LIFE’S YOUNG DREAM.

Albany, January, 1844.A. R.

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

HARRY HARSON.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

In the same room from which Craig and Jones had set out on their ill-fated errand, and at the hour of noon on the following day, the latter was crouching in front of the fire-place, which had been so bright and cheery the night before, but which now contained nothing except ashes, and a few half-burned stumps, charred and blackened, but entirely extinguished. Over these Jones bent, occasionally shivering slightly, and holding his hands to them, apparently unconscious that they emitted no heat, and then dabbling in the ashes, and muttering to himself. But a few hours had elapsed since he had left that room a bold, daring, desperate man; yet in that short time a frightful change had come over him. His eyes were blood-red; his lips swollen and bloody, and the under one deeply gashed, as if he had bitten it through; his cheeks haggard and hollow, his hair dishevelled, his dress torn, and almost dragged from his person. But it was not in the outward man alone that this alteration had taken place. In spirit, as well as in frame, he was crushed. His former iron bearing was gone; no energy, no strength left. He seemed but a wreck, shattered and beaten down—down to the very dust. At times he mumbled to himself, and moaned like one in suffering. Then again he rose and paced the room with long strides, dashing his hand against his forehead, and uttering execrations. The next moment he staggered to his seat, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed like a child.

‘Tim,’ said he, in a low broken voice, ‘poor old Tim; I killed you, I know I did; but blast ye! I loved you, Tim. But it’s of no use, now; you’re dead, and can never know how much poor Bill Jones cared for you. No, no; you never can, Tim. We were boys together, and now I’m alone; no one left—no one, no one!’

In the very phrenzy of grief, that succeeded these words, he flung himself upon the floor, dashing his head and hands against it, and rolling and writhing like one in mortal pain. This outbreak of passion was followed by a kind of stupor; and crawling to his seat, he remained there, like one stunned and bereft of strength. Stolid, scarcely breathing, and but for the twitching of his fingers, motionless as stone; with his eyes fixed on the blank wall, he sat as silent as one dead; but with a heart on fire, burning with a remorse never to be quenched; with a soul hurrying and darting to and fro in its mortal tenement, to escape the lashings of conscience. Struggle on! struggle on! There is no escape, until that strong heart is eaten away by a disease for which there is no cure; until that iron frame, worn down by suffering, has become food for the worm, and that spirit and its persecutor stand before their final judge, in the relations of criminal and accuser.

A heavy step announced that some one was ascending the stairs. Jones moved not. A loud knock at the door followed. Still he did not stir. The door was then flung open, in no very gentle manner, for it struck the wall behind it with a noise that made the room echo: but a cannon might have been fired there, and Jones would not have heard it.

The person however who had thus unceremoniously opened the way to his entrance, seemed perfectly indifferent whether his proceedings were agreeable or otherwise. His first movement on entering the room was to shut the door after him and lock it; his next was to look about it to see whether it contained any other than the person of Jones. Having satisfied himself on that score, he walked rapidly up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Jones looked listlessly up at him, and then turning away, dabbled in the ashes, without uttering a word.

‘Hello! Bill Jones,’ said the stranger, after waiting a moment or two in evident surprise, ‘what ails you?’

The man made no reply.

‘Are you sulky?’ demanded the other; ‘Well, follow your own humor; but answer me one question: where’s Craig?’

Jones shuddered; and his hand shook violently. Rising up, half tottering, he turned and stood face to face with his visiter.

‘Good day to ye, Mr. Grosket,’ said he, with a ghastly smile, and extending his hand to him. ‘Good day to ye. It’s a bright day, on the heels of such a night as the last was.’

‘Good God! what ails you, man?’ exclaimed Grosket, recoiling before the wild figure which confronted him; and then taking his hand, he said: ‘Your hand is hot as fire, your eyes blood-shot, and your face covered with blood. What have you been at? What ails you?’

Jones passed his hand feebly across his forehead, and then replied: ‘I’m sick at heart!’

He turned from Grosket, and again crouched upon the hearth, mumbling over his last words, ‘Sick at heart! sick at heart!’—nor did he appear to recollect Grosket’s question respecting Craig. If he did, he did not answer it, but with his arms locked over his knees, he rocked to and fro, like one in great pain.

‘Are you ill, man, or are you drunk?’ demanded Grosket, pressing heavily on his shoulder. ‘Speak out, I say: what ails you? If you don’t find your tongue, I’ll find it for you.’

Jones, thus addressed, made an effort to rally, and partially succeeded; for after a moment he suddenly rose up erect, and in a clear, bold voice, replied:

‘I’m not drunk, Mr. Grosket, but I am ill; God knows what’s the matter with me. Look at me!’ he continued, stepping to where the light was strongest; ‘Look at me well. Wouldn’t you think I’d been on my back for months?’

‘You look ill enough;’ was the blunt reply.

‘Well, then, what do you want?’ demanded Jones, in a peevish tone; ‘why do you trouble me? I can’t bear it. Go away; go away.’

‘I will, when you’ve answered my question. Where’s Craig?’

‘I don’t know. He was here last night; but he went out, and hasn’t been here since.’

‘Where did he go?’

Jones shook his head: ‘He didn’t say.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘No,’ replied the other, evidently wincing under these questions; ‘No; there was a man with him, nigh about my size. He went with him. That’s all I know about either of them. There, there; get through with your questions. They turn my head,’ said he, in an irritable tone.

‘Why did he take a stranger?’ demanded Grosket, without paying the least attention to his manner. ‘You forget that I know you and he generally hunt in couples.’

It might have been the cold of the room striking through to his very bones that had so powerful an effect on Jones, but he shook from head to foot, as he answered:

‘Look at me! God! would you have a man out in such a night as that was, when he’s almost ready for his winding-sheet?’

Grosket’s only reply was to ask another question.

‘What was the name of the man who went with him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did they go to do?’

Jones hesitated, as if in doubt what answer to make, and then, as if adopting an open course, he said: ‘I’ve know’d you a good while, Mr. Grosket, and you won’t blab, if I tell you what I suspect, will ye? It’s only guess-work, after all. Promise me that; I know your word is good.’

Grosket paused a moment before he made the promise; and then said: ‘Well, I’ll keep what you tell me to myself. Now then.’

‘It was a house-breaking business,’ said Jones, sinking his voice. ‘They took pistols with them; and I heard Tim tell the other one to take the crow-bar and the glim. That’s all I know. I was too much down to listen. There; go away now. I’ve talked till my head is almost split. Talking drives me mad. Go away.’

Grosket stood perfectly still in deep thought. The story might be true; for the city was ringing with the news of the burglary, and of the death of one of the burglars by the hands of his comrade. It was rumored too, that the dead man had been identified by some of the officers of the police, and that his name was Craig. It was this, taken in connection with the facts that the attempt had been made on Harson’s house; that an effort had been made to carry off a child who lived with him, and of its being known to Grosket that Rust had often employed these two men in matters requiring great energy and few scruples, that had induced him thus early to visit their haunt, to ascertain the truth of his suspicions; and to endeavor, if possible, to ferret out the plans of their employer. The replies of Jones, short and abrupt as they were, convinced him that his suspicions respecting Craig were correct; but who could the other man be?

Engrossed with his own thoughts, he appeared to forget where he was and who was present; for he commenced walking up and down the room; then stopped; folded his arms, and talked to himself in low, broken sentences. Again he walked to the far end of the room and stopped there.

Jones, in the mean time, to avoid farther questioning, seated himself; and leaning his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hand. He was disturbed, however, by feeling himself shaken roughly by the shoulder. ‘What you’ve just been telling me, is a lie!’ said Grosket, sternly. ‘You should know me well enough not to run the risk of trifling with me. I want the truth and nothing else. Where were you last night?’

Jones looked up at him and then answered in a sullen tone: ‘I’ve told you once; I was here.’

Grosket went to a dark corner of the room and brought back Jones’ great-coat, completely saturated with water. ‘This room scarcely leaks enough to do that,’ said he, throwing it on the floor in front of Jones. ‘Ha! what’s that in the pocket?’

He thrust in his hand and drew out a pistol. The hammer was down, the cap exploded, and the inside of the muzzle blackened by burnt powder.

‘Fired off!’ said he. ‘You told the truth. The man who went with Craig did look like you. I know the rest. Tim Craig is dead, and you shot him.’

An expression of strange meaning crossed the face of the burglar as he returned the steady look of his visiter without making any reply. But Grosket was not yet done with him; for he said in a slow, savage tone: ‘Now mark me well. If you lie in what you tell me, I’ll hang you. Who employed you to do this job?’

Jones eyed him for a moment, and then turned away impatiently and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t worry me. I’m sick and half crazy. Get away, will ye!’

‘This to me! to me!’ exclaimed the other, stepping back, his eyes flashing fire; ‘you forget yourself.’

Jones rose up, his red hair hanging like ropes about his face, and his bloodshot eyes and disfigured features giving him the look rather of a wild beast than of a man. Shaking his finger at Grosket, he said, ‘Keep away from me to day, I say. There’s an evil spell over me. Come to-morrow, but don’t push me to-day, or God knows what you may drive me to do. There, there—go.’

Still Grosket stirred not, but with a curling lip and an eye as bright as his own, and voice so fearfully quiet and yet stern that at another time it might have quelled even the strong spirit of the robber, he said ‘Enoch Grosket never goes until his object is attained.’

‘Then you won’t go?’ demanded Jones.

‘No!’

Jones made a hasty step toward him, with his teeth set and his eyes burning like coals of fire; but whatever may have been his purpose, and from the expression of his face, there was little doubt but that it was a hostile one, he was diverted from it by hearing a hand on the latch of the door and a voice from without demanding admittance.

‘It is Rust,’ exclaimed Grosket, in a sharp whisper. He touched the burglar on the shoulder and said in the same tone, ‘I’m going in there.’ He pointed to a closet in a dark part of the room, nearly concealed by the wainscotting. Let him in, and betray me if you dare!’

‘You seem to know our holes well,’ muttered Jones. ‘You’ve been here afore.’ Grosket made no reply, but hurried across the room and secreted himself in the closet, which evidently had been constructed as a place of concealment, either for the tenants of the room themselves, or for whatever else it might not suit their fancy to have too closely examined.

Jones stared after him, apparently forgetting the applicant for admission, until a renewed and very violent knocking recalled his attention to it. He then went to the door, drew back the bolt, and walked to his seat, without even glancing to see who came in, or whom the person was who followed so closely at his heels. Nor did he look around until he felt his arm roughly grasped, and a sharp stern voice hissing in his ear:

‘So, so! a fine night’s work you’ve made of it. Tim Craig is dead and the whole city is already ringing with the news; and you, you’re a murderer!’

Jones started from his seat with the sudden spasmodic bound of one who has received a mortal thrust. He stared wildly at the sharp thin face which had almost touched his, and then sat down and said:

‘Don’t talk to me so, Mr. Rust; I can’t bear it.’

‘Ho, ho! your conscience is tender, is it? It has a raw spot that won’t bear handling, has it? We’ll see to that. But to business,’ said he, his face becoming white with rage; his black eyes blazing, and his voice losing its smoothness and quivering as he spoke.

‘I’ve come here to fulfil my agreement; you were to get that child for me to-day; I’ve come for her; where is she?’

Jones looked at him with an expression of impatience mingled with contempt, but made him no answer.

‘Tim Craig was to have gone to that house; he was to have carried her off; he was to have her here, here, HERE!’ said he, in the same fierce tone. ‘Why hasn’t he done it?’

‘Because he’s dead,’ said Jones savagely.

‘I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!’ exclaimed Rust. ‘He deserved it. The coward! Let him die.’

‘Tim Craig was no coward,’ replied Jones, in a tone which, had Rust been less excited, would have warned him to desist.

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Rust, scanning him from head to foot, as if surprised at his daring to contradict him, ‘Would you gainsay me?’

Jones returned his look without flinching, his teeth firmly set and grating together. At last he said:

‘I do gainsay you; and I do say, whoever calls Tim Craig a coward lies!’

‘This, and from you!’ exclaimed Rust, shaking his thin finger in his very face; ‘this from you; you, a house-breaker, a thief, and last night the murderer of your comrade. Ho! ho! it makes me laugh! Fool! How many lives have you? One word of mine could hang you.’

‘You’ll never hang me,’ replied Jones, in the same low, savage tone. ‘I wish you had, before that cursed job of yours made me put a bullet in poor Tim. I wish you had; but it is too late. You wont now.’

Words cannot describe the fury of Michael Rust at seeing himself thus bearded by one whom he had been used to see truckle to him, whom he considered the mere tool of Craig, and whom he had never thought it worth while even to consult in their previous interviews.

‘Wont I? wont I? Look to yourself,’ muttered he, shaking his finger at him with a slow, cautioning gesture, ‘Look to yourself.’

‘You’re right, I will; I say I will,’ exclaimed Jones, leaping up and confronting him. ‘I say I will; and now I do!’ He grasped him by the throat and shook him as if he had been a child.

‘I might as well kill him at once,’ muttered he, without heeding the struggles of Rust. ‘It’s him or me; yes, yes, I’ll do it.’

Coming to this fatal conclusion, he flung Rust back on the floor and leaped upon him. At this moment, however, the door of the closet was thrown open, and Grosket, whom he had entirely forgotten, sprang suddenly out:

‘Come, come, this wont do!’ said he; ‘no murder!’

Jones made no effort to resist the jerk at his arm with which Grosket accompanied his words, but quietly rose, and said:

‘Well, he drove me to it. He may thank you for his life, not me.’

Relieved from his antagonist, Rust recovered his feet, and turning to Grosket said, in a sneering tone:

‘Michael Rust thanks Enoch for having used his influence with his friend, to prevent the commission of a crime which might have made both Enoch and his crony familiar with a gallows. A select circle of acquaintance friend Enoch has.’

Grosket, quietly, pointed to the closet and said:

‘You forget that I have been there ever since you came in the room; and have overheard every thing that passed between you and my friend.’

Rust bit his lip.

‘Don’t let it annoy you,’ continued he, ‘for the most of what I heard I knew before. I have had my eye on you from the time we parted. With all your benevolent schemes respecting myself I am perfectly familiar. The debt which you bought up to arrest me on; your attempt to have me indicted on a false charge of felony; the quiet hint dropped in another quarter, that if I should be found with my throat cut, or a bullet in my head, you wouldn’t break your heart; I knew them all; but I did not avail myself of the law. Shall I tell you why, Michael Rust? Because I had a revenge sweeter than the law could give.’

‘Friend Enoch is welcome to it when he gets it,’ replied Rust, in a soft tone. ‘But the day when it will come is far off.’

‘The day is at hand,’ replied Grosket. ‘It is here: it is now. Not for a mine of gold would I forego what I now know; not for any thing that is dear in the world’s eyes, would I spare you one pang that I can now inflict.’

Rust smiled incredulously, but made no reply.

‘Your schemes are frustrated,’ continued Grosket. ‘The children are both found; their parentage known; your name blasted. The brother who fostered you, and loaded you with kindness will have his eyes opened to your true character; and you will be a felon, amenable to the penalty of the law, whenever any man shall think fit to call it down upon your head. But this is nothing to what is in store for you.’

‘Well,’ said Rust, with the same quiet smile; ‘please to enumerate what other little kindnesses you have in store for me.’

‘I will,’ replied Grosket. ‘I was once a happy man. I had a wife and daughter, whom I loved. My wife is dead; what became of my child? I say,’ exclaimed he bitterly, ‘what became of my child?’

‘Young women will forget themselves sometimes,’ said Rust, his thin lip curling. ‘She became a harlot—only a harlot.’

Grosket grew deadly pale, and his voice became less clear, as he answered:

‘You’re right—you’re right! why shrink from the word. It’s a harsh one; but it’s God’s truth; she did—and she died.’

‘That’s frank,’ said Rust, ‘quite frank. I am a straight-forward man, and always speak the truth. I’m glad to see that friend Enoch can bear it like a Christian.’

A loud, taunting laugh broke from Grosket; and then he said:

‘Thus much for me; now for yourself, Michael Rust. You once had a wife.’

Rust’s calm sneer disappeared in an instant, and he seemed absolutely to wither before the keen flashing eye which was fixed steadfastly on his.

‘She lived with you two years; and then she became—shall I tell you what?’

Rust’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. Grosket bent his lips to his ear, and whispered in it. Rust neither moved nor spoke. He seemed paralyzed.

‘But she died,’ continued Grosket, ‘and she left a child—a daughter; mine was a daughter too.’

Rust started from a state of actual torpor; every energy, every faculty, every feeling leaping into life.

‘That daughter is now alive,’ continued Grosket, speaking slowly, that every word might tell with tenfold force. ‘That daughter now is, what you drove my child to be, a harlot.’

‘It’s false as hell!’ shouted Rust, in a tone that made the room ring. ‘It’s false!’

‘It’s true. I can prove it; prove it, clear as the noon-day,’ returned Grosket, with a loud, exulting laugh.

‘Oh! Enoch! oh, Enoch!’ said Rust, in a broken, supplicating tone, ‘tell me that it’s false, and I’ll bless you! Crush me, blight me, do what you will, only tell me that my own loved child is pure from spot or stain! Tell me so, I beseech you; I, Michael Rust, who never begged a boon before—I beseech you.’

He fell on his knees in front of Grosket, and clasping his hands together, raised them toward him.

‘I cannot,’ replied Grosket, coldly, ‘for it’s as true as there is a heaven above us!’

Rust made an effort to speak; his fingers worked convulsively, and he fell prostrate on the floor.

THE SACRIFICE.

Shelter-Island.Mary Gardiner.

THE DEATH BED.

A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A ‘COUNTRY DOCTOR.’

BY F. W. SHELTON.

‘Bury me in the valley, beneath the willows where I have watched the rippling waves, among the scenes of beauty which I loved so well, oh! my friend!’ exclaimed the dying youth; and as he grasped my hand his lips moved tremblingly, tears gushed upon his wan cheeks, and an expression of very sadness stole upon him. His looks were lingering; such as one flings back upon some paradise of beauty which he leaves forever; some home which childhood has endeared to him, and affection has filled with the loves and graces. Pity touched my soul as I regarded silently that beaming countenance, alas! so shrunken from the swelling, undulating lines of his hilarious health; a pity such as one feels whose hopes are too inexplicably bound up with another’s, who shares his very being, and who knows by all the sympathies of a brother’s bosom that the other’s heart-strings are snapping. Animæ dimidium meæ!—beautiful expression of the poet, comprehended less while life unites, than when death severs. It is only when gazing on the seal which has been set, we inquire ‘Where is the spirit?’ and struggle in vain to understand that great difference; when the smiles which shed their sunshine have rapidly vanished, and the voice we loved has died away like the music of a harp; when that which was light, joy, wit, eloquence, has departed with the latest breath; when, in short, we are awakened from our revery by the clods falling on the coffin, and the mourners moving away; it is then that the soul, diminished of its essence, flits away with a strange sense to its unjoyous abode, as a bird would return to its lonely nest.

There never existed one who more lived and moved, and had his spiritual being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: dulcis vita, sweet life. It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement of fierce passions; a present divorce from a close and clinging alliance; a foretaste of the waters of life; in short, the very essence and devotion of a pure religion. Would it seem strangely inconsistent that a being of so sweet a character as I shall describe him, my poor young friend declared, with a gush of the bitterest tears, that he could not go into the dark valley, for he loved life with an inconceivable, passionate love? His was the very agony and pathos of the dying Hoffman, when almost with his latest breath, he alluded to ‘the sweet habitude of being.’ But it was only, thanks be to God! a short defection, a momentary clouding of that bright faith which was destined soon to see beyond the vale. His tears ceased to flow, glistened a moment, and then passed away as if they had been wiped by some gentle hand.

He leaned upon a soft couch, so very pale and haggard that his hour seemed very near. Costly books strewed his table; pictures and many exquisite things were scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with sentiments which awakened hope. Youth and beauty hovered around him with their unintermitted care, and Age sent up its fervent prayers to heaven. Oh! who but the ungrateful would not love a life so filled with blandishments and crowned with blessings? Who could see all these receding without a sigh, or feel the pressure of that kiss of love as pure as if it had its origin in Heaven? But with the finest organization of intellectual mind, he had been accustomed to look at all things in the light of poetry. For one so constituted the pleasures which are in store are as inexhaustible as the works or mercies of his God. Not an hour which did not present some new phase of undiscovered beauty. He revelled in the beams of the morning; the rising sun was never a common object, nor its grandeur ever lost upon a soul so conscious of the sublime. For all beauty in nature he found a correspondent passion in the soul; and intoxicated alike with the music of birds or the perfume of flowers, found no weariness in a life whose current was like the living spring, pure, perennial and delightful.

To be so susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a gentle sleep after a long and weary day.

Travers was in the very gush and spring-tide of his youth; yet crowned as he was with blessings, and every attribute for their most perfect enjoyment, the true secret of his too fond desire to live, was that he loved:

In her the poetry of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian’s hope, enable us one by one to break off the dearest ties, and to renounce whatever we most love on earth. And so my young friend in good time emerged from the cloud which obscured his prospects, and saw clearly beyond the vale. It is not long since, being well assured that his fate was inevitable, he expressed a desire, which he carried into execution, to visit once more his well-loved haunts, and take a solemn farewell of them all. As one grasps the hand of a friend at parting, he looked his last at things which were inanimate. He rambled in the deep, dark groves whither he had so often gone in health, to enjoy their Gothic grandeur, to breathe the spirit of the religion they inspire, or to murmur in their deepest shades the accents of his pure and passionate love. He inscribed his name for the last time upon the smooth bark of a tree; then leaving them forever, as he emerged into the gay meadows, he turned to me with tears and said:

He clambered the steep hill-side, and sinking exhausted beneath a smitten tree, enjoyed the picturesqueness of the scene; the meadows, the streams, the pasture-grounds, the dappled herds, the sereneness of the summer skies, cleft by the wing of the musical lark, in all their purity of blue. He sat beside the sea-shore, and watched the big billows breaking and bursting at his feet; and as he looked where the waters and the sky met together in the far horizon, he exclaimed, ‘Now indeed do I long to fly away!’ Then he returned to his pillow, never to go forth again. ‘I shall die,’ he said, ‘when the season is in its prime and glory; when the fields are green and the trees leafy; and the sunlight shall shimmer down through the branches where the birds sing over my grave.’ Then casting a look at his books, where they stood neatly arranged on the well-filled shelves, he lamented that he had not time to garner half the stores of a beautiful literature; to satisfy his perpetual thirst; to drink to the full at the ‘pure wells of English undefiled.’ There were the Greek poets, whom he would have more intimately cherished, (he had been lately absorbed in the sublimity of the ‘Prometheus Vinctus;’) there was the great master and anatomizer of the human heart, who knew how to detail the springs of action common to all ages, the paragon of that deep learning which is not derived from books, but gleaned by his genius from all nature with a rare intuition, and with an incomprehensible power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all its beauties. There is no glowing thought, no exquisite conception, no sublime and beautiful idea, which is not imperishable as the mind itself, and which shall not be carried on from age to age, or if destroyed or lost upon the written page, revived by some happy coincidence of intellectual being, and perpetuated and enjoyed, here or hereafter, wherever mind exists. A communion like this will be a communion of spirits. A finer organization, expanded faculties shall rapidly consume the past; but oh, the future! what glories are to be crowded into its immensity? How shall knowledge be commensurate with the stars, or wander over the universe? Now bring me the written Revelation, the written word. It clasps within its volume all excellencies, all sublimities of speech; secrets which could not be developed by reason, nor found in the arcana of human wisdom. Henceforth this shall be my only companion, and its promises shall light my passage over the grave.’

I marked the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at all things on the ‘bright side.’ His very love could think upon its object without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the darkened windows, the stillness, the grouping, the subdued sobs, the awful watchfulness for the identical moment when a lovely and intellectual spirit breaks its bonds, as if the strained vision could detect the spiritual essence. What a heart-sickness comes over those who love! What a change in the appearance of all things! The very sun-light is disagreeable, the very skies a mockery; the very roses unlovely. We look out of the casement, and see the external face of nature still the same; how heartless, how destitute of sympathy, now appears the whole world without, with the home, that inner world! How can those birds sing so sweetly on the branches; how can the flowers bloom as brightly as ever; how can those children play so gleefully; how can yon group laugh with such unconcern! He is an only son. Though wan, and wasted in all his lineaments, his pure brow, his gentle expression, tell that he was worthy to be loved. Can no human power restore him to the arms of a fond mother? It is in vain! The spirit flutters upon his lips; it has departed. But it has left behind it a token; a clear, bright impress; a smile of undissembled love and purity; an expression beaming with the last unutterable peace; the graces which were so winning upon earth, but which shall attain their perfection in heaven.

FREEDOM’S BEACON.

A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS.

IN THREE SCENES.

SCENE FIRST.

Morning; eight on the clock. Billing’s Hotel, Trenton. Outside, a clear bright sun glancing down through an atmosphere sparkling with frost, upon as fine a road for a sleigh-ride as ever tempted green-mountain boys and girls for a moonlight flit. Inside, a well-furnished breakfast-table, beef-steak, coffee, toast, etc., etc. On the one side of it your correspondent; serious, as if he considered breakfast a thing to be attended to. He is somewhat, as the lady on the other side of the table says, somewhat in the ‘sear leaf,’ by which name indeed she is pleased to call him; but there is enough of spring in her, to suffice for all deficiencies in him. Like the morning, she is a little icy, but sunshiny, sparkling, exhilarating, thoughtful, youthful—and decided. She takes no marked interest in the breakfast.

‘Sear leaf!’ Madam, say on.

‘I wish to go to the Falls.’

‘To what!’

‘To the Falls—to Trenton Falls.’

He drops his knife and fork. ‘Whew! what! in winter?—in the snow?—on the ice?’

‘Certainly; that is just the season.’

‘Crazy! You were there in the summer——’

‘I know it; every one goes there in summer. I must see them now. There’s no time like it; in their drapery of snow and ice; in the sternness and solitude, the wild grandeur of winter!’

‘How you run on! You’ll miss the cars at Utica.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You’ll be a day later in New-York.’

‘I don’t care. I must see them in their hoary head.’

‘You wish to see if they look as well in gray hairs as I do, perhaps.’

‘Yes.’

‘You really must go?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a very imperious young lady; and allow me to say, that although some young gentlemen——’

Lady, interrupting him: ‘Shall I ring the bell?’ She rings it. Enter landlord. She orders the horse and cutter.

SCENE SECOND.

Enter landlord: ‘All ready, Sir.’

‘Will you allow me to ask if your feet are warmly clad, Madam?’

‘I am ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc, or a ramble with a hunter upon the shore of Hudson’s Bay.’

‘Very well; now for the cutter.’

‘Landlord, just step round, if you please, and put that buffalo-robe a little more closely about the lady. Hold fast, hostler! That horse likes any thing better than standing still.’

‘Ay, ay, Sir.’

‘Now we are ready. Let go! Away we dash; ‘on for the Falls!’ Gently, my good horse, gently round this corner; now ‘go ahead!’ How do you like my steed, Madam?’

‘A rein-deer could not transact this little business better.’

‘Is not this a glorious morning?’

‘Vivifying to the utmost! How far we fail of becoming acquainted with the face of nature, when we only come to look upon it in summer! It is as if one should only look upon the human face in the hues of youth, and never upon the gray head; on the brow where high thoughts have left their impress; on the face which deeper and sterner knowledge, research, patience, have made eloquent, while stealing away the rose. As for me, though I am but a girl, I like to see sometimes an old man; one who in the trial-hour of life has kept his integrity; and when the snows of age fall on him, he gently bends beneath their weight, like those old cedars yonder by the way-side, beneath their weight of snow. Wherever the eye can pierce their white vesture, all is still deep spring-green beneath; unchanged at heart—strong and true. So I like to look on you, Sere Leaf.’

‘Thank you! You have a gift at compliments.’

‘Summer reminds one of feeling and Lalla Rookh; Winter; of intellect and Paradise Lost.’

‘How your voice rings in this clear air! Do you know what Dean Swift says a sleigh-ride is like? ‘Sitting in the draft of a door with your feet in a pail of cold water!’’

‘Abominable! libellous! Exhilaration and comfort are so blended in me that—— But is not that the house?’

‘Ay; here we are! Smoke from the chimney; some one is there to welcome us, no doubt. Gently, my Bucephalus, through this gate! There comes the landlord. Treat my horse well, if you please; we are going to the Falls.’

SCENE THIRD.

‘Madam, are you ready for the woods?’

‘Quite. How still the air is! Why don’t you thank me for insisting on coming? You have no gratitude. There’s not two inches of snow on the ground. It all seems piled upon these grand old trees. There! see that tuft of it falling and now spreading into a cloud of spangles in the sun-light which streams down by those old pines. Hark! the roar of waters! The sound seems to find new echoes in these snow-laden boughs, and lingers as if loth to depart.’

‘This way, Madam; the trees are bent too low over the path to allow a passage there. We are near the bank which overlooks the first fall. Take my arm; the brink may be icy. Lo! the abyss!’

‘Magnificent! What a rush of waters! How the swollen stream foams and rages!’

‘And see! the pathway under the shelving rock where we passed in summer is completely colonnaded by a row of tall ice pillars; gigantic, symmetrical—fluted, even. What Corinthian shaft ever equalled them! What capital ever rivalled the delicacy or grace of those ice-and-hemlock wreaths about their summits!’

‘And see those pines, rank above rank, higher and higher; stately and still and snow-robed like tall centinels! Perhaps, Sear Leaf, the Old Guard might have stood thus in the Russian snows over Napoleon, when he bivouacked on the hill-side, and sought rest while his spirit was as wildly tossed as the waters that dash beneath us.’

‘Yes, Lady; or it may be that these trees in their perpetual green, in their calmness and dignity, may be emblematic of the way in which the angels who watch on earth look down on man. Perfect rest on perfect unrest.’

‘Ah! you grow gloomy.’

‘Took I not my hue from you? On, then, for the higher fall!’

‘These trees seem to have increased in stature since the summer we were here. As we proceed, the snow lies thicker on them, and the branches seem closer locked; the roof overhead more complete. How still the woods are! Our very foot-fall is noiseless.’

Influenced by the scene, they pass on in silence along the path which leads round the foot of the cone-like hill toward the cottage by the higher Falls, whose deep roar now breaks upon the ear, and rolls through the motionless forest. Thus then the Lady to Sear Leaf:

‘Has God any other temple like this?’

‘Never a one, reared by any hand save His!’

‘What organ ever rolled so deep a bass through arches so grand! See how the sunlight glances amid the gnarled branches of the roof, and here and there falls through on the floor below; making those low icy forms look like the shrubs of the valley of diamonds in the eastern story. Just so it is that the light of truth struggles through entangled and dark mazes of human error, and here and there illuminate some humble mind with its pure ray; while others, tall and strong and haughty, like those old trees, are left darkened.’

‘You have a noble nature, and should be nobly mated. But here we are upon the brow of the hill which leads to the cottage. The snow is deeper here: gently, now; a slide down this bank might check even your enthusiasm. Take my arm; there—so; safe at the bottom! Let us go forward upon the platform of the cottage over the Falls. No bench? Well, sit upon my cloak.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘You must. There; be pleased to sit and rest. What a gorgeous display of frost-work and flashing light on fantastic forms of ice! How the spray rises and waves and changes its hues in the sun! And the trees, how delicately each sprig of the evergreens is covered with a dress so white and shining ‘as no fuller on earth could whiten them.’’

‘Even so, Sear Leaf; And I love to think that the same one who wove the glorious dress to which you refer, to gladden Peter, made this dazzling drapery, and gave us eyes to look upon it. It recalls to my mind the song of the Seraphim: ‘The whole earth is full of thy glory!’’

‘Did they not, Lady, sing of a moral glory?’

‘No; decidedly no. There was no moral glory in the earth when they sang that song. Even the chosen people of God are then and there denounced as having abandoned Him. No; it was the glory of the works of His hands, such as we look upon this day, which elicited their praise.’

‘I believe your exegesis is right. The scene is glorious. Summer in all her loveliness has no dress like this. She has no hues equal to the play of colors on these walls and columns of ice, extending far as the eye can reach down the ravine, and towering in more than colossal grandeur. The water is in treble volume, and force and voice; and as it rolls its white folds of spotless foam down the valley, it reminds one of the great white throne of the Revelations, and this wavy foam the folds of the robe that filled the temple.’

‘It is inexpressibly, oppressively beautiful, Sear Leaf!’

‘Speaking of Revelation, how accurate is the description in Manfred of this scene!’

‘Let me hear it:’

‘Well, Madam, why are you silent? Shall we go?’

‘No. I could stay here till nightfall. I was thinking of the lines succeeding those you have repeated:

‘Am I nobody?’

‘We are alone here. How many of the light of heart, in youth and strength and beauty, climbed these rocks, shouted in these old woods, and gathered the summer flowers along these banks—and passed away! Where are they now! Some who wrote their names in the traveller’s book in this cottage, have them now written by others on their tombstone. One I knew well, who, full of health and beauty, passed up this wild ravine, who has faded like the flowers she culled, and is now in her father’s house, to pass in a few more days to heaven. And of all the rest, did we know their history, what a picture would it give of life!’

‘You are thoughtful for one so young.’

‘Are not twenty years enough to make one a moment thoughtful? Tell me now, thou of the gray head, of what art thou thinking?’

‘Of earth’s fairest scene, blent with her fairest daughter.’

‘Bravo! For what fair lady on your native mountains did you frame that compliment twenty years ago?’

‘Madam!’

‘Well?’

‘It is time to return.’

G. P. T.