the pen. I will breathe one prayer that you may not mourn for me as one without hope;' and then, as I used to do in childhood, I will say 'Good night, dear mother!' and fall asleep.'

Another hand added the following:

'He was quite exhausted after writing the above, and lay quite motionless for hours. We feared he would never speak again; but toward midnight he revived, and called us each by name. He said: "You have been very kind to me, brothers. I can wish you no greater blessing than that you may once more look upon your native village; and when you lie down to die, may it be with sights and sounds of home around, and kindred hands to minister unto you. You will lay me on the east side of the hill, in the place which I showed you, and tell her, when the morning sun lights up the little room that I loved so well, to think it is shining on my grave; and bid her see in the increasing light the hope that cheers me now - the hope of an eternal day.' He never spoke again! We buried him on the hill-side, where he had directed, and A read the burial-service. It was a solemn scene. Those noble words, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' rising amid this wild solitude, spoken by a voice now deep and manly, and anon choked and trembling, the rough-clad group about the grave, and tears falling from eyes all unused to weep' - it was a scene never to be forgotten. It was a gallant spirit that we laid there to rest, in the hope of a glorious resurrection.' When we sit round the hut-door after our day's toil, we love to speak of him and to recall the keen wit and sprightly humor of happier days, as well as the dying words of tenderness and affection. Perhaps it will be pleasing to you, dear Madam, to know that we always think and speak of you at those times.

'It seems but idle to offer you our regard and sympathy; but we were children together; we knew your son in joy, we heard his cheerful words when adversity came upon us. We watched beside his sick-bed, and heard no murmur or complaint. We caught his last dying words, closed his eyes in death, and laid him in his last resting-place; and if one kindly word from us will do aught to soothe your sorrow, like which there is no sorrow,' it is all we ask or expect.'

This most touching letter was signed by four of the young man's companions in self-exile. I handed it back, and the mother gazed long upon it, as if the words were not already deeply graven in her inmost heart. 'I have been calmer,' she said, 'since this came. It is a strange

joy to read it again and again, and his spirit seems near me when I see the trembling lines. But then I think, if he could only have died here at home, I could have blessed the stroke; and sometimes I think, if some sudden accident, or the hand of violence even, had laid him low, it would have been better. It is when I think of him in the long, long hours of suffering, vainly wishing for one touch of the hand that soothed him in childhood, that I feel this sharp pain here. I fear my heart is indeed breaking! All joy is gone forever from this world; buried with my dear boy on the far-off hill-side!'

She covered her face again with her hands, and the tears fell fast over them. Poor stricken mother! What could I say?—how could I console her? I could only repeat, 'Thank God that the hope dimly seen by the far-off sufferer was with her a glorious certainty! that through no earthly medium, but with the eye of faith, did she look to that place where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow_nor crying, neither any more pain; for God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes' who inhabit therein.

Continuing my walk, it was long before I could forget the scene I have described. Although it was a sad picture, I said it should even go back with me to the great city and the gloomy office, and in my hand-to-hand struggle with existence I would look upon it, and learn to forget and despise my own petty griefs and annoyances.

And now, as I occasionally get a glimpse of blue water through the trees, there is a healthful sense of the salt sea in the air, and I hear the sound of the surf borne up by the light south wind. As I stand musing by an ancient well, I see a dignified matron approaching with her bucket, and I hasten to offer my assistance, and swing down the long pole, pour out the cool water, and insist on carrying it to the

house; and there I am quite taken aback by finding myself in the presence of two young maidens, comely and fair to look upon.'

A draught of the cool beverage from the cocoanut-cup soon restored me, and rest assured I did not neglect the matron's invitation to 'take a cheer;' and a cheering sight I looked upon. One of these damsels was a mild, quiet, blue-eyed girl. I have no distinct recollection of what she was doing, for to see the other was to forget every thing else. Just imagine a creature with curls, black eyes that had a touch of roguery in them, short sleeves, and a delicious roundness of face and form; just such a rosy-cheeked beauty as farmers' boys fall in love with at first sight; and, remember, I am a farmer's boy myself. She stood by a window where the breeze came off the sea and rustled through the leaves of some kind of creeping vine, and she was starching bits of lace; doing up' muslins, I think they call the operation. Heaven forgive her, but she came very near 'doing up' me, that sleeveless young girl with the black eyes!

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Perhaps, reader, you have seen muslins 'done up,' and know that the articles, being dipped in the starch and squeezed out, are held up lightly by the fingers and smartly slapped between the outspread palms. And you will also know, if you are a person of any taste, that where the hands are reasonably small, with dimples across the knuckles, and the arms are round and white, and other circumstances favorable, the effect of this performance is decidedly pretty. For what is she preparing those bits of finery? Perhaps to wear next Sabbath at the village church, to aid in captivating some susceptible swain; perhaps he is already captivated, and that little lace cuff she is now manipulating with such earnestness will rest lovingly upon his stalwart arm as they go slowly home through the moonlight from some evening party; or perhaps she is getting those things ready for her own wedding; who knows? And at this suggestion I mentally ejaculated God forbid !" But what business was it of mine, I should like to know!

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Under pretence that it was cooler where the breeze came through the vine-leaves, which physically it was, I drew my 'cheer' up in that direction, and said to the sleeveless creature that I loved to see her doing that, for I remembered to have seen my mother doing the same thing years ago; and something about this enlisted her sympathies, and we were on the best possible terms in no time.' Dissembler that I was! as though I needed any associations to make me like to see her thus engaged; and as though my recollections of the matriarch when in this business were not any thing but pleasant; for I remember that she generally wore a knit-up brow, and the juvenile members of the household considered it unsafe to approach the presence on such occasions; and just as though I did n't have a vivid and distinct recollection that on one occasion she apparently mistook my ears for a bit of obdurate lace, and visited them in such a style as to leave therein a murmuring sound for a considerable space of time, as though my head were a big sea-shell!

There was no frown on that brow when the shaken-back curls revealed it; no anger in the laughing eye; no sternness in the silvery voice, and no vengeance in the dainty little hands, which would have

been white, only that the exercise started out the carnations. Looking at the action of those hands, I would gladly welcome back that mnrmuring sound of old days, and am almost tempted to wish that 'this too solid flesh would melt,' and resolve itself into-muslin!

I am a sober, plodding sort of a man, cold, reflective and philosophical; but to look on that rosy face was ecstasy!—to undertake to count the dimples across the knuckles, or let the eye revel on the pearly whiteness of the rounded arms, was delirium! and to glance at that flexible form of rounded slenderness was frenzy and madness!

I don't know how long I stayed by that window, but the muslins were all done up,' and I thought the dignified matron was looking rather uneasily over toward our side of the house; so I left, like the young man mentioned by St. Matthew, 'going away exceeding sorrowful,' though from quite a different reason. And I deemed this indeed a pleasant picture to hang up in the dingy office that looked out on the brick-wall.

A little farther, and I reach the extreme limit of my walk. I stand upon a high bluff, and look forth over the Vineyard Sound, and see the surf tumbling in on the beach at my feet. It is a glorious sight, and well repays the long walk, if it had had no other attractions. The Sound. is full of vessels, as it always is in fine weather. I see the humble fisherman, with no fore-topmast; aristocratic liners, with their taper spars; business-like lumbermen, from down-east,' loaded deep in the water. Larger vessels, with now and then a noble ship, are drawing off the land, steering south-east by Great Point and the island of Nantucket, and so far out to sea, on their various trackless courses. I see a solitary steam-boat in the distance, her white length relieved against the blue headlands of Martha's Vineyard. It is the Nantucket steamer Massachusetts, Captain Barker, just coming out of Holmes' Hole, on her way to New-Bedford. And now, with my quiet cigar, I lie at length under the tall pines, through which the south wind is sighing. Thick as the fragrant smoke-wreaths around me are the fast-coming fancies; as light, airy and graceful; and truth to say, as unsubstantial.

I remember, when a boy, ranging the shore with my gun (for I had full share of the killing propensity inherent in all boys), and, becoming tired, I would recline under the trees, and in my boyish way long for the painter's eye and hand, to reproduce the bright scene before me, or the poet-feeling that should convey to a thousand hearts, in beautiful images, what I felt within me; all which aspirations suddenly disappeared if ever a gull came within gun-shot.

The same tall trees wave over me now. I look forth on the same scene, with the same aspirations, almost as hopeless; though I would fain, with my poor prose, make a compromise between the poet and the painter-longings.

There are not wanting those who say, that for one wearing perpetual mourning for past days, the writer of this contrives to extract a wonderful deal of enjoyment from the present; that for one born in a Puritan New-England village, and brought up at the feet of Gamaliel in the nurture and admonition of the LORD,' he hath an undue liking

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for brilliantly-lighted halls, where the blaze of beauty is yet brighter; that the touch of soft hands, the gleaming of bright eyes, have peculiar attractions for this moody man; and when there is music to be heard, the slanderers further say that he has not the power to resist, but gives himself up, heart and soul, to the delicious melody leaping gaily from violins, stealing out from flutes and clarionets; that he thinks he hears spirit-voices in the wild, wailing oboe, and has all sorts of feeling when he hears skilfully touched the unearthly, almost human violoncello, and is ready to fall down and worship the high art that can portray human passions by such delicious floods of harmony. It may be so; perhaps I must plead guilty to these charges; but, thank Heaven! my ear is not impaired for these old familiar sounds, musical as when I had not heard the Germania, and the opera was a thing unknown. There is a majestic movement' to that tenth wave; a glorious 'crescendo' in its gathering roar; a delightful 'shake' is performed when, nearly spent, it rushes far up on the beach, and some delicate 'fingering' in those points of foam, thrusting by the rest, curling round the pebbles, as if to find something the last wave had left; there is 'minor' sound in its deep-drawn sigh when it sweeps back, that increases to a sullen roar; the wind through the pines is a pleasing accompaniment,' and not inharmonious is the distant cawing of sombre crows and the scream of the white-winged sea-gull. There is no discord, no false note, here. Nature paints and shifts the scenes with her own hand, and there needs no prompting.

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When I cease to find beauty in these scenes, and to delight in these sounds; when they cease to rouse in me all my better nature, awake me to whatever is lovely and pleasant, noble and grand, beautiful and bright, then may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and my right hand forget its cunning!'

STANZAS..

To me it is a quiet spot,
A sacred holy place

Where, with a veilless eye, I see
Our FATHER's smiling face.

To me it is an angel's form,
With angel's vestments clad;
And with a voice of softest tone
It cheers me when I'm sad.

To me it is a gladsome eye,

That beams with nature's soul;

And waking joyous thoughts in mine,
How swift the minutes roll.

To me it is a guide to heaven,

A resting place from care;

And buoyant faith the while espys
Eternal glories there.