistress of the premises and my own affairs. I was still young, and sadly deficient in many of the qualifications of housekeeper and manager; but I had the vanity to think I could soon accomplish myself, while it never entered my head that to my plans there could be any other objection.

But my father knew very well, and in consternation exclaimed : Stay here alone; impossible! What would the world say?' These were considerations which I had not weighed, for I had seen so little of society that I scarcely knew its rules. But I have learned since, and learned too what sort of morality it glosses with its matronizing and chaperoning; how the heartless and frivolous and false are screened by escorts, and while conforming to conventionalities, revelling in sin.

.ance.

But I had neither inclination nor strength to defy the world, and saw my bright visions dissolve and my fairy castles levelled without resistI must return to the home of my childhood, to which I had no attachments, and resign myself to a life of dreariness. My father had commenced house-keeping again, with a distant relative, a sort of cousin, for directress in the household economy; so that I should be entirely relieved from care, and have nothing to do but go on making embroidery for amusement; reading, if I could get any thing to read, and hope to get married, and dream about it for a subject of interest.

"This is the lot of woman.'

This I had been taught by every precept and example; by every book and newspaper I had read, and these were certainly of the most sober and approved kind; but I had been taught as thoroughly that it would be very indelicate to confess it; and that which alone could afford aim and object in life to woman; that alone which was her proper sphere, she must even deny that she ever wishes to obtain. And however perseveringly she may persist in the denial, with whatever falsehood she may stain her lips on this subject, it is no sin in the eyes of the world.

But to think that the house which was now my own; the garden, the orchard, the little grove, and the strips of meadow-land must be sold, and fall into the hands of strangers! My father said the income of it, if converted into money, and put at interest, would yield me much more than the rent I could obtain; and as I was a young girl, ignorant of business, and lamentably ignorant of money matters, my remonstrances were vain.

Again and again I visited every loved and cherished spot, and thought how I might beautify and adorn the grounds; how I might fit up the old castle of a house, and how cozily and independently I might live there, with two of the old servants who would serve me till death for the love they bore me; how I would exercise hospitality, and with

some congenial companion introduce life and gayety where there had been so long a stillness worse than death, inasmuch as a skeleton is a more unseemly vision than a corpse.

Submission was not so difficult as if I had never learned the lesson; and however sharp the pang and bitter the tears this sorrow caused, I made no demonstrations of rebellion.

In a little time the thoughtless crowd was gathered in the shadows of those green old trees, and the hammer of the auctioneer was heard in front of that quiet old hall.

It was finished - all was still! I wandered once more through those empty rooms, wept at the remembrance of the past, and in more bitter agony as I thought of the future; and left, never again to listen to the echo of footsteps within its walls.

IN the long and quiet evening,
While a storm of snow in ARIES,
Bowing low the drooping branches,
Whitened every roof and pavement,
I had weary grown with reading,
And the deep, unbroken silence
Settled heavy o'er my heart-strings.
Then I laid the book beside me,
Mused amid the glimmering lamp-ght,
Gazing on the wall and pictures
Till the reverie was broken,
Lonely reverie, as I deemed it,
By two eye-balls glaring on me,
Round, unwinking in their sockets,
Eye-balls of the bird of PALLAS,
Of the great white bird of PALLAS,
Seated on my parlor-table !

When I last had looked upon him

I believed him gravely gazing

On the wealth of green-house flowers
That beneath him, in their vases,

Grew and flourished, fresh with fragrance.

He had seemed to make a neighbor
Of the jonquil and the crocus,
Hyacinths in pink and purple,
Hyacinths in blue and saffron;
Orange-trees, and sweet Ilissus,
And the cyclamen of Persia,
Folding back its snowy petals
With a sort of graceful gladness,
Like an innocent white rabbit;

He, my Owl, methought had viewed them

With a patronizing pleasure,

And I started at perceiving

Fixed on me those grave, round eye-balls,
As if curiously inquiring:

'Are you thinking of your daughter,
Thinking of her recent bridal,
And the happy home she maketh
For her chosen life's companion?
Are you thinking of the music

That from yonder shut piano

She, with fairy, flying fingers,

Used to summon forth to cheer you?'

Then methought those large eyes twinkled

With a pitiful emotion;

And, as sympathy is precious,

Even from unexpected quarters,

Even from most inferior creatures,
Quick I drew my seat beside him,
Laid my hand upon his shoulder,
Softly said: 'My Koko-Koho,*
Sing a song, or tell a story,
To amuse my lonely hearth-stone;
For the hearth-stone must be lonely
Where is neither son nor daughter,
Face of youth, or voice of infant!'

Though, in truth, that term of hearth-stone
Now is obsolete and ancient,

And the most correct cognomen,

Howsoe'er the poets murmur,

Should be register or furnace.

Then his snowy moustache trembled,

And from out that beak majestic
Came the strangest elocution,

All monotonous and inbred,

(Not like that which in my childhood,
When a guest at quaint, old farm-house,
Used to scare me from my slumbers-
Hideous hooting of a screech-owl,)
But monotonous and inbred,
Perched upon my parlor-table,
Thus intoned the bird of PALLAS.

'Where the rugged coast of Plymouth
Battles stoutly with the ocean,
In a hollow, doddered oak-tree,
Like a Druid I was nurtured
In the wisdom of my people,

6

Wisdom that hath made them sacred,

At the shrine of great MINERVA.

Musing in my studious cloister,

Oft I listened as the oak-tree

When the west wind stirred its branches,

Lectured to its merry leaflets

From the annals of its childhood:

'I remember, I remember,'

Thus it said in tones maternal,

When the 'May-Flower,' the explorer,

Small and brown, and tempest-beaten,

Landed on yon rocky bastion,

All New-England's solemn fathers.
I have heard the first-born echo

Of their axe amid the forest;

Heard their hymns of mournful cadence,
When the winter and the famine
Smote them in their earth-floored hovels.
I have looked on saintly CARVER,
Heard the prayers of Elder BREWSTER,
Seen the stalwart form of STANDISH,
And sweet ROSE, his blue-eyed consort;
Seen the WINSLOWS and JOHN ALDEN,
And the plumed and painted chieftains,
Gazing on the pale-faced strangers

*Indian name for the owl.