GATHERED WAIFS 
 
 ANN W. CURTIS. 
 
 KENNEBUNK, MAINE, 
 1892.
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 J. E. FARWELL & CO., Printers, 45 Pearl St. 
 l8Q2.
 
 To my dear friends living and to the memory of 
 my beloved dead, I dedicate this volume. 
 
 A. W. C. 
 
 The author of this volume selected from her 
 writings the " GATHERED WAIFS," and directed that 
 they be published, not for general circulation, but 
 especially that they be presented in her name to her 
 more immediate and long cherished friends and asso 
 ciates, as a memorial of her sincere friendship, which 
 was constant through the lights and shadows of life's 
 scenes and continued true and unabated to the end.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE NEW MINISTER ..... 5 
 
 THE OLD STORY ..... 10 
 
 UNIFORMITY . . . . . . 13 
 
 IT COULD NOT BE . . . . . 16 
 
 BIBLE BROOKS AND RIVERS, 
 
 THE RIVER JORDAN ..... 20 
 
 THE BROOK CHERITH .... 24 
 
 THE BROOK BESOR 28 
 
 THE BROOK CEDRON . . . . . 31 
 
 THE RIVERS OF BABYLON .... 34 
 
 THE WATERS OF THE WILDERNESS . . 37 
 
 IMMORTELLES ....... 41 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY . . . . . 45 
 
 HENRY OF NAVARRE . . . . 51 
 
 RICHARD CROMWELL ..... 56 
 
 MICHAEL FARADAY ..... 60 
 
 EDELWEISS ....... 66 
 
 HENRY MARTYN ...... 70 
 
 THE ELDER'S HOME ...... 76 
 
 A REMINISCENCE ...... 80 
 
 REV. OLIVER BARRON .... 85 
 
 THE PHANTOM WITNESS .... 89 
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE . . . 96 
 THE REOJJITED . . . . . .118 
 
 AUNT RACHEL . . . . . 133 
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT .... 138 
 
 "I SHALL BE" 148
 
 THE NEW MINISTER. 
 
 A PELLES boasted that he painted for eternity. 
 It was a bold figure of speech that far out 
 stripped the sobriety of truth, for no mortal eye for 
 long centuries has seen a line of his pencil. But that 
 same empty boast, with slight modification, is but the 
 plain, literal truth concerning the minister's work." 
 
 The old minister had grown feeble and was not 
 equal to the labors which his extensive parish required. 
 
 He was a strange old man, but honored and be 
 loved ; and unusual indeed must have been the sway 
 which the simple force of mind and heart exercised, 
 for he owned no influence won through external 
 means. 
 
 As he went forth on the week day, clad in a cam- 
 blet morning-gown, which however served him the 
 day through, and girded about the waist with coarse 
 twine or a piece of split rope, with wide brimmed felt 
 hat and rough stick, he walked abroad the honored 
 and beloved pastor. For however much we may 
 reason upon it, how conscious so ever we may be, that 
 it is the thinking, cultivated, polished mind ; the feel 
 ing, noble, generous heart alone that makes the true 
 man or the true woman ; yet so subject are we to our 
 external senses ; so much more readily does the eye
 
 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 recognize than the mind perceive or the heart appre 
 ciate, that it rarely happens that external appearances 
 can be so disregarded without reputation in a measure 
 suffering from it. 
 
 But they were proud of their old minister ; proud 
 that a rural district like theirs might boast of one who 
 was eagerly welcomed to the pulpits of the city. 
 Pleased were they when they had heard that the most 
 eminent minister of Boston had said of him, "When 
 I walk up the pulpit stairs with him, I feel ashamed 
 of him ; but when we come down, I always feel 
 ashamed of myself." If there was anything of which 
 the old man was proud, it was that he owed none of 
 the respect which he possessed to anything external, but 
 to weight of character alone. 
 
 Instead of being offended, he was much pleased, 
 when on one occasion, while attending the " general 
 court" of Massachusetts, being invited to dine with 
 the governor, on presenting himself at the door, he 
 was led by the servant into the kitchen to await His 
 Excellency's leisure, where, unnoticed, he frequently 
 heard his own name mentioned among the eminent 
 men who were to be guests that day ; and greatly he 
 enjoyed the confused looks of the servant girls when 
 they discovered who it was they had so unceremo 
 niously entertained. 
 
 Keen was his reply to a foppish young preacher 
 whose powdered wig seemed his special care, when 
 asked, " Why do you not dress better? People mis 
 take you for an old plow-jogger!" "I dress com 
 fortably," said the old man quietly " It suits me
 
 THE NEW MINISTER. 7 
 
 But I know there are those who bestow ' abundant 
 honor on that part which lacketh.' " 
 
 We doubt if his people would so readily have borne 
 with his eccentricities and uncouthness had he not been 
 so honored and sought for abroad. So much are we 
 subject to the opinions of others, especially of the 
 rich and influential, and so much do we forget to 
 judge from our own powers of reasoning and con 
 sciousness of truth. 
 
 Before the colleague who had been called to assist 
 him in his pastoral labors had arrived, the old man 
 died, having ministered to his people for more than 
 fifty years. 
 
 From far and near they flocked to his funeral ; and 
 when the text was pronounced, " My father, my 
 father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen there 
 of! " all felt that in the whole Bible no more appro 
 priate words could have been found than in that wail 
 of sorrow and shout of triumph. 
 
 To the younger members of the congregation a new 
 minister fresh from the honors of his college was a 
 theme of delight. 
 
 The Sabbath morning on which he was to appear 
 among them was hailed with intense interest, and 
 they were early in their pews that they might have a 
 full view of the young man as he walked up the long 
 aisle. 
 
 A sense of disappointment came over them as he 
 appeared ; so plainly clad, so simple and unpretending 
 in his appearance, it seemed as though it might have 
 been the spirit of their old minister come back in 
 another form.
 
 S GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 He rose in the pulpit; the hymn was read in a 
 deep, rich voice ; the prayer offered with solemnity and 
 fervor; and the sermon, founded on the words, "I 
 ask therefore for what intent ye have sent for me ? " 
 full of deep and serious thought. And as he spoke 
 of his own intent in coming, of his desire of know 
 ing nothing among them but " Jesus Christ and Him 
 crucified," they felt that he was not the gay young 
 clergyman they had hoped to meet, but verily a min 
 ister of the everlasting gospel. 
 
 More than forty years had passed since that young 
 clergyman had appeared among that people, when 
 one, who in her girlhood had been of his congrega 
 tion, spoke to us of him and of his ministry, and 
 especially of the afternoon of that first Sabbath ; and 
 it was with a freshness of thought, a vividness of ex 
 pression and a warmth of feeling, which it is possible 
 for the memory of few to excite who have slept for 
 forty years beneath the sod. 
 
 It was with a less eager step than in the morning, 
 said she, that I approached the old meeting-house ; 
 but it was at that time that the " arrows of the 
 Almighty " were appointed to pierce me. " For what 
 is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, 
 and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in 
 exchange for his soul ? " were the first words he uttered 
 as he rose. Often and often had I heard those words 
 before ; then why did they send such a thrill through 
 heart and brain, as though some new and fearful truth 
 had been revealed ? 
 
 I have ever thought that that sermon must have
 
 THE NEW MINISTER. 9 
 
 been written with a soul bowed in prayer such 
 prayer as Jacob's was when he wrestled with the 
 angel, or Elijah's when he called the fire from heaven 
 and that it was in answer to some svich fervent 
 prayer, that those words arrested my thoughts, and I 
 listened, eagerly as prisoner at the bar, to every sen 
 tence that fell from his lips as he spoke of the Plan 
 of Salvation through a Redeemer. And more than 
 forty years have passed since that Sabbath afternoon, 
 and from that time life has had a new aim, a new 
 object, a new purpose ; from that hour a softened 
 halo was imparted to it ; I saw the beauty 6f holi 
 ness, the loveliness of the gospel, and the blessedness 
 of the Bible as the chart to guide to heaven and to fill 
 the mind with those dispositions and affections which 
 may make earth a fitting prelude to it. 
 
 It was, 'she added, after a blessed ministry of two 
 years that he was taken from us. He was but twenty- 
 eight when he died, and though I am so old now that 
 men of that age seem to me as striplings, still I think 
 of him as my father in Israel. 
 
 And this influence, thought we as we listened, has 
 been, is, and will be extending to the end of time ; 
 and that minister may yet look upon souls given as 
 seals to others which shall be counted unto him as 
 though set in his own crown of rejoicing. 
 
 Verily, we said, do such men paint for Eternity, 
 but they paint imperishable truths upon an imper 
 ishable substance.
 
 THE OLD STORY. 
 
 " And when, in scenes of glory, 
 
 I sing the new, new song, 
 'Twill be the old, old story 
 That I have loved so long." 
 
 TT was a one-storied farm-house old and unpainted 
 J- black house, we called it in the parlance of child 
 hood. There were neither carpets or nice furniture 
 in that low-roofed dwelling ; but it was the home of 
 culture and refinement of rare religious and scholarly 
 attainments. Child as we were, the memory, the pict 
 ure, of the beautiful brother and sister who dwelt 
 there, has hung, almost unfaded, on the old walls of 
 the past. 
 
 Again, the sister takes me in her arms and tells me 
 of the Saviour who loves little children ; or, I stand 
 beside her in front of the great kitchen fire, where 
 flitting flames make moving shadows on the wall ; 
 while the fair, white fingers pick the chaff from the 
 flax seed, which is to be steeped for medicine, and, 
 dreamily, as if partly to herself and partly to me, she 
 asks: "What means 'A bruised reed shall He not 
 break, and smoking flax shall He not quench ' ? " 
 
 A little while passed, and her earthly life was 
 ended ; and the brother stood beside the fair clay, not 
 mourning, but erect, almost glad, because he knew
 
 THE OLD STORY. II 
 
 she had entered the Celestial City. And now, among 
 old things put away, I find a record of that brother's 
 last days. More than forty years have passed since 
 his mortal remains were committed to earth, and more 
 than forty years since a hand which I know not tran 
 scribed his dying words from dying lips. It is an old 
 story, and nearly all who knew, or cared for, or loved 
 him, have long been lying in their low graves. It is- 
 a story as old as Ararat, where the ark rested ; old a& 
 Sinai, where God gave His testimony to Moses; old 
 as Tabor, where Christ was transfigured ; as Calvary r 
 where He was crucified ; and I may not throw to the 
 flames, for no other eyes than mine to see, another 
 evidence of that same old faith which " subdued king 
 doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
 stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of 
 fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness 
 were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to 
 flight the armies of the aliens." 
 
 He died while in his Sophomore year in Brown 
 University. One day he asked, " How much longer 
 does this term continue?" He was told, "Four 
 weeks." " Then it closes with the month of March," 
 he said, " I shall be in Heaven before it closes." 
 
 Dr. Wayland called, and, being about to engage in 
 prayer, asked " if there was anything that he wished 
 him to pray for in particular?" "Pray," he an 
 swered, " that I may be perfectly patient and endure all 
 my sufferings with entire resignation, and that I may 
 be so prepared as that if I should die now it may be 
 my gain, and if I live it may be for Christ." " That 
 is enough, my son," said Dr. \Vayland.
 
 12 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 On a Sabbath evening, being asked how he had 
 enjoyed the day, he replied, "I have had a glorious 
 time." When asked if he was ready to die, he an 
 swered, " I know not why I may not, if it is the will 
 of God, as well die now as hereafter. Heaven is a 
 more pleasant place than earth. Still, I have some 
 times a desire if it consists with God's will, to be re 
 stored to health, that I may go forth among the people 
 and testify to His goodness and speak of His great 
 mercy. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine, O God, 
 be done." " My only refuge is in Christ," he said. 
 " O, what a refuge what a rock what a Saviour !" 
 His last audible expression was, " God, even our God 
 can save us." 
 
 " He died within the walls of the College; and in 
 the very i-oom where he had been wont to investigate 
 the principles of science his pure spirit passed to the 
 awards of immortality. Thus passed away, in the 
 spring-tide of his being, a distinguished scholar and a 
 most amiable man. It is, however, grateful to reflect 
 that his life, though short, had answered life's great 
 end ; that in youth and in health he had remembered 
 his Creator, and that in sickness and in death he looked 
 forward, with humble hope, to that crown of life 
 which Christ hath promised to those who put their 
 trust in Him."
 
 UNIFORMITY. 
 
 |4 TF the unity of the Church is ever manifested to 
 the world, it will not be by the unanimous sub 
 scription of believers to a formulated creed, but by 
 their fraternal intercourse as brethren in Crmst." 
 
 Not many months ago there was a convocation of 
 Divines of different religious denominations, the osten 
 sible object of which was to attain to a uniformity of 
 belief. 
 
 "Who can visit," said a prominent city clergyman 
 among them, " a village of one thousand inhabitants, 
 with its three churches, and not confess that these 
 divisions are unchristian?" 
 
 To us the thought would come : Among these peo 
 ple are those who care enough for their religious 
 creed ; for that which they consider the doctrine of 
 the Gospel of Christ ; to be willing to exert them 
 selves, to make some sacrifice to maintain it. 
 
 When Cardinal Wiseman, grudging to the poor lit 
 tle Sandemanian church the great name of Faraday, 
 arrogantly asked him, "if in his deepest conviction 
 he believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic 
 and apostolic," was shut up in that church, Faraday 
 replied: " Oh, no; but I do believe from the bottom 
 of my soul that Christ is with us." And in that 
 courteous, noble answer was revealed a strength and 
 
 13
 
 14 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 beauty for which the Christian character is stronger 
 and more beautiful to-day. 
 
 In churches of every name we recognize men and 
 women of the noblest type, and, almost invariably, 
 they are those who hold firmest to the principles of 
 their own denomination and give the best of their 
 talent, their influence and their means to sustain them. 
 
 Want of strenuous principle on the part of members 
 of churches : so-called unsectarianism ; indifference, 
 shilly-shallying, usually culminates in such members 
 ignoring the church to which they belong, whenever 
 their lot falls in a place where that church is not the 
 richest and most fashionable. Their church home is 
 determined wholly by their latitude and longitude. 
 
 The whole thing was put in a nutshell by a woman 
 whom we knew, more simple and honest, but with 
 no less principle, than most of her class, who, on 
 entering a new place of residence, said: "I think I 
 shall prefer Blank church, the steeple is the tallest." 
 
 Let us not believe, let us not be taught that it mat 
 ters little what church we attend, or what doctrines we 
 hear inculcated. Let us cling closest to that church 
 which, in our inmost heart, we believe to be nearest 
 to the teachings of Jesus. Let us love it best as our 
 own spiritual home; and let us each build, as the 
 walls of Jerusalem were built, over against our own 
 house. 
 
 And there is nothing in all this to take from the 
 love and interest with which we may regard those of 
 other denominations, any more than a man's loving 
 his own home and family better than any other, pre-
 
 UNIFORMITY. 15 
 
 vents him from being a good neighbor. Neither does 
 it prevent us wherein we are agreed from walking 
 "by the same rule" and from minding "the same 
 thing." 
 
 In no way does it detract from that beautiful, all- 
 embracing, though bewildered, answer of the dying 
 soldier, who, when asked, "Of what persuasion are 
 you?" replied, "I am persuaded that neither death, 
 nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
 nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
 separate me from the love of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus."
 
 IT COULD NOT BE. 
 
 " But He who being gave, 
 Sharing with me thereby His infinite, 
 Scorned that the phantom of a vain delight 
 
 Should make His own its slave, 
 So from my forehead took joy's blooming crown, 
 And to the dust threw those fair idols down." 
 
 '"THE words of the Judge and Maud Muller have 
 been echoed from a thousand hearts, and a 
 thousand tongues have repeated them with a wail of 
 anguish wilder and more hopeless than Poe's raven 
 cry of " Nevermore." " It might have been" it is a 
 whole volume the epitome of a lifetime the despair 
 ing wail of an agonized heart. 
 
 " We are only what might have been," is the 
 mournful expression which Charles Lamb gives to his 
 "Dream-children." Only what might have been; 
 and he gazed upon a grief-painted picture, and 
 remembered the fair hair and eyes of Alice W n. 
 
 Moments in life stand out in memory which we now 
 know determined our earthly destiny. We see where 
 the road diverged, and when, it seemed, we might 
 have taken either way. Those moments appear in an 
 almost preternatural light : the spot where we stood ; 
 the way the rain came as it splashed against the 
 window, and the size of the drops upon the glass ; or 
 16
 
 IT COULD NOT BE. 1 7 
 
 it may be, where the sunbeams fell, and the motes 
 that danced in the beams. We look through the 
 intervening years, as sometimes, we are told, down, 
 down through clear water, a sunken ship may be seen 
 with every rope and spar clearly defined ; or, as in 
 some Swiss lake a lost city, sunk ages ago. 
 
 I cannot conceive why I carried Charlotte Gary to 
 ride on that June afternoon when I was on my way to 
 invite Fanny Lee. Had Fanny gone my life might 
 have been joyous as it has been otherwise. My self- 
 love would bid me think that there is sadness lying in 
 her heart and hidden in her eyes; but that, and 
 memory, and the wailing dirge of might have been, 
 makes me an unfit judge of her happiness. Her 
 husband is a good man and rich, and noble in look and 
 mien ; and sometimes I stand before the mirror, and 
 while I cannot help acknowledging in my heart that 
 his is a better face than mine, my pride is gratified 
 to believe that my features had once to her a charm 
 which his had failed to awaken ; and had I gone in 
 that evening when I passed her gate had I spoken to 
 her then she would now have been my wife. Mine, 
 mine a regret, not for yesterday, not for to-day, but 
 for all time. Will it be for Eternity? So linked is 
 that regret with every thought, that sometimes I can 
 scarcely believe in my soul's immortality without the 
 immortality of its sorrow. 
 
 But do we not believe too much in "It might have 
 been"? Is it not truer, better to say, "It could not 
 be" God did not will it? Yes. Those obstacles, 
 those impedimenta, that rising in the throat, the
 
 1 8 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 hysterica passio, which prevented us from speaking 
 when the joy of life, all but the hopes of eternity, hung 
 upon our lips ; the want of the one word, the breath 
 to turn the balance whereon was laid all that made 
 life for us all this could not be changed ; nor could 
 we have turned our steps in another path, any more 
 than with the uplifting of the hand, we could prevent 
 the fall of the sparrow which " He noteth" 
 
 Something hindered us on our way, and the steamer 
 had gone ten minutes before we reached the wharf. 
 The steamer is lost, and all on board perish. Then 
 we believe in 'special providences. We think of our 
 unaccountably lingering steps, and know, and believe 
 of a truth, that "all the hairs of our head are num 
 bered." ** It might have been " rises fearfully before 
 us. " It could not be " wells up from our heart in a 
 psalm of thanksgiving. We beheld no obstacle, but 
 the angel standing in the way with his " sword drawn 
 in his hand," shut up our path as effectually as he did 
 that of Baalim. 
 
 We have read of the artist standing on a plat 
 form in St. Paul's Cathedral and gazing upon a 
 picture on its walls which he had just completed : 
 gazing admiringly upon his work the embodiment 
 of his genius the earnest of his fame. Moving back 
 ward step by step, with every thought absorbed in the 
 gaze ; a brush, drawn rapid as the lightning's flash 
 across the picture, destroyed all its beauty. He sprang 
 forward with a cry of mingled wrath and anguish ; but 
 the hand of him, who had thus destroyed the work, 
 pointed to the spot where he had stood a moment
 
 IT COULD NOT BE. 19 
 
 before. It was at the very edge of the platform, a 
 fall from which would inevitably have destroyed his 
 life. The artist was answered, and he knew truly that 
 the destruction of his picture had saved his life. 
 
 And those pictures, dreams, visions, "might have 
 beens" of life, were perhaps to our immortal interests 
 what the picture of the artist was to his mortal being. 
 
 A fortune with its charms of taste and elegance 
 was almost within my grasp, but it eluded my touch : 
 had I but lifted into the carriage my boy, who was 
 playing in the yard as I rode out of it, he would not 
 have wandered to the pond, where, an hour after, we 
 found his little body floating among the lilies; and 
 had I only been half conscious of my love for Fanny 
 Lee she might now have been my wife. Absorbed in 
 my wealth, self-indulgent, doting on my boy, or loving 
 Fanny with a love too deep and wild to give to mortal 
 woman, I might have forgotten the land beyond the 
 stars, " a soul to save, a God to glorify." 
 
 The doing, or the not doing, on which has so unwit 
 tingly hung our mortal destiny, though it may bring a 
 regret for all time, should not cause the soul to faint. 
 If there is in it no sin against God, let not "It might 
 have been " sound in the chambers of the heart like 
 clods upon the lowered coffin. And even where sins 
 are remembered, to the penitent there is no place for 
 despair. The words of Jesus to the repentant woman, 
 " Thy sins be forgiven thee," were not spoken for her 
 alone, but were a legacy to us all.
 
 THE RIVER JORDAN. 
 
 '"PHE River Jordan, regarded in its actual, and espe- 
 cially in its symbolical character, is a stream of all 
 absorbing interest : it is the Mount Zion among waters. 
 Mountain and river are each made types of great and 
 mysterious truths. Jordan is the name we give that 
 stream whose current is stronger, deeper, swifter and 
 wilder than all torrents, from the vortex of whose 
 whirlpools none can hold back ; and where there can 
 be safety in no other bark than where Jesus Christ is 
 seen seated at the helm. It is the type of that river 
 where the "burdens of the camel must all be lifted 
 off" and left upon the shore ; and we may take with 
 us nothing but our " hearts unmantled and unmasked :" 
 it is the land viewed from the tops of Shenir and Her- 
 mon : it is the passage " from the lions' dens, from the 
 mountains of the leopards." 
 
 The river Joi'dan from its rise in the mountains of 
 Lebanon Lebanon itself a type of Christ and his 
 church, and whose cedars were the symbols of glory 
 and strength till it loses itself in the waters of the 
 Dead Sea, washes shores made holy by the footsteps 
 of our Lord.
 
 THE RIVER JORDAN. 21 
 
 It was from the heights of Nebo that Moses gazed 
 across its shining waters upon the land that lay 
 stretched between it and the "utmost sea;" and 
 glorious to his sight were the mountains and the trees : 
 beautiful the waving palms, and the glancing waters 
 of the Mediterranean. That longing gaze was his last, 
 and Joshua became the. leader of the people. It was 
 for him first that the waters of Jordan were divided ; 
 divided, not where it is first formed by the rivulets of 
 Lebanon, but where, after having received all its 
 tributaries, till it was about to enter the sea, the waters 
 stood, and rose heap upon heap, and were to them 
 firm as walls of adamant, till that mighty host had 
 reached the western shore. 
 
 It was as they walked on Jordan's banks that the 
 " sons of the prophets " whispered to Elisha low and 
 trembling, " Knowest thou that the Lord will take 
 away thy master from thy head to-day ? " and he, 
 wishing only for the sympathy of silence, shrinking 
 from the thought of bringing into words a subject so 
 sacred, only answered, "Yea, I know it ; hold ye your 
 peace." 
 
 And again was the stream divided : the hermit of 
 Carmel smote its waters with his mantle, and a dry 
 path appeared. But Jordan's bosom was that day to 
 reflect a scene as strange as the parting of its waters ; 
 strange those crimson lights, bright and wild, that 
 danced upon its surface ; strange far up in air a 
 "chariot of fire and horses of fire;" and as Elisha 
 caught the floating mantle the neighboring hills all 
 echoed that startling cry of triumph and of anguish-:
 
 22 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the 
 horsemen thereof." 
 
 It was when John was baptizing our Saviour in 
 Jordan, that from out the hovering clouds that voice 
 proceeded, saying, "Thou art my beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." 
 
 About seventy miles from the source of the river, 
 the lake Gennesaret is formed Gennesaret, sleeping 
 among hills made holy by the miracles of God. It 
 was on this lake, when its waters were surged by a 
 midnight storm, that the bright form of Jesus appeared 
 and spake to the trembling Peter those words of 
 promise and of trust, which are a legacy to his people 
 for all time, "It is I, be not afraid." 
 
 And who are these seated on its shore, partaking 
 of the humble fare of fishermen? Asia's sun, or the 
 snow-capped heights of Lebanon, or its mighty cedars 
 and waving palms never again looked down upon such 
 a company. It was Peter, the impetuous, angry, 
 repentant, and finally martyred Peter; Thomas, 
 doubting, yet loving ; Nathaniel, on whom Jesus pro 
 nounced that best eulogium, "An Israelite indeed, in 
 whom is no guile ;" and James and John were there 
 and other of the disciples. But most of all, He was 
 there : " He whom Plato longed to see, and Aristotle 
 died ignorant of; " He, the " Prince of the house of 
 David," the " Lion of the tribe of Judah ; " a crucified 
 Lord ; an ascended Saviour. 
 
 Even the tributary waters of this river are brought 
 from hills of sacred interest ; Hermon sends her dews 
 in a sparkling stream, and Tabor and Gilead collect 
 their rivulets to swell the holy tide.
 
 THE RIVER JORDAN. 23 
 
 Jordan ! blessed by a Saviour's footsteps, made 
 glorious by his baptism Jordan ! beautiful and sad, 
 with melody in its every ripple, hope on its every 
 wave pre-eminent among rivers, it flows, and ever 
 will flow, till " death shall be swallowed up in its own 
 river."
 
 THE BROOK CHERITH. 
 
 A MONG the thousand streams that spring from the 
 ^ mountains of Judea, the brook Cherith rises 
 from the midst of rocky, shelving crags, where only 
 the wild goat wanders, or the proud eagle builds her 
 nest. Through dark and tangled forests in which the 
 lion, coming up " from the swelling of Jordan," makes 
 its lair, and the fierce and beautiful leopard roams, the 
 deep, wild brook finds its way past the solitary dwelling 
 of Elijah. 
 
 These heights were strange to him, and these were 
 not the waters of which his childhood had tasted. 
 Far yonder to the north is Gilead, where the snow 
 capped heights of Lebanon rise ; and cedars, such as 
 never grew in any other soil, wave their unfading 
 leaves. Beneath these was the tent his father pitched ; 
 and he, now the grave and solemn prophet, whose 
 word made King Ahab tremble, and the glowing 
 cheek of the beautiful but wicked Jezebel grow pale, 
 was a boy, with the wild, joyous glow of childhood in 
 eye and cheek, hunting the partridge on the moun 
 tain, or chasing the wild roe from cliff to cliff. 
 24
 
 THE BROOK CHERITH. 25 
 
 It was a fitting home for the boyhood of such a 
 prophet. Not the murmuring of a rill, or the song of 
 the bluebird, was the music to which his boyhood 
 had listened ; but it was the eagle's screech and the 
 roar of the wild cataracts that leaped among the hills. 
 Though God performed mighty miracles by Elijah 
 yet, in the formation of character which made of him 
 our highest conception of a prophet of God, he used 
 no miracle nothing save the ordinary circumstances 
 and surroundings which go to make up human 
 character. 
 
 The calmness with which he had stood in his father's 
 tent in Gilead amid the clear sunshine, and watched 
 far off on Lebanon the storm clouds flying wild, and 
 heard the rushing of mad torrents down its shelving 
 sides, seemed to have in it something of that stillness 
 with which he afterward watched on Carmel the "fire 
 of the Lord that fell " and consumed his sacrifice ; or 
 the fearlessness with which he answered Ahab when 
 he said : "I have not troubled Israel ; but thou, and 
 thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the com 
 mandments of the Lord and hast followed Baalim." 
 
 And here, alone beside this gushing brook, the old 
 man dwells in the vast solitude. Here the dark 
 winged ravens bring him food and lay it at his feet ; 
 and to him their strange and doleful cry, as they again 
 raise their wings and float away like a black cloud, has 
 become as an anthem which tells of the fulfilment of 
 God's promise, and the clear waters of Cherilh are 
 welcome to his lips as the red wine. And when, par 
 taking of the general drouth, the waters of the brook
 
 26 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 fail him, an angel hand points toward Zidon ; and far 
 away over the hills and plains of Judea away till 
 Lebanon again appears he follows that directing 
 hand. 
 
 Before Elijah's weary steps had reached Zarephath 
 God had there provided for him a home. Strange did 
 it seem to the wavering faith of that destitute widow 
 that the Lord should send a guest to her. But when, 
 by a daily recurring miracle, her handful of meal and 
 her little oil did not fail, and finally, when the prophet 
 had taken in his arms and borne away to his chamber 
 her dead son, and brought back and laid him in her 
 arms a living child, with clasped hands and gushing 
 faith, she cried, "By this I know that thou art a man 
 of God." 
 
 Mysterious was his departure from earth ; strange 
 and glorious was his burial that chariot, those horses 
 of glowing flame, burning ever like the bush that 
 Moses saw, and like that bush ever unconsumed and 
 then that host of horsemen, u such as earth saw never, 
 such as heaven stooped down to see." 
 
 Cherith ! Does it still flow from Judah's holy hills? 
 Does it still pour its clear waters into Jordan's ever 
 flowing river? 
 
 The running brook may be dry, its mountain springs 
 pour its waters into other streams, but never shall its 
 name be spoken but there shall come, as by a conjurer's 
 wand, the image of a brazen sky, and parched earth, 
 and dry water courses; and sitting by one flowing 
 stream and drinking of its cool waters shall be an old 
 and solitary man, and ravens, changed from carrion
 
 THE BROOK CHERITH. 2j 
 
 birds to ministering doves, laying at his feet his daily 
 food. And then, following on, shall he be seen till 
 the flaming horses bear him away, and there shall be 
 heard the far-off echo of Elisha's voice as he grasps 
 the floating mantle and cries, " My father, my father, 
 the horsemen of Israel and the chariot thereof."
 
 THE BROOK BESOR. 
 
 '"PHE brook Besor, springing from the hills of Judea 
 and flowing westward into the "Utmost Sea," 
 crossed the accustomed route from Palestine to Egypt, 
 and was a sort of boundary line between the two 
 countries the place beyond which a wild, unfriendly 
 region lay, inhabited by the fierce Amalekite. 
 
 Joseph, sold by his brethren to the Ishmaelites as 
 they journeyed from Gilead, "with their camels bear 
 ing spicery and balm," crossed this brook, leaving 
 behind him the home which he was nevermore to see. 
 Little thought those " merchantmen " that in the 
 youthful captive whom they bore from his native 
 country, they bore the hope of Israel ; one through 
 whom was to be preserved that nation from whom the 
 Shiloh was to come. Each time that Jacob's sons 
 crossed that boundary stream, as they journeyed for 
 the corn that their starving families might not perish, 
 they must have remembered Joseph, and thought how 
 his young heart must have fainted for his father and 
 his home as he entered into the wilderness. 
 28
 
 THE BROOK BESOR. 29 
 
 It was at the brook Besor that two hundred of 
 David's men, " so faint that they could not follow," 
 sunk by the way in their pursuit after the Amalekites, 
 who had just borne away captive their wives, their 
 sons and daughters, and taken all their treasure. It 
 was in a neighboring field that an Egyptian was found, 
 who, like so many of themselves, had sunk exhausted 
 by the way, and whom they bore to their camp, and 
 who, refreshed with timely food, guided David to the 
 spot where the Amalekites were feasting and dancing 
 in their joy. Returning, laden with spoil, and bear 
 ing in triumph the beloved captives, they were met 
 by those who had been lying on the borders of the 
 little stream, and who, refreshed, went forth to meet 
 the rejoicing company. And then men, grasping, 
 selfish " men of Belial " such as there are in eveiy 
 army, in every great assembly, thought to take advan 
 tage of those who had been unable to pursue the 
 enemy. Their narrow souls gloated over the thought 
 that their own share would be all the greater because 
 of the misfortune of their fellows. And then David, 
 with his voice of authority spake : " Ye shall not do so, 
 my brethren, with that which the Lord hath given us." 
 "As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall 
 his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part 
 alike." 
 
 Across this brook Joseph, with "the young child 
 and Mary his mother," fled from the face of Judea's 
 murderous king ; and then again they crossed it when 
 Herod was dead, thereby fulfilling the prophecy : "Out 
 of Egypt have I called my Son."
 
 30 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 Waters, dividing the land of light from a region of 
 darkness ; crossed by Israel and his sons ; upon whose 
 banks was first set forth the just and beautiful princi 
 ple of division which, for soldier and for sailor, is still 
 recognized as law among all Christian nations ; passed 
 over by Joseph, by Mary, and by the Saviour's youth 
 ful feet, become a sacred stream.
 
 THE BROOK CEDRON. 
 
 TN the hills about Jerusalem those hills so often 
 mentioned in the prayer of the Christian : be 
 round about us "as the mountains are round about 
 Jerusalem," in those holy hills the bright streams are 
 collected which form the brook Cedron. Full of 
 memories of her kings, of her prophets, of Jesus and 
 his followers, every drop of its waters becomes saci-ed 
 as the dust of the streets of Zion itself. 
 
 We look into the flowing stream, and we think of 
 the tears which David and his people wept as 
 they passed over it, fleeing into the wilderness from 
 the face of the aspiring Absalom. Absalom the 
 light of his father's eyes the joy of his heart ; whose 
 rare, strange beauty he had watched with all a parent's 
 pride; that he should have raised a banner against 
 him. That he who should have been ready to have 
 " met his enemies in the gate," should have been his 
 shield on the battle-field ; that he, with his bewildering 
 beauty and his "fair spoken words," should "steal 
 the hearts of the men of Israel." 
 
 Different bitterer far were the tears that David 
 shed that clay than those he wept over Bathsheba's dead 
 boy for whose life he had fasted and wept, but over
 
 32 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 whose cold clay he had pronounced those words of 
 Christian triumph and eternal faith : "I shall go to 
 him, but he shall not return to me." 
 
 Aye ! There are sadder tears than those that are 
 shed above the graves of the dead. There are living 
 sorrows sorrows which find no graves, which the 
 withered leaves of time may never bury from the sight. 
 
 Weeping he passed the brook, and " weeping and 
 with his head covered and bare-foot," he ascended the 
 mountain, at the base of which Cedron flows the 
 mountain whereon Christ preached the sermon of the 
 Beatitudes of glorious hopes, hopes which make the 
 Christian heart rejoice like that river, "the streams 
 whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy 
 place of the tabernacles of the Most High." 
 
 Cedron the Saviour's footsteps passed when, away 
 from the multitude, he so often sought retirement 
 among the low-spreading trees of Olivet, or in the 
 gai'den of Gethsemane which lay between it and the 
 mountain. On Cedron's banks was the agony the 
 mysterious passion the anguish of a world of sin, and 
 on its waves it bore the thrice uttered cry: "O my 
 Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except 
 I drink it, thy will be done." Here the disciples lay 
 when Jesus found them sleeping for sorrow, and, 
 stooping down, whispered in their heavy ears those 
 words which were for them and for us, which were an 
 admonition for all time : "Watch ye and pray, lest ye 
 enter into temptation." Here Judas betrayed our 
 Lord, and these waters listened to the clashing of the 
 Roman arms as they gave back the wild glare of their
 
 THE BROOK CEDRON. 33 
 
 torches, and like a " lamb to the slaughter," he was 
 borne away from the garden which he loved, from the 
 olive trees beneath which he had prayed, and from the 
 stream whose waters to him had made an anthem. 
 
 Close to Rama, and having heard the dying cries of 
 her murdered children, and the wailings of those 
 Rachels, who would not be comforted, having reflected 
 the bright star that guided the shepherds of Judea, 
 Cedron at length falls into the waters of the Dead Sea 
 waters still heavy with the curse of God. 
 
 With its holy surroundings, springing from the 
 hills of Zion, passing the foot of Olivet, flowing 
 through the holy garden, the roots of whose olive 
 trees it moistened, receiving David's tears, bearing 
 upon its waves a Saviour's groans waters so holy to 
 pour themselves into that polluted sea, seems almost 
 as a type of Him, who came down from heaven, from 
 heights which angels never trod, and walked with 
 fallen man.
 
 THE RIVERS OF BABYLON. 
 
 away to the east of Judea lay the land of 
 Chaldea. Through its plains flowed the Eu 
 phrates with its tributary streams, rendering the whole 
 land luxuriant as a garden. Babylon, its capital city, 
 lay on both sides of the river, and was famed among 
 the nations for its magnificence and beauty. 
 
 Thither the sons and daughters of Israel were borne 
 captive. Having seen the walls of Jerusalem broken 
 down ; the house of the Lord, the king's house, and 
 "every great man's house" burnt with fire; the 
 victorious army of the Chaldees had borne them 
 king, priests and people triumphantly to their homes, 
 leaving behind only " the poor of the land to be vine 
 dressers and husbandmen." 
 
 Though they were bidden in the name of the Lord 
 to "seek the peace of the city," whither they were 
 carried away captives, and to pray for it, and though 
 the Lord inclined the hearts of the Babylonish rulers 
 toward them, so that they were treated with rare 
 clemency, yet they could not the Lord did not ask 
 that they should forget the land of their birth and the 
 city of their love. 
 
 The " Utmost Sea," stretching along her whole 
 western shore; "Tabor among the mountains, and 
 
 34
 
 THE RIVERS OF BABYLON. 35 
 
 Carmel by the sea ; " Olivet and Jordan and Gennes- 
 aret, with their foreshadowed glory, and Jerusalem, 
 "whither the tribes went up," all these could never 
 be forgotten, and were fairer to them than all the 
 plains of Chaldea and Babylon, though she sat a 
 queen. In these proud palaces, filled with spoil 
 brought from their own fair homes, their rulers dwelt ; 
 and there the consecrated vessels, which they had 
 looked upon with shaded eyes, careless hands bore to 
 profane lips. 
 
 By the quiet streams the captives were wont to sit 
 and talk together of their captivity and of their 
 vanished glory. Thither their captors followed them, 
 and required of them mirth, saying : " Sing us one of 
 the songs of Zion " Sadly they replied : " How shall 
 we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" And, as 
 the thought of song came to them, and the name of 
 their holy city brought her walls and her sacred 
 temple more vividly before them, half to their captors, 
 half as if talking to themselves, in low, rapt words, 
 they added, " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my 
 right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember 
 thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; 
 if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." 
 
 So often did the sad captives retire beside the 
 streams of Babylon come thither to "lave their 
 bleeding feet" that at length those streams became 
 the type of Israel's sorrow. 
 
 And they are still the type of sorrow. Not of all 
 sorrow, but of sacred grief, of sanctified affliction. 
 The merchant, who mourns the miscarriage of his
 
 36 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 schemes of wealth ; the politician, who fails of 
 political aggrandizement, sits not by the streams of 
 Babylon. The shade of its bending willows, the 
 sound of its slow-flowing waters are not for him. It 
 is for those who "remember Zion." 
 
 Beneath the shadow of those willows David walked 
 when, mourning for his dead son, he came forth from 
 the chamber where he had wept, and uttered those 
 words of Christian faith and triumph : "I shall go to 
 him, but he shall not return to me." Job was there, 
 when in anguish he cried : " Though He slay me, yet 
 will I trust in Him." 
 
 God help us all in sorrow to sit beside the streams 
 of Babylon, so to receive from His hand every change 
 that may come to us, that it shall draw us nearer to 
 Him ; 
 
 " That not one throb of grief, one dart of pain, 
 One burning throb of anguish, pierce in vain," 
 
 and grant that when the days come, when we shall no 
 longer walk among men, better harps than those that 
 have hung upon willows may be given to us, and that 
 we may join in the songs of praise to Him who 
 "ascended upon high," who "led captivity captive, 
 and gave gifts unto men."
 
 THE WATERS OF THE 
 WILDERNESS. 
 
 TT is as serious as interesting to think of the im- 
 mense importance which is often attached to 
 affairs in themselves trifling. The little coral has 
 been the architect of mighty islands, and seeming 
 trifles have decided the destinies of armies and 
 of nations. When Israel was watching with an old 
 man's childish interest, the making of Joseph's coat, 
 marking the brilliant beauty of its colors, and fancying 
 Joseph's pleased surprise when he should present it to 
 him ; he deemed it only an affair of his own, a demon 
 stration of his affection for his son with which none 
 else had to do. But what was it? It was the begin 
 ning of that long train of events which make up so 
 large a portion of Bible history. It made Joseph the 
 second ruler in the kingdom of Egypt. It made his 
 father and his brethren emigrants, and their posterity 
 slaves in the land. It made them a deliverer in the 
 person of Moses, and it formed the background of 
 those miracles which the Lord performed by his hand. 
 Wanderers from Egypt, they had passed by a miracle 
 the waters of the Red Sea, and their progress had 
 been a continued miracle, but experienced so often, 
 " all was miracle in vain." It had begun to be no 
 
 37
 
 38 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 wonder that their garments waxed not old, and their 
 shoes failed not; that manna fell fresh from heaven 
 for their food, and that quails came in strange num 
 bers, and brought themselves as offerings to them. 
 That pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, 
 seemed no more a miracle to them than the daily 
 brightness of the sun, or the pale moonbeams. They 
 had reached Rephidim, and had pitched their tents 
 beneath the towering heights of Horeb Horeb ! 
 What memories were" awakened in Moses' heart as he 
 again looked upon those hoary cliffs ! Again was he 
 a simple shepherd, climbing with his crook those 
 rocky, shelving heights in search of wandering lambs ; 
 or, reclining on the ground with his faithful dogs and 
 quiet flocks, was trying to catch upon his reed some 
 of those Hebrew tunes which he had so often heard 
 Miriam sing, when, in his young boyhood, he would 
 steal away from his palace home to his mother's 
 humble dwelling. He thought of that burning bush 
 burning ever, but unconsumed out of which the 
 voice came consecrating him for his work, baptizing 
 him for his mission. And now, with wearied heart, 
 he stood again beneath its shadow, surrounded by a 
 murmuring people. But the voice that he had heard 
 of old, had bidden him go on, and had promised to 
 stand before him upon Horeb. And He was there ; 
 so that when Moses touched the rock, the waters 
 leaped out as if eager to obey ; and to those who had 
 asked, " Is the Lord among us or not?" He replied, 
 "Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee : I
 
 THE WATERS OF THE WILDERNESS. 39 
 
 answered thee in the secret place of thunder : I 
 proved thee at the waters of Meribah." 
 
 For three days had their parched lips longed for 
 water, and the little children had looked up and 
 begged it of their mothers, eagerly as Hagar's child. 
 At length, before them, a silver line appeared, and the 
 foremost shouted back to the lagging, fainting company 
 the one word water. The talismanic name seemed 
 to infuse strength into their failing limbs, and young 
 boys, who, but a moment before, had been ready to 
 sink exhausted on the sand, now bounded like roes 
 towards the running stream. With eager hands they 
 scooped the water and raised it to their thirsty lips, 
 but scarcely could they taste from its gall-like bitterness. 
 And then, a simultaneous murmur rose like the low 
 rumblings of thunder ; and the cruelties of their task 
 masters, and the deliverances which they had received 
 at the hand of Moses, were alike forgotten in the 
 memory of Egyptian springs. And now Moses 
 prayed, and the Lord pointed him to a tree, which, 
 when he had cast into the waters, they became sweet 
 as the fallen dew. That stream was prophetic of their 
 journey ; long and weary their way, but terminating 
 at last among the shadowy palm trees and the gushing 
 springs of Palestine. Marah ! Marah ! Waters of 
 which many deeply drink ; streams of which every 
 human soul must taste. Blessed are they to whom 
 the waters of Marah become sweet ; to whom, tasting 
 of its bitterness, it becomes medicine to the soul. The 
 promise, "Blessed are they that mourn," remains ever 
 firm as the bulwarks of Zion.
 
 4O GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 And now appeal's Elim, with its groves and foun 
 tains. Elim ! And to how many does the future 
 seem glorious as its palm trees, beautiful as its springs, 
 but proving only as the mil-age painted against the 
 sky ! Or often, when the hopes for the future have 
 all been realized, and longings satisfied, when an Elim 
 has been reached ; lo ! the palm trees cast no shadows 
 and yield no dates, and the springs of its fountains are 
 forever dry. Happiest is he, whose eye is fixed most 
 steadily upon the Jordan beyond ; who, finding an 
 oasis, rests there but as a wayfarer, thankful for a 
 night's repose ; and, dipping into the fountain his 
 scallop-shell, or tasting of Eschol's grapes, remembers 
 that he is only a pilgrim.
 
 IMMORTELLES. 
 
 'Tis a little thing 
 
 Dropped in the heart's deep well ; 
 The good, the joy which it may bring 
 Eternity shall tell." 
 
 "TJ*RAIL as a flower;" "withering like a leaf," 
 are expressions which well convey the ideas of 
 weakness and transitoriness. We pluck the delicate 
 anemone, and it withers almost as soon as the stem is 
 broken ; we touch the leaf of the mimosa, and it 
 closes itself shrinkingly ; and all the flowers of rarest 
 beauty and of most delicate perfume, begin to wither 
 when they have reached perfection. But there are 
 flowers which live always live in the perfection of 
 their bloom, have been transformed by the alchemy of 
 memory and of love into flowers of fadeless beauty 
 and of immortal fragrance. 
 
 " The roses do not blush so deep as when I was a 
 girl," said a lady as she stood looking at a beautiful 
 pink rose-bush. But we knew that she was comparing 
 the flowers that were blooming there, with those 
 which had been dipped in the dreams of her youth ; 
 and which had there caught a depth of coloring, 
 which, for her, would never be equalled on earth. 
 
 The pond-lilies which the boys brought to school 
 and scattered with a free hand, are blooming still.
 
 42 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 Neither are their white leaves and their rare fragrance 
 alone preserved ; but with them come men from every 
 land, from marts of trade and from all professions ; 
 and foreheads, crossed and seamed with accounts of 
 business and of care, become smooth, and they are to 
 us boys again ; while " the burial places of memory " 
 give up their dead, and from long covered graves 
 appear bright young faces among the lilies. Aye ! 
 The loving hand that gives, the word, the smile, 
 embalms beyond all mystery of art. 
 
 Douglas Jerrold, in the fulness of his fame, and 
 encircled by multitudes who loved him and gloried 
 in his genius, tells us that he stood once a bare-foot 
 boy at the fence of a poor wood-cutter's garden in his 
 native village, gazing longingly at the flowers that 
 were blooming there. " The owner," said Jerrold, 
 " saw the boy, and breaking off the most beautiful of 
 his carnations it was streaked with red and white 
 he gave it to him. Neither the giver nor the receiver 
 spoke a word, and with bounding steps the boy ran 
 home. And now here, at a vast distance from that 
 home, after so many events of so many years, the feel 
 ing of gratitude which agitated the breast of that boy 
 expresses itself on paper. The carnation has long 
 since withered, but now it blooms afresh." 
 
 We are told that on a Sabbath evening, many years 
 ago, a reckless, dissipated young man was lounging 
 beneath the trees of a public square in Worcester. A 
 stranger came along, kindly laid a hand upon his 
 shoulder, and asked him to go with him to a temper 
 ance meeting at the town hall. He went ; and from
 
 IMMORTELLES. 43 
 
 the simple words, the kindly act of that good, old man, 
 sprang ten thousand "immortelles;" for the young 
 man was Gough, through whose efforts so many of 
 the fallen have been raised. 
 
 Few have ever won friends, given or received hap 
 piness from the performance of any great deeds of 
 self-denial or of genei'osity ; but one who watches 
 carefully the path he treads, will find many a flower to 
 give to those he meets ; attentions so trifling that 
 they scarce seem worth the offering, but which has 
 sometimes lighted up a spirit itself scarce conscious 
 from whence the sunshine has come. 
 
 Such a sunlight now we feel, though since first it 
 shone, 
 
 " Many a daylight's dawned and darkened 
 Many a night shook off the daylight.' ' 
 
 There was an Irish woman a peddling Irish 
 woman who brought sunshine so strangely on a 
 darkened heart that it made the light gladness of girl 
 hood circle eyes and lips that had long forgotten the 
 expression of joy. She had for sale pretty linen 
 handkerchiefs which she had herself woven, and she 
 took from about them one of the bright, worthless 
 pictures that usually come round such goods. It was 
 of a village, in Ireland, and she gave it, saying it was 
 her home ; and we asked her to write beneath it her 
 name, and that of the village for neither were easy to 
 be remembered, and we have long forgotten both 
 but she shook her head, and smiled regrettingly. Yes : 
 we were indebted for a feeling of quiet pleasure then,
 
 44 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 and of remembered happiness now, to a woman, who 
 could not so much as write her own name. 
 
 Whoever improves his every opportunity of doing 
 good or showing kindness, is on the alert to help his 
 brother on the way, has a mind attuned, ready at 
 the moment, for any great emergency ; and the silent 
 influence which such a character exerts is interminable 
 immortal. 
 
 It was only a farthing which the poor widow whom 
 Jesus commended, cast into the treasury. It was no 
 great thing which Dorcas did ; and it was only the 
 poor women of the neighborhood who wept about her 
 coffin, showed their garments and smoothed down 
 their aprons, saying that it was she who had made 
 them. Doubtless, many rich in that city had never 
 heard her name till the day she died, if indeed, they 
 heard it then ; but, now, for eighteen hundred years, 
 her name has been the watchword of charity. 
 
 However poor or feeble, all may add something to 
 the sum of human happiness. Gardens of flowers are 
 ever ready for the gathering ; fields, ever white for the 
 harvest. God help us all to be reapers, who shall 
 bear at last to His feet the many sheaves.
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 His life was gentle ; and the elements 
 
 So mixed in him, that nature might stand up, 
 
 And say to all the world, This was a man ! 
 
 Shakespeart. 
 
 ~C*OR three hundred years the name of Sir Philip 
 Sidney has been regarded as the type the expo 
 nent of all things high and beautiful in human 
 character. History has furnished us with examples 
 not less noble than his ; and men, great and good and 
 self-sacrificing as he, have been cast into nameless 
 graves. Many such heroes there were in our own 
 civil war. Some, known to God alone ; some, 
 remembered only in their old homes, or by grateful 
 comrades ; and others, who, then, perhaps, received a 
 passing notice. 
 
 We think of such an one now a New England boy 
 John B. Marsh byname: forced into rebel ranks, 
 deserting to our own, recaptured and led to execution, 
 he managed to get into the hands of a fellow prisoner 
 a farewell to his friends. "I am to be shot," he 
 wrote, " for defending my country ; I love her and am 
 willing to die for her. Tell my parents I am also 
 happy in the Lord. My future is bright." And 
 standing beside his coffin, he removed his hat, and 
 looking at his executioners cried, "Three cheers for 
 
 45
 
 46 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 the old flag and the Union ! " then, waving his hat, 
 
 shouted, "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" and fell, a 
 
 Christian martyr. 
 
 And another a missionary's son young Schneider, 
 
 dying of wounds, bright and cheerful to the last, and 
 sending to his brother the parting message : "Stand 
 by the flag and cling to the cross of Christ" 
 
 But Sidney ; standing on the pinnacle of society, 
 with rare beauty and talent ; the idol of Queen Eliza 
 beth and her court ; surrounded by bad examples, by 
 sin in most alluring and fascinating guise ; by that 
 prosperity, more tempting than adversity to have 
 made him selfish and unprincipled ; yet, daring even 
 the displeasure of the despotic queen, in speaking 
 what he believed to be true, and doing what he 
 thought to be right, became the marvel of the age in 
 which he lived, and poetry and history immortalized 
 him. 
 
 Sidney was born at the castle of Penshurst in 
 November, 1554. This castle was a gift from Edward 
 VI to his grandfather, William Sidney, who had been 
 his tutor, and who had distinguished himself for 
 bravery in fighting against the Scots. To Henry 
 Sidney, the father of Sir Philip a man of excellent 
 character this beautiful manor had descended. 
 
 His mother, Mary Dudley, was the daughter of that 
 Duke of Northumberland, whose attempt to place the 
 crown of England on the head of Lady Jane Grey, the 
 wife of his son, Lord Guilford Dudley, repudiating 
 alike the claims of Maiy and Elizabeth, brought his 
 own head, with those of the guileless Guilford and
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 47 
 
 Lady Jane, to the scaffold. Another son uncle to 
 Sir Philip was that handsome, fascinating and 
 wicked favorite of Elizabeth, Robert Dudley, Earl of 
 Leicester, whose crimes Scott reveals in his " Kenil- 
 worth," in colors no stronger than sober history 
 warrants. 
 
 The mother of Sidney in no way resembled her 
 bi-other, unless in personal graces and accomplish 
 ments ; and the religious principle of his father was 
 exemplified in a Christian "walk and conversation." 
 In a letter to his son, written in ' quaint old Saxon" 
 when he was about twelve years old, he says: "Let 
 your first action be the lifting up of your mind to 
 Almighty God by hearty prayer. Be courteous of 
 gesture and affable to all men. There is nothing win- 
 neth so much with so little cost. Above all things, 
 tell no untruth, no, not in trifles." And after much 
 other good advice, signs himself : " Your loving father 
 so long as you live in the fear of God." 
 
 At the age of seventeen he went abroad for the im 
 provement of foreign travel. He was a guest at the 
 "Paris Wedding" - the massacre of Saint Bartholomew 
 and found refuge, till the danger was past, at the 
 house of the English minister, Walsingham. Here he 
 first saw Frances, the daughter of Walsingham, "then a 
 beautiful child, whose passionate grief for the Hugue 
 nots called forth his sympathizing and tender regard," 
 and who, eleven years later, became his wife. 
 
 About this time, in deep distress, he writes to his 
 beloved tutor, Languet, announcing that Count Louis, 
 of Nassau, had been defeated and mortally wounded,
 
 48 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 and his brother taken prisoner. This was that Count 
 Louis of whom Motley says : " It is difficult to find in 
 history a more frank and loyal character. His life 
 was noble ; the elements of the heroic and the genial 
 so mixed in him that the imagination contemplates 
 him, after three centuries, \vith an almost affectionate 
 interest." And sadder than Sidney's letter stated, the 
 two brothers, Louis and Henry, perished together on 
 the battle-field, and their bodies were never found. 
 
 During an absence of three years on the continent, 
 his love and sympathy for the Protestant cause was 
 deepened. He longed to leave the flatteries and 
 emoluments of Elizabeth and her court, and fight 
 with the Nassaus the battles of religious freedom, but 
 the queen continually refused her consent. Sent by 
 her, however, on an embassy to the court of Vienna, 
 and returning through the Netherlands, he made the 
 acquaintance of William of Orange, and, though 
 nearly twenty years younger than that prince, a warm 
 friendship sprang up between them, and though they 
 never met again, they corresponded many years. 
 
 Soon after his return from abroad, he desired to 
 marry one whom he had known and loved from child 
 hood, Penelope Devereux, the " Stella" of his verse. 
 She was the daughter of that Earl of Devereux, whom 
 the Earl of Leicester is supposed to have taken off by 
 poison, in order that he might marry the beautiful 
 widow ; and sister of that Earl of Essex whose death 
 upon the scaffold brought to Elizabeth a remorse and 
 grief to which some historians attribute her death. 
 Like her unfortunate brother, and no less unfortunate
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 49 
 
 mother, she possessed rare beauty and accomplish 
 ments, and the marriage, apparently, would have 
 been every way suitable ; but from mercenary consid 
 erations of her own, or her relatives, she preferred a 
 man whose wealth was enormous, but whose personal 
 character was a perfect contrast to Sidney's. Her 
 marriage was a most unhappy one. . Sidney's wife is 
 represented as a lovely woman better worthy his 
 affection than she who won his first love. 
 
 In 1585, Elizabeth sent forces to assist the Nether 
 lands in their struggle against Spain, and giving 
 Leicester command of the troops, allowed "my 
 Philip," as she foolishly and fondly called Sidney, to 
 accompany him, and appointed him Governor of 
 Flushing. Here the true character of his uncle seems 
 first to have dawned upon him. Whispers had 
 reached his ear, which he had rejected with all the 
 warmth of family pride and affection ; but now, with 
 his own eyes, he saw him levying unlawful taxes, 
 altering the coin, and cheating the English troops out 
 of their pay. In vain he remonstrated ; but with a 
 free hand, from his own private purse, scattered his 
 bounty among the faithful soldiers. 
 
 Side by side with the gallant Prince Maurice, who, 
 upon his father's death, had become the recognized 
 leader of the Protestants, he fought the battles of 
 religious freedom with the skill and valor of a veteran. 
 
 A hero among heroes, he fought on the field of 
 Zutphen. Wherever the fight was fiercest, Sidney 
 spurred his steed. Two horses were shot under him, 
 and he had mounted a third, when he saw his friend,
 
 50 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 Lord Willoughby, surrounded by the foe. Dashing 
 into the midst of the affray, he rescued him, but, at 
 the same moment, received a mortal wound. It was 
 when being borne from the fatal spot that the beautiful 
 incident occurred which has become a classic story: 
 
 "Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called 
 for drink, which was presently brought him ; but, as 
 he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor 
 soldier carried along who had eaten his last at' the 
 same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle, 
 which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head, 
 before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with 
 these words, ' Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.' " 
 
 For sixteen days he lingered, watched over with 
 devoted care by his wife and the friends who loved 
 him. Lying on his couch of pain and death, brought 
 suddenly from the scenes of earthly ambition to look 
 upon the realities of a future world, he expressed 
 entire resignation to the will of God. 
 
 The night before he died, with that strength which 
 faith in Jesus alone could impart, he said : " I would 
 not change my joy for the empire of the world." 
 
 Just before he breathed his last, he called for music. 
 His thirty-two years of life were not quite complete, 
 when, October I5th, 1586, u amid the harmonies of 
 earth, the benedictions of love, and the incense of 
 prayer," his soul went up to heaven.
 
 HENRY OF NAVARRE. 
 
 T "X 7"E cannot find in history a character more lovable, 
 attractive, and, alas ! more dangerous, because 
 so attractive, than that of Henry IV, King of France 
 and Navarre. The first of the Bourbon race of kings, 
 there could hardly be a greater contrast than that 
 which appears between him and his descendants : a 
 king beloved as deeply as they were hated. 
 
 The traditions of his kindness, of his generosity, of 
 his courage, which made " the white plume of Henry 
 of Navarre," the type of everything gallant and chival 
 rous, had so floated down the current of time, that in 
 the French Revolution the insane multitude, who 
 were desecrating the tombs of royalty, for two days 
 paused in reverence at the coffin of Henry, before it 
 could be persuaded by its mad leaders to fling it into 
 the common ditch. 
 
 And even in our day the name of the " white plume 
 of Henry of Navarre " is the synonym of all that is 
 bold and generous in human action. It is always the 
 u white plume;" for, by a strange contrast, the name 
 of the white cockade, the " white feather" worn by 
 the grandson of his daughter Henrietta, has come to 
 us as the emblem of cowardly fear. 
 
 It has fallen to the souls of few to be so fiercely 
 tempted as was the soul of Henry. He loved the 
 
 5 1
 
 52 GATHERED \VA1FS. 
 
 faith of the Huguenots. He loved it for the sake of 
 his princely uncle, the "Great Conde," who, falling 
 at the battle of Jarnee, covered with wounds, had 
 cried : " It is sweet to die for Christ and country." 
 He loved it for the sake of his noble, persecuted, dead 
 mother, who, when Catherine de Medici had urged 
 her to renounce it for the sake of her son and of her 
 alienated husband, had declared that neither for her 
 son, nor for all the kingdoms of the world together, 
 would she peril the salvation of her soul. And he 
 must have loved it for its own sake, when, in reply to 
 a prisoner of distinction, who had expressed surprise 
 at the small number of his troops, he said : "You do 
 not see all of them. You do not count God and the 
 right." 
 
 Every argument of a worldly sort ; the ability to 
 protect from persecution and to allow freedom of 
 worship to the Huguenots, brought out strong, though 
 specious, reasoning for him to embrace Catholicism. 
 And, though it was "a cruel disappointment to the 
 noblest and best among the Protestants to lose their 
 beloved and magnificent chief," there were of them, 
 even, those, who, tired of the long struggle, fearful of 
 the repetition of the terrible scenes of the night of St. 
 Baitholomew, were glad for him to yield : glad to feel 
 assured that the lilies of France would continue to be 
 worn by a secret friend. 
 
 But, in spite of that " white and upright plume," 
 the thread of his Bourbon father ran through his 
 character; and for the tinsel of a crown, he became 
 *' the eldest son of the church." Moreover, it has
 
 HENRY OF NAVARRE. 53 
 
 been said that "he never recovered from the corrupt 
 ing effects of those early years," when, in spite of his 
 agonized mother, he was kept by his father and by 
 Catherine in that wicked, voluptuous French court. 
 
 He had not by nature, and the grace of God had 
 not imparted to him, that iron firmness, that unshrink 
 ing integrity, which brought from William of Orange 
 his reply to Philip of Spain, when that monarch had 
 given him to understand that there was no desire he 
 could express freedom for his imprisoned son, liberty 
 of worship for himself, restoration of his confiscated 
 estates that should not be granted him, if he would 
 abandon the cause of the republic: "Neither for 
 property nor for life, neither for wife nor for children, 
 will I mix in my cup a single drop of treason." 
 
 That Henry became a Catholic only for the peace of 
 France and its blood-stained crown was well under 
 stood. Beside, his nature was so frank, so free, so 
 open ; in many respects, so akin to that of his sainted 
 mother ; for so many years had he breathed a wild 
 freedom amid the shadows of the Pyrenees, that it 
 seemed impossible for him to conceal from friend or 
 foe his real sentiments and prejudices. 
 
 Entering into a treaty with Spain, he pledged him 
 self to give no assistance to the Provinces ; then 
 furnished them with thirteen hundred thousand crowns, 
 saying that he "was under great obligations to his. 
 good friends the States, and nothing in the treaty for 
 bade him to pay his debts." 
 
 Jestingly, mockingly, he called himself a Catholic, 
 with the same subtle wit with which he declared that
 
 54 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 " with his Chancellor, who knew no Latin ; and his 
 Constable, who could neither write nor read, he could 
 go through the most difficult affairs." 
 
 It was in vain that the Duke of Sully, who truly 
 loved him, urged him to secrecy and discretion. The 
 generous and naturally truthful king could not so act 
 a lie but that the whole kingdom knew that his heart 
 was with the Huguenots ; and it was because of this 
 that the murderous hand of the fanatical assassin 
 sought his life. 
 
 " Next Tuesday," said the king, "I shall cause the 
 queen to be crowned at Saint Denis ; the following 
 Thursday she will make her entry into Paris. Next 
 day, Friday, I shall take my departure." And he did 
 take his departure, but not whither his plans were 
 directed. That day, May I4th, 1610, he was stabbed 
 to the heart by Ravaillac. 
 
 His rule, so kind and tolerant to all, was succeeded 
 by that of his weak and bigoted queen, who, for a 
 time, guided the counsels of her son ; a son so unlike 
 his father cold, hard, relentless, and hated by his 
 people that his widowed queen said to their son, 
 Louis XIV, then a child : "My son, strive to be like 
 your grandfather and not like your father ; for when 
 Henry IV died, the people wept ; when i,ouis XIII 
 died, they rejoiced." 
 
 The time-serving policy of Henry availed but a short 
 time for the peace of France. It was an apple of 
 Sodom, fair to look upon ; but opened, its ashes were 
 scattered down the ages. The edict of Nantes, the 
 glory of his reign, was revoked ; the land well nigh
 
 HEXRY OF NAVARRE. 55 
 
 covered with the slain of its people ; and his own 
 blood, in the persons of Louis XVI and his sister 
 Elizabeth, shed upon the scaffold ; while the rest of 
 his descendants fled ignominiously from their native 
 land. 
 
 Nor was it alone on the soil of France that the war 
 fare was renewed ; that the "hurt of the daughter of 
 my people " was opened afresh. As if personating 
 the warring elements of his own soul : exponents of 
 opposing principles ; the grandson of Henry James 
 II and the grandson of his daughter Prince William 
 fought anew on the banks of the Boyne the battle of 
 freedom and of faith, till the Christian world rejoiced 
 to see the bright orange flag of William wave tri 
 umphant in England. 
 
 Alas for the memory of Henry of Navarre ! with all 
 his magnificent capabilities ; with a great and holy 
 trust committed to his keeping ; of whom it was said, 
 referring to the men, who in his day sat on thrones at 
 Madrid, Vienna and London: "There was but one 
 king in Europe." 
 
 He failed, because he could not say with the great 
 Netherland Prince : " Before I ever took up the cause 
 of the oppressed Christians, I entered into a close 
 alliance with the King of kings ; and am firmly con 
 vinced that all who put their trust in Him shall be 
 saved by His almighty hand."
 
 RICHARD CROMWELL. 
 
 I feel within me 
 
 A peace above all earthly dignities, 
 A still and quiet conscience. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 A PERFECT contrast to his ambitious, unscrupu- 
 lous and wretched father, Richard Cromwell 
 appears on the page of history, occupies a little niche 
 in the royal walls of the past. 
 
 He had seen his father standing on the proudest 
 heights which his aspiring ambition could covet the 
 head of that government of which he had said: "I 
 wish the world to respect the English republic as 
 much as it once respected the Roman republic." 
 And what had it all availed ; the humiliation of Hol 
 land, the conquest of Spain and the precedency of 
 every European nation ? In the midnight watches he 
 had been awakened by his restless step ; he marked 
 his furtive glances ; noted the quick, nervous grasp 
 with which he would clasp his sword at an unexpected 
 sound, and he knew that to him every shadow came 
 clothed in the garbs of those he had murdered, and 
 that he saw on every jewel in the royal diadem drops 
 of King Charles' young blood. 
 
 In the perfection of his manhood at an age when 
 the pulse of ambition beats strongest in the human 
 56
 
 RICHARD CROMWELL. 57 
 
 heart, when the consciousness of power is best enjoyed, 
 he had silently and sadly received from his father's 
 dying hand the bequest of a blood-stained sceptre, and, 
 with the name of Protector, had ascended England's 
 vacant throne as peaceably as though he had come 
 from a long line of kings. 
 
 His blameless life, his irreproachable honor and 
 the openness and sincerity of his character, caused him 
 to be respected even by the most devoted adherents of 
 Charles II ; but the army over which his father had 
 held so powerful a sway and had made subservient to 
 the great puposes of his ambition, excited by a few 
 restless and ambitious leaders, revolted against his 
 authority. 
 
 " He might," says a historian of the times, " have 
 preserved the heritage acquired by the exertions of his 
 father, had he been willing to have sacrificed three or 
 four principal officers of the army who opposed them 
 selves to him." But to Richard Cromwell the heights 
 of ambition were not dizzy , nor was the cup of human 
 glory intoxicating. To him the voice of fame was not 
 a melody half so sweet as the far-off music of some 
 cottage home, and he turned away with unspotted 
 hands and a peaceful heart from the blood bought 
 domes of Whitehall, desirous only to perform the 
 duties and to enjoy the happiness of a private citizen. 
 The sons of Oliver Cromwell seem to have lacked 
 neither the talent or bravery of their distinguished 
 father, but they seem to have soared above the fields 
 of ambition, to have been able, while the hopes of 
 youth were fresh about them, to realize the nothingness
 
 58 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 of fame and cheerfully to resign the power which an 
 ambitious father had unjustly acquired. 
 
 "I would rather," said Henry Cromwell, the younger 
 brother of Richard, upon resigning the government of 
 Ireland, which he had managed with singular ability 
 and success, " I would rather submit to any suffering 
 with a good name, than be the greatest man on earth 
 without it." 
 
 The restoration of Charles Stuart to the throne of 
 his ancestors was a measure which the brothers appear 
 to have regarded with satisfaction. 
 
 It was an act which their just and virtuous mother 
 had endeavored to induce their father to perform when 
 Charles had offered to agree to any terms if he would 
 place him on the throne ; and to which, loving ever 
 the proud heights where he trembled as he stood, he 
 answered in words which implied an acknowledg 
 ment both of guilt and of cowardice: "If Charles 
 Stuart can forgive me all that I have done against 
 him and his family, he does not deserve to wear the 
 crown of England." 
 
 Nothing perhaps was so trying to the sons as bravely 
 to bear up against the knowledge that with most, their 
 motives of laying down the power which had been 
 thrust upon them, would be misunderstood ; that their 
 conscientious regard of right, their forgetfulness of 
 everything but duty, would be attributed to cowardice 
 and inefficiency. 
 
 "Oliver Cromwell was a great man; but his son 
 Richard is a contemptible one, not knowing how to 
 enjoy the fruit of his father's crimes," said the Prince
 
 RICHARD CROMWELL. 
 
 59 
 
 of Conti to Richard Cromwell, whom he met while 
 travelling in France soon after his abdication, and 
 without knowing him, entered into conversation upon 
 the affairs of England. 
 
 To the honor of Charles II he never attempted in 
 any manner to molest the family of Cromwell. Once 
 in hunting, not aware of whose residence he was 
 approaching, he rode to the house of Henry Cromwell 
 to obtain some refreshment ; Cromwell recognized 
 him and and was at first a little embarrassed, but they 
 parted mutually pleased with the interview. 
 
 Richard Cromwell resided upon the continent for 
 nearly twenty years after his abdication. He then 
 returned to England and passed the remainder of his 
 days in quiet seclusion among the sunny hills of Hert 
 fordshire. With the snows of nearly ninety winters 
 scattered among his hair, we see him sitting peacefully 
 by his own hearthstone, having outlived the reigns of 
 Charles, of James and the Prince of Orange. 
 
 He died in 1712, it being the eleventh year of the 
 reign of Anne. Passing his life in retirement, he laid 
 down in an humble grave amid the groves of Cheshunt. 
 But did he rest less quietly there than his father rested 
 laid with funeral pomp in the sepulchre of long lines 
 of kings? The ashes which the hand of vengeance 
 scattered to the winds reply.
 
 MICHAEL FARADAY. 
 
 A S a man of science, a philosopher, a " prince 
 ^^ among the aristocracy of intellect," comparatively 
 few are interested in, or capable of appreciating, the 
 character of Michael Faraday ; but as a good man, 
 singular for his truth and simplicity, he is a subject of 
 interest and affection, capable of being undei'stood by 
 all. We value him as we value our friends ; not for 
 rank, not for wealth, not for intelligence even, but for 
 goodness. 
 
 How infinitely higher he himself regarded character 
 than all the acquisitions of science, is shown in a 
 remark addressed by him in a letter to a scientific 
 friend : " After all, though your science is much to me, 
 we are not friends for science sake only, but for some 
 thing better in a man, something more important in 
 his nature, affection, kindness, good feeling, moral 
 worth" 
 
 Faraday was born in London in 1791. His father 
 was a blacksmith, poor in purse and feeble in health, 
 but rich and strong in those moral qualities, which 
 were so beautifully developed in his eminent son. At 
 thirteen years of age he became an errand boy for a 
 bookseller, and soon after, his apprentice. About the 
 
 60
 
 MICHAEL FARADAY. 6 1 
 
 same time he attended lectures on Natural Philosophy, 
 the money for admission being given to him by an 
 elder brother, who earned it at his father's trade. 
 
 Amid all his successes and the honors that were 
 showered upon him, he never outgrew the society of 
 his humble relatives and friends, or forgot his love for 
 them. As equals they ever met and mingled, giving 
 heart for heart. He remembered the days and friends 
 of his boyhood with fondest interest. He visited the 
 shop where his father had worked, looking about it 
 earnestly and affectionately as though it were an 
 "ancestral hall." Once when sitting for his bust, the 
 sculptor, in giving the last touches to the marble, 
 chanced to make a jingling with his chisels ; and, 
 noticing an unusual appearance of absence and reserve 
 in his sitter, and feai'ing that it had annoyed him, 
 apologized : " No, my dear Mr. Noble," said Fara 
 day, placing his hand kindly on the artist's shoulder, 
 "but the noise reminded me of my father's anvil, and 
 took me back to my boyhood." When journeying in 
 Switzerland, he wrote of visiting a nail factory and 
 said, " I love a smith's shop and anything relating to 
 smithery. My father was a smith." In walking the 
 streets of London, he would look with kind interest at 
 the newsboys, because, he said, he used to be a news 
 boy himself. 
 
 Early in life he became interested in religion, but 
 did not make a public profession till he was about 
 thirty, when he united with the Sandemanians, per 
 haps the least known and humblest of any sect. It
 
 62 
 
 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 was the church to which his parents belonged, and 
 where he had received his first religious impressions. 
 But reasons stronger than these the belief that its 
 doctrines were most in accordance with the teachings 
 of Jesus doubtless decided his choice. The Queen 
 and the Prince Consort might sit as learners at his 
 feet, but the establishment presented no allurements to 
 draw him away from the humble church in which he 
 had chosen the home of his soul. When asked by 
 Cardinal Wiseman, "If, in his deepest conviction, he 
 believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic and 
 apostolical was shut up in the little church in which 
 he bore rule," referring to his being an elder; Fara 
 day replied: "Oh, no. But I do believe from the 
 bottom of my soul that Christ is with us." 
 
 And this was enough for him. Enough, that there 
 he might sit with Jesus at the well, and drink of those 
 living waters which alone can allay the thirst of an 
 immortal mind. He was, says Gladstone, "one of 
 that long line of scientific men, beginning with the 
 savants of the East, who have brought to the Redeemer 
 the gold, frankinscence and myrrh of their adoration." 
 
 With all his humility and meekness, Faraday knew 
 how to value himself and his own acquisitions. When 
 Garibaldi was visiting London at the time his fame 
 was highest, some member of the Royal Institution 
 remarked to him: "We must get Garibaldi to come 
 some Friday evening ; " Friday evenings being the 
 regular time for lectures. His quiet reply was : "It 
 Garibaldi thinks he can learn anything from us, we
 
 MICHAEL FARADAY. 63 
 
 shall be happy to see him." As a statesman, a war 
 rior, and a patriot, he might do honor to the distin 
 guished Italian ; but as a man of science, standing in 
 the rooms of the Royal Institution, he could regard 
 him only as a pupil. 
 
 It has been said of Sir Godfrey Kneller, that having 
 expressed a desire not to be buried in Westminster 
 Abbey, and being asked, why he wished that such an 
 honor should be declined; replied, " Because they do 
 bury fools there." Expressed in a very different man 
 ner from the sarcastic painter, but scarcely less cogent, 
 were the reasons which Faraday gave, why no attempt 
 should be made to rewai'd intellectual achievement by 
 conferring titles of nobility. On this subject his opin 
 ion had been desired by a Parliamentary Committee. 
 He replied, in a letter expressing his gratitude for all 
 the kindness and attention, which he had received 
 from his " sovereign downward." Referring to the 
 honors which had been conferred upon him by princes 
 and learned societies of foreign lands, he wrote. " I 
 cannot say that I have not valued such distinctions ; 
 on the contrary, I esteemed them very highly, but I do 
 not think I have ever worked for or sought after them." 
 But in regard to titles of nobility, he said: "Instead 
 of conferring distinction, they confound the man who 
 is one of twenty, or perhaps fifty, with hundreds of 
 others. They depress rather than exalt him, for they 
 tend to lower the especial distinction of mind to the 
 common places of society." " The distinctions," he 
 added, " being rendered very desirable and even en-
 
 64 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 viable in the eyes of the aristocracy by birth, should 
 be unattainable except to that of science." 
 
 The marriage of Faraday was a singularly happy 
 one. It satisfied his whole heart, and home was to 
 him the dearest spot on earth. " After all," he said, 
 " there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of 
 home." 
 
 At length the powers of body and mind began to 
 fail. " The fastenings of his earthly tabernacle were 
 removed one by one." His memory gave way, and 
 the strength of his great mind declined ; but through 
 the dimness, the faith, and hope and joy of the Chris 
 tian, shone with unfading brightness ; and, on religious 
 matters, he expressed himself with his wonted clear 
 ness. To his niece he wrote: "Out of the view of 
 death comes the view of the life beyond the grave, as 
 out of the view of sin comes the glorious hope. My 
 worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. 
 Happy is it for all of us that the true good lies not in 
 them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little chil 
 dren trusting in the Father of Mercies, and accepting 
 his unspeakable gift." He died August, 1867, at the 
 age of seventy-five. 
 
 He was buried by his relatives according to the 
 simple rites of the church to which he belonged. But 
 the honors which he had not sought while living, and 
 which his family had not sought for him when dead, 
 were offered to his memory. Resolutions, expressive 
 of honor and affection, were drawn up by learned 
 societies in all lands, and eulogies pronounced upon 
 him. Nothing seems better to describe the earnestness
 
 MICHAEL FARADAY. 65 
 
 and excellence of his character than an expression of 
 his friend and biographer, Bence Jones: "On every 
 occasion and in all the varying circumstances of life, 
 he always endeavored to seek and say that which he 
 believed to be the truth, and to do that which he 
 thought was kind."
 
 EDELWEISS. 
 
 A STORY told in the quaint and beautiful style of 
 Germany, represents a mother parting with her 
 son as he leaves their home for foreign travel. She 
 throws her arms around him and cries, sobbing: "I 
 have nothing more to say to thee ; the father has said 
 everything. Only, when thou findest on the Swiss 
 mountains the little plant, Edelweiss, bring it home to 
 me." She asks him not to bring wealth ; nor, with 
 the proud enthusiasm of that mother who bade her 
 son return to her with or upon his shield, to win fame ; 
 she only asks him to bring to her that pure, high- 
 blooming flower the Edelweiss honor white. 
 
 The boy Warren Hastings lying on the bank of 
 the stream which flowed through the old domain of 
 his family, made the resolve, never abandoned, to 
 recover the estate which had belonged to his worthless 
 father. 
 
 We remember well an old woman of rare brilliancy, 
 one whose very energy and ambition seemed to hold 
 age and infirmity at bay. It was just as the great Cali 
 fornia gold fever broke out, and thousands of the 
 young and strong and ambitious had gone thither to 
 seek their " Castles in Spain." And her sons, inheri 
 tors of her beauty, her energy, and her ambition, 
 66
 
 EDELWEISS. 67 
 
 were with the first who found those, then, far-off 
 shores. 
 
 "I have sent my son," she said to us, naming one 
 of them, " a dozen pairs of socks that I have knit for 
 him, and I sent an odd one, which, I wrote him, he 
 might return to me filled with gold." 
 
 And in those sons that mother's wish was fulfilled. 
 They held the wands wherewith some men conjure 
 wealth, and the children of many generations dwell in 
 ceiled houses. But among all their names, known in 
 marts of trade, seen on registers at the resorts of 
 fashion, not one is recognized, either by the public at 
 large, as philanthropist ; or, by those who know them 
 in private walks, as men of generous and kindly deeds. 
 Among them, sons, grandsons, all, not one is known 
 as philanthropist, scholar, or Christian. 
 
 Aye ! What a wealth of strength, and energy, and 
 fine capacity was there devoted to winning gold : win 
 ning it for its own sake, and with no thought of any 
 noble end. How different might it have been had 
 that mother, as her gallant sons went forth, asked, 
 wished, prayed that her sons might bring home to her 
 that for which the German mother asked the Edel 
 weiss. 
 
 And there was another mother, in homely guise, of 
 whom we have been told by one, who has lately and 
 forever laid down his gifted and consecrated pen, who, 
 when her wild, reckless boys were at their revels, 
 plead with God for their salvation : k ' Constant con 
 stant constant. When they're startin' out, an' when 
 they come home roarin' drunk ; when they're bias-
 
 68 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 phemin', and when they're sleepin'. Sleepin' ? Yes, 
 when them boys great, big, grown men now are 
 sleepin' in the other room, I often an' often steals in 
 an' kneels by their bedside sleepin' so peaceful 'minds 
 me of when they was babes an' children. I like to be 
 near 'em, touchin' 'em while I pray. This one Lord, 
 I say, or this one only me to pray for them, Lord! 
 O, if it be possible ! And behind the butter-beans, 
 too ! Seems to me the Lord must hear !" And the 
 Lord harkened and head her pleadings, and the mother 
 saw her sons clothed and in their right minds. 
 
 It is, for the most part, what we ardently wish for, 
 that is given to us ; what we steadily look to as a goal 
 for ourselves, or for those over whom we have an in 
 fluence, that is reached. We may not attain to that 
 which we wish to be in our best moments, in moments 
 of high enthusiasm, but we may reach to that which 
 we uniformly wish to be ; what we are willing to 
 deny ourselves for the sake of being ; what we are 
 willing that our friends and those we love best should 
 blame us for, it we feel sure in our own consciences 
 that we are following the voice of the Great Shepherd. 
 
 In the glitter of the world, in the pride of life, amid 
 the allurements of beauty, and the songs of sirens, 
 may the words which the Psalmist pronounced of those 
 who " lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and 
 tempted God in the desert," never be spoken of any 
 one of us. "He gave them their request; but sent 
 leanness into their soul." 
 
 Happiest he, who stretches his hand most eagerly
 
 EDELWEISS. 69 
 
 for the Edelweiss; who longs most for "whatsoever 
 things are true, whatsoever things are honest, what 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things 
 are of good report."
 
 HENRY MARTYN. 
 
 TT is an old forgotten book, laid away almost with 
 centennials, its pages time-stained and lonesome 
 looking, but it contains that "eternal sap" which 
 keeps for ever green, like the leaves of that tree which 
 John saw in vision, and which was given for the heal 
 ing of the nations. 
 
 Henry Martyn was born in Truro, among the rocks 
 of Cornwall, in 1781. His father, Mr. John Martyn, 
 was a laborer in the famous mines of that region ; but 
 by improving every hour saved from toil in the acqui 
 sition of useful knowledge, and by a force of character 
 like that by which Hastings recovered his ancestral 
 domains, he soon placed himself in a very different 
 and more lucrative situation. Understanding the value 
 of education, he provided for his son the best that 
 England afforded. At the age of eighteen young 
 Martyn entered the University of Cambridge. The 
 advantages which he there received were rather the 
 result of his father's efforts and anxiety than of any 
 exertion of his own. He had much talent, but his 
 earnest wish to improve seemed to spring mainly from 
 the desire to please his father. The very sudden 
 death of that father was blessed to his conversion. 
 "While I mourned the loss of an earthly parent," he 
 70
 
 HENRY MARTYN. 7 1 
 
 said, " the angels in heaven were rejoicing at my 
 being so soon to find an heavenly one." 
 
 The influence which turned his mind to the work of 
 a missionary was, to a large extent, wafted from 
 American shores. The reading of the life of David 
 Brainard, and the "apostolical zeal and success" with 
 which he labored among the North American Indians, 
 first called his attention to the work of missions, and 
 filled his soul with "a holy emulation of that extraor 
 dinary man." From an overpowering sense of obli 
 gation and love to the Saviour, after an intense conflict 
 of soul, he resolved to obey that Saviour's last com 
 mand. On the altar of Christian devotion he laid all 
 that he held dearest, his country, beloved relatives, 
 and one so strangely dear to him that he never trusts 
 himself to utter her name, except as "the person 
 dearest to me upon earth." To be a missionary at 
 that time, and especially for a member of the estab 
 lished church, was almost a new thing. Before leav 
 ing England, friends obtained for him the situation of 
 chaplain of the East India- Company, it appearing 
 " peculiarly eligible, as offering singular facilities for 
 missionary exertions amongst millions of idolaters." 
 He did not wait to leave the shores of England to do 
 " the work of an evangelist," but labored earnestly, 
 especially among the poor, the dying, and the friend 
 less, to bring souls to Christ. 
 
 On his way to Portsmouth, whence he was to sail 
 for India, his mental sufferings were so acute that " he 
 fainted and fell into a convulsion fit." " My heart," 
 he says, "was sometimes ready to break with agony."
 
 72 GATHERED -WAIFS. 
 
 He went forth to preach the gospel to the heathen, 
 and it was his fixed resolution to live and die amongst 
 them. When he left England, he left it wholly for 
 Christ's sake, and he left it forever. He was then 
 twenty-four years of age, and, had his purpose been a 
 worldly one, his position as chaplain of the East India 
 Company was most eligible. But, in accepting it, he 
 turned away from all he held dearest. More precious 
 to his heart would have been the humblest home 
 among the rocks of Cornwall than the proudest palace 
 in India. It was nine months from the time he left 
 England before he reached his destination. The voy 
 age had been crowded with incidents. At Cape Town 
 troops were landed from their ship, and a battle en 
 sued. Six miles he marched over the burning sands 
 to the fatal field, and ministered to the dying ; and 
 wherever the ship anchored and on board of the ship, 
 he ever sought to work for the Master. In his work, 
 too, he had found consolation. Jesus had walked on 
 the waves of his soul, and had said, " Peace, be still." 
 In March, 1808, after a residence of less than three 
 years in India, he completed the " great work for 
 which in the ages yet to come myriads will gratefully 
 remember and revere the name of Marty n, the ver 
 sion of the New Testament into Hindoostanee." At 
 the close of 1809, he commenced his public ministra 
 tions to the heathen. As chaplain of the East India 
 Company, he had performed with singular fidelity the 
 duties of his position ; on field and in hospital, with 
 officer and soldier, he was ever breaking the bi'ead of 
 life and offering water from the wells of salvation.
 
 HENRY MARTYN. 73 
 
 He preached to the lowest class of the heathen, while 
 he labored still for his regiment and his " little flock 
 of Europeans." To a beloved fellow-missionary he 
 writes: " We are shepherds keeping watch over our 
 flocks by night. If we fall asleep, what is to become 
 of them ! " 
 
 Unremitted labors and an enervating climate act 
 ing upon a delicate constitution, forced him to leave 
 Cawnpore, where his regiment was stationed. For 
 the last time he preached to the natives, telling them 
 of Jesus, and exhorting them to believe on him. Mrs. 
 Sherwood, author of the once well-known story of 
 " Little Henry and his Bearer," was one of those who 
 listened to his last sermon to his English friends. She 
 says: "He seemed as one inspired from on high. 
 Never was an audience more affected. The next day 
 this holy and heavenly man left Cawnpore, and the 
 society of many who sincerely loved and admired him. 
 He left us with little hope of seeing him again, until, 
 by the mercy of our Saviour, we meet with him in 
 our Father's house." 
 
 He sailed down the Ganges still scattering the eternal 
 seed, and after reaching Calcutta, though with a feeble 
 voice, continued telling the story of Jesus and his cross. 
 Not long after he went to Arabia, partly in pursuit of 
 health. "I now pass" he writes, "from India to Arabia 
 not knowing the things which shall befall me there, but 
 assured that an ever faithful God and Saviour will be 
 with me in all places whithersoever I go." For a year 
 he dwelt in Shiraz, Persia, and, being endowed with 
 remarkable aptitude in the acquisition of languages,
 
 74 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 in that time translated the New Testament into Per 
 sian. Martyn had hoped to present his translation in 
 person to the King of Persia, but was prevented by 
 dangerous and prostrating sickness. The English 
 ambassador, however, promised that he would present 
 it. Accordingly, it was laid before the King, who 
 publicly approved of it, carried the manuscript to St. 
 Petersburgh, where it was printed and put into circu 
 lation. Joyfully he says: " The way of the kings of 
 the East is preparing. . . The Persians also will 
 probably take the lead in the march to Zion." Thus 
 he went forth, telling to Arabians, to Medes and Per 
 sians, to Mohammedans and Jews, the wonderful 
 things of God. And in his work he received exceed 
 ing joy, nearness in communion with his God, and a 
 peculiarly sweet delight in the companionship of 
 friends, whether among clergymen, in the army, or 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Hoping for the restoration of his health, and think 
 ing to return to England, Martyn commenced the long 
 journey from Shiraz to Constantinople. It was 
 through the land of ancient story, a way deeply inter 
 esting to him as a scholar and a Christian. There 
 was Persepolis, there was the "garden enclosed," 
 there was Ararat. But in that journey his sufferings 
 from fever, heat and deprivation, were too great to 
 allow him little more than a consciousness of the 
 regions through which he was passing. It was not 
 from beautiful scenery or classic memories that his 
 heart received consolation ; but he saw a better coun 
 try, " even an heavenly ;" he remembered the story of
 
 HENRY MARTY N. 75 
 
 the cross, and knew that for him thei'e was a better 
 home and a dearer friend than earth had ever given. 
 Attended by a hard, merciless Turk, Hassan byname, 
 he had reached Tocat in Turkey, where, sinking 
 under the weight of accumulated sufferings, or, as 
 some thought, from the plague which was raging 
 there, he died Oct. 16, 1812, not quite completing his 
 thirty-second year. 
 
 Great has been the harvest, and not yet all gathered, 
 which has sprung from the seed sown by Henry Mar 
 ty n. His preaching, his translations of the Scriptures, 
 and his example, are still bearing fruit.
 
 THE ELDER'S HOME. 
 
 It mav be a sound 
 
 A tone of music summer's eve or spring 
 A flower the wind the ocean which shall wound, 
 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound. 
 
 Byron. 
 " Awake but one and, lo ! what myriads rise ! " 
 
 r I ^HERE are scenes and places that lie in the mern- 
 ory, dim like a landscape in the haze, or the sea 
 seen through the mist : memories so faint, that we 
 half count them among our dreams, or stories read 
 long ago. So to us appears a good old man of whom 
 we were reminded in finding, as we thought, a strong 
 resemblance to him in the engraving of a likeness of 
 Thomas Jefferson, taken in his old age. He was a 
 pioneer Baptist of New England, " Elder Henry 
 Smith ; " and the notices of his death in the time- 
 stained " Minutes of the York Association," of more 
 than forty years ago, read with the ring of truth ; the 
 church call him "their aged, beloved and faithful 
 pastor; " the ministers " resolve." " that we sincerely 
 feel the loss we have sustained in the death of our 
 aged and venerable father and brother, Rev. Henry 
 Smith, who was one of the little band that cherished 
 this Association in its infancy, has been a firm pillar 
 and supporter of its interests about half a century, . . . 
 
 76
 
 THE ELDER'S HOME. 77 
 
 faithfully and ably preached and defended the doctrines 
 and ordinances of the cross as they were first delivered 
 to the saints, and has been a successful pastor of an 
 affectionate and grateful church many years." 
 
 There are legends of his gentleness, and of his 
 firmness as well. The " Shakers" the original 
 " Spiritualists" were dwellers near his home, and in 
 his youth, thinking they perceived in him a yielding 
 spirit, made some effort to bring him into their faith. 
 One of them said to him, " Henry, your mother ap 
 peared to me last night and said, ' Go to Henry and 
 tell him I wish him to unite with your people.' " 
 " The next time she comes," said he, readily, " tell 
 her I shall do no such thing." 
 
 He had no salary, no presents, only that the black 
 smith used to shoe his horse for nothing. Verily, 
 " without money and without price," he broke unto his 
 people the bread of life. The memory and the tradi 
 tions of the good are fragrant and long lasting. The 
 favorite perfume of the Empress Josephine is said still 
 to linger in the palace where she dwelt ; but the memory 
 and the influence of the good are immortal, and will 
 live when the walls of Malmaison have long crumbled 
 into dust. 
 
 With the pictured face, there comes the " Elder's" 
 fair home the farm, which his own hands tilled. A 
 grove of white oaks reared their stately heads on an 
 ascending slope in the rear of the house, and there 
 was a great ledge of smooth rock, which was beauti 
 ful to lie down upon, while the sun glinted through 
 the leaves of the oaks and across the tops of the firs,
 
 7 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 whose roots lay below, at the foot of the ledge. And 
 there were " ivory leaves" and plums and wild honey 
 suckles growing there, which made a paradise for a 
 child ; and breezes laden with their fragrance, touched 
 cheek and brow, on which neither care nor sorrow 
 had made its writing. 
 
 Near the edge of the wood, where, in the afternoon, 
 the open sunshine fell, there was one large stump 
 where we always sat down to rest, or paused, and 
 thought of the lofty trunk it had once supported. It 
 had a story of its own a story which broken hearts 
 never forgot. It was the mainmast of the ship " Isa- 
 dore," which, one December afternoon, almost forty 
 years ago, for the first time left her moorings, and that 
 same night laid her stately mainmast, and all the tim 
 bers that seemed so staunch, and the frozen bodies of 
 fourteen men all who sailed in her broken among 
 the cliffs of "Bald Head." 
 
 And then, we remembered the funeral, the old-fash 
 ioned meeting-house and the old-fashioned minister. 
 We remember, he said, " they met the storm, and 
 they met it to win its fury." And there was one 
 among the mourners who there mourned his only son ; 
 and, as he passed along the aisle to follow him and 
 others to their graves, he turned, and with a beseech 
 ing look to the congregation said, " My friends, this is 
 very hard for a poor old man to bear." That old stump 
 brought it all : the ship, that seemed so gallant ; the 
 men, most of them in the strength of young manhood; 
 and that grief-stricken old man, long since gone home
 
 THE ELDERS HOME. 79 
 
 to the Saviour whom he loved, and in whom he 
 trusted. 
 
 In front of the dwelling lay a bright, sunny lake. 
 They called it pond perhaps lake seemed pretentious ; 
 and then, " pond lilies" grew there. Again, in a frail 
 boat, we cross those deep, quiet waters. And beside 
 us is he my brother in the first glow of his young, 
 beautiful manhood, loving and strong, good and true. 
 
 Soon we ascend a hill, and come to the " Shaker 
 Settlement," and stand beside a newly digged grave, 
 with sides irregular and all caving in, and he turns, 
 and, in tones so low that our guide might not hear, 
 whispers: "Wretched barbarians, who know not 
 how to dig a grave," words spoken in imitation of 
 a Polish patriot, who, just before he fell, a victim to 
 Russian vengeance, looked into the ill-made grave 
 prepared for him, and uttered that expression of con 
 tempt again we feel " the touch of a vanished hand, 
 and hear the sound of a voice that is still." 
 
 Between the dwelling-house and the lake, enclosed 
 from the meadow where the meek-eyed cows grazed, 
 was a square of land where the dead lay. The earlier 
 graves had headstones, "home-made" smooth-faced 
 rocks with chiseled inscriptions, some of which told 
 of the old faith, " old and beautiful as the stars," or 
 the everlasting hills. And here, among his kindred 
 and his flock, was made the aged minister's grave 
 when he went to that heavenly home, 
 
 " Where tired feet, with sandals loose, may rest."
 
 A REMINISCENCE. 
 
 Days, weeks, and months but seem 
 
 The recollection of a dream, 
 
 So still we glide down to the sea 
 
 Of fathomless Eternity. Marmion. 
 
 "\ 1 7E are looking from our west far back where the 
 sun shone so brightly on our eastern morn 
 ing. It is more than twice twenty years since we 
 spent a beautiful month among the hills of New 
 Hampton. We have not seen them since, but we can 
 close our eyes, and look again upon those hills and see 
 the bright river flowing near. 
 
 With the love for rambling which belongs to early 
 years, we wander to the river and step warily from 
 rock to rock till we sit amid the stream glad young 
 girls, and one exceeding fair with life in its beauty 
 spread before us. Or, where the tall, dark pines are 
 growing and a brook gurgling through, we walk with 
 slow step beside another, and talk more seriously, 
 dwelling on life's realities. She, with her dark, bright 
 face full of energy and earnest purpose, has long been 
 a dweller in an Asiatic city, where, we doubt not, she 
 sheds the light of a cultivated intellect and a pure 
 Christian character over its benighted people. 
 
 Every Sunday, during our stay among the hills, a 
 long walk brought us to the meeting-house, an old, 
 80
 
 A REMINISCENCE. 8 1 
 
 unsightly structure with, we think, un-cushioned 
 seats and un-carpeted floor. But from its uncouth 
 pulpit, Sabbath after Sabbath, we listened to the 
 preaching of that saintly and gifted man of God, 
 John N. Brown. His gentle beauty, rare polish, 
 poetic gift, and wide-spread scholarship, added to his 
 deep, earnest Christian character, would have honored 
 any pulpit in the land. But he was one who seemed 
 to have risen above ambition and desire for earthly 
 good as the bird of paradise rises above the region of 
 darkness and of storm. The fine face, the beautiful 
 polish of manner, and the poetic gift were the endow 
 ments of nature. Learning he loved and lived on as 
 his daily food ; and all his gifts, like the shepherds 
 who followed the star, he "laid at the Redeemer's 
 feet." 
 
 His wife she so strong and brilliant, with her raven 
 hair and lustrous eyes was a wonderful supplement to 
 him ; a help-meet indeed, aiding in intellectual pursuits, 
 helping largely in his " Encyclopedia of Religious 
 Knowledge," but, especially, bearing for him the cares 
 and burdens of daily life. Loving him greatly, but 
 with an affection which, from need, was rather a sus 
 taining than a clinging love. 
 
 We remember the little white house where they 
 dwelt ; full, though God had never given them chil 
 dren of their own, full to overflowing, with young life. 
 Among them was one happy girl, taken, when but a 
 few months old, from a home of wretchedness and 
 nurtured as their own. Opening a book of hers one 
 day, on the fly leaf we found, written in a clear, open
 
 82 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 hand, the words, " Louise, from her own father." 
 More than all the others, they called her their very 
 own, because in the wide world she had only them to 
 care for and to love her ; and when borne to an early 
 grave no other parents mourned her loss. 
 
 It was a marvel to all how much good in their quiet, 
 independent, unobtrusive way was accomplished by 
 that noble and gifted man and woman. One who 
 knew them well and loved them much and was often 
 in their home, entering one day, found Mrs. Brown sit 
 ting in a litter of straw and braiding with swift fingers. 
 "What are you doing, Mrs. Brown?" was the excla 
 mation. "Well," said she, "Mr. Brown has just 
 subscribed twenty dollars for (naming some mission) 
 and he has not so much in all the world ; and so I 
 have learned to braid straw and make hats, and Mr. 
 Burpee at the village store has engaged to buy them 
 of me." 
 
 She did not complain never thought of such a thing 
 for was it not an outcome of the sympathy and 
 interest of the noble, generous, yet unthinking, im 
 practicable being whom she so loved ! She asked no 
 one to help her out ; no one to share the burden and 
 care. He had himself pledged it; and, proud, inde 
 pendent, and honest to the core, he should not be cred 
 ited with anything that he did not do ; and she, alone, 
 was one with him. 
 
 While absent at the South, he wrote to his wife 
 letters of which any woman might well be proud, and 
 sometimes containing little poems, which probably, 
 never saw the light. One of these, held for the long
 
 A REMINISCENCE. 83 
 
 years in our keeping, we think too beautiful never to 
 be seen : 
 
 ON LOOKING AT MY WIFE'S MINIATURE. 
 
 Do I not love thee, vision of my soul ! 
 
 Whose pictured beauty now before me lies ; 
 With power my inmost feelings to control, 
 
 And draw deep tears of pleasure from my eyes ? 
 Thy rich, dark hair, in its luxuriant wreaths, 
 
 Thy polished forehead, throne of noble thought ! 
 Thy smiling lips, where sweet persuasion breathes, 
 
 And thy dark eyes, with night's deep beauty fraught! 
 
 Do I not love thee, Mary ! dearer far 
 
 Than when in youth, in love and beauty's pride 
 I wooed thee by the light of evening's star, 
 
 And thy voice promised to become my bride ? 
 Do I not love thee more to-day, far more, 
 
 Than when I clasped thy trembling hand in mine, 
 And by thy side stood up, with joy to pour 
 
 Love's mutual vow at Wedlock's holy shrine ? 
 
 Nigh twice nine summers since have passed away, 
 
 Some tender memories each to thought endears ; 
 And pure affection, nourished day by day, 
 
 Grows with our growth, and strengthens with our years. 
 Ah ! little know they of its holiest power, 
 
 Who talk of Love as but the Dream of youth ; 
 The Passion-flush, the Iris of the hour, 
 
 That fades before the touch of time and truth. 
 
 Far otherwise I find it. Love's calm glow 
 
 Sunlike shines on, gilding the stream of life ; 
 And as I gaze on thy dear face, I know 
 
 Earth has no name so dear as thine, My Wife ! 
 But thou art absent ! 'Tis not thou , my love, 
 
 'Tis but thine image on this ivory scroll ! 
 O when shall I see thee thyself and prove 
 
 How much I love thee, vision of my soul ?
 
 84 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 A wave of earthly ambition seems sometimes to 
 have passed over his mind, for in one of those letters 
 he writes ; ' ' Would that I could say to you what the 
 dying poet Monti said to his noble wife " Remember 
 that Monti cannot wholly die ! Think, O think ! I 
 leave thee dowered with no obscure, no vulgar name ! 
 for the day shall come, when among the matrons of 
 Italy it shall be thy boast to say : ' I was the love of 
 Monti.' " 
 
 But better and more enduring than all the fame of 
 the Italian poet, is the incense of grateful love from 
 many hearts, and the unfailing influence of a high 
 example. 
 
 The devoted wife outlived for many years the be 
 loved husband. Both have now entered into rest ; 
 have doubtless heard the Master's words, the "Inas 
 much ; " the " Well done."
 
 REV. OLIVER BARRON. 
 
 These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar 
 things suggestive of the voice, look, manner ; never, never more 
 to be encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a be 
 reavement. Dickens. 
 
 A NOTHER of the fathers has been called home ; 
 another laborer finished his "vintage task ;" an 
 other soldier won his field. 
 
 For years we had not seen " Elder Barren," for he 
 long ago removed to another State, but the notice of 
 his death renewed a youthful memory, brought vividly 
 back the bright, cheerful face, and frank kindly ways 
 of that honored man of God. 
 
 A minister of the type of Amos, he might have 
 said with that ancient seer, " I was no prophet, neither 
 was I a prophet's son, but J was a herdman, and a 
 gatherer of sycamore fruit ; and the Lord took me as 
 I followed the flock, and said to me : Go prophecy 
 unto my people Israel." As we sometimes pass the 
 cultivated plant unheeded, while the wild flower, or 
 the forest oak brings a joy, so sometimes we love to 
 meet the man of sense and intelligence, who has never 
 stepped within the shade of Academic walls ; whose 
 mind has not been trained in a " school of the proph 
 ets;" and it seemed to us that he might have lost 
 
 something of the originality, independence, and natur- 
 
 85
 
 86 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 alness of his style and manner, had he been " through 
 a course of instruction." But perhaps he himself 
 might have felt the want of early advantages, for he 
 was ever warmly interested in the cause of education, 
 and according to his means, gave with a liberal hand 
 to aid others in obtaining its advantages. 
 
 His parish was many miles from us, but matters of 
 business, or Sabbath exchanges, made him a frequent 
 guest at the hearthstone of our home ; and we remem 
 ber the cordiality with which he was welcomed by the 
 older members of the household, and how wide our 
 childish hearts opened to receive him; for he was one 
 who kept his heart young, whose youth lived not alone 
 in memory, but seemed transferred to the feelings and 
 enjoyments of other generations. With the intuition 
 of youth, we knew that his interested manner was not 
 put on to win influence, or steal our hearts, but that 
 it emanated from him naturally as the morning song 
 from the birds. His cheerfulness could not have been 
 that which sometimes rises to the surface of a great 
 sorrow ; it had a lightness, grace and beauty not to be 
 found where shadows fall. 
 
 He was possessed of that rare power of touching 
 secret springs of feeling ; gaining confidence, we 
 know not how. A power which seems most like the 
 gift supposed to belong to the diviner, in whose hand 
 the twig bends above water springs, or the witch-hazel 
 betrays the place where treasure lies hidden. 
 
 In thinking of him, we call to mind one sweltering 
 Sabbath day in summer, when as he was preaching, 
 he stopped in his sermon, drew off his coat, and lay-
 
 REV. OLIVER BARRON. 87 
 
 ing it beside him, repeated in a quiet unaffected way, 
 " the Lord desireth mercy, and not sacrifice," and 
 continued his discourse. And this he did so naturally, 
 so unconsciously, that no one felt his sense of pro 
 priety offended. 
 
 A man full of impulse, warmth and earnestness, he 
 never failed to express his views of religious doctrine, 
 or of political opinion with unequivocal openness. 
 He knew that as the minister of an everlasting Gospel, 
 none had a better right than he to be a man. And 
 yet so frank, so true, with his " heart upon his sleeve," 
 even those with opposing views never seemed to love 
 him less. 
 
 His salary never could have been thought large, but 
 he always seemed satisfied with it, and never ap 
 peared to think, that the difference between it and 
 the largest income of any man in his parish, was 
 something out of which he was wronged. And often 
 as we have listened to him in the freedom of familiar 
 conversation, we never heard him complain of any 
 one, or betray a particle of envious or jealous feeling. 
 
 Generous and noble-spirited, his soul yet craved a 
 portion of the blessing which saith, "It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive ;" and, with a liberal 
 hand, as God prospered him, he gave to every benev 
 olent or religious object which came before him. To 
 his friends, to the people of his charge, to all who 
 came within the sphere of his influence, he manifested 
 an unaffected sympathy. He dealt largely in the 
 " small passing civilities the decimal coinage of daily 
 life ; " that which costs so little, which gives so much.
 
 05 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 And now his true, joyous spirit has departed. He 
 has gone to that Saviour to whom he early gave his 
 heart, and at whose altar he loved to serve. He is 
 doubtless resting "among the sheaves" which God 
 gave him. 
 
 We know little of his life ; and of his death have 
 learned nothing but the simple record: "In Wood 
 stock, N. H., August 29th, Elder Oliver Barron, 77. 
 He was injured from the fall of a tree the 26th, and 
 died the 29th. Although death came suddenly, it 
 found him prepared for the summons." But we trust 
 that some " In Memoriam" of him may be prepared, 
 that his name may not be forgotten ; and that the fra 
 grance of his memory may be preserved in the denom 
 ination which he loved and served so well.
 
 THE PHANTOM WITNESS. 
 
 TT was afternoon in April April with its changing 
 light and shade, its sunshine and its rain and 
 its fitful light shone cheerlully in the many happy 
 homes of Devonshire. 
 
 In one such home, surrounded by comfort and 
 beauty, was seated a lady of about thirty-five. She 
 was a woman of most pleasing appearance. There 
 was something about her that at once imparted the 
 idea of strength of character, honesty of purpose and 
 gentleness of disposition. Seated near her and en 
 gaged on the same piece of embroidery was her step 
 daughter a girl of nineteen. 
 
 It was a fair picture : the mother with her 
 commanding presence, her dark complexion and large 
 deep blue eyes and almost black hair ; and the young 
 girl the very personification of the Saxon fair, 
 with sunny eyes and light, wavy hair, and the look of 
 trusting love which ever and anon she turned upon her 
 mother, showed that she loved and was beloved even 
 as she might have been by her that bore her. 
 
 Emily Harcouit had gone to the widowed home of" 
 her husband with a heart full of love for his orphan 
 child, not only because it was his child, but also that 
 the mother of the little girl had been the chosen friend 
 
 89
 
 9O GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 of her youth ; and with all the warmth, the clinging 
 love of a childish heart, did Mary Wilde return that 
 affection, and as years passed on, strove by many an 
 act of kindness and of cai*e to her little half brother and 
 sister, to repay in some measure the debt of gratitude 
 she owed their mother. 
 
 "It is William, mother," said the young girl, as a 
 shadow passed the window and a step was heard in 
 the hall, and joy circled her sunny eyes but the 
 mother's look was very grave though kind. 
 
 William Burton was certainly handsome enough to 
 make a young girl's heart beat quick, and her cheek 
 flush with a deeper glow, and hers especially, to whom 
 he had professed his love. 
 
 With fine form and features faultless, his dark hair 
 curling about his white temples, his eyes large and 
 bright, and his winning smile revealing teeth perfect 
 in form and whiteness, no wonder that he had won a 
 young girl's heart. 
 
 But those large eyes, so dark and bright, too often 
 shone with such a light as that a fallen angel's might 
 have had, and the expression of that winning smile 
 would change to a look clouded and sinister. But this 
 the girl never noted. She only thought that William's 
 smile was beautiful, and knew that she was happiest in 
 its light. 
 
 The father, too, was pleased at the thought of hav 
 ing the handsome and enterprising Burton for a son- 
 in-law ; but the mother had from the beginning shrunk 
 from him with an indefinable dread, perhaps the
 
 THE PHANTOM WITNESS. 9! 
 
 deeper and the sadder because it was so ill substan 
 tiated. 
 
 Burton had inherited from his maternal grandfather 
 an estate lying a few miles from Tiverton, and it was 
 in his brief and occasional visits to this estate that he 
 had made the acquaintance of Mary Wilde. 
 
 To her husband Mrs. Wilde had unhesitatingly 
 spoken of her aversion, her half dread of young 
 Burton, and had expressed a belief that mercenary 
 motives were influencing him in regard to Mary, since 
 she had received from her mother a considerable 
 fortune. But Mr. Wilde, well satisfied both with the 
 appearance and position of Burton, regarded his wife's 
 feelings of suspicion as wholly uncalled for, and 
 thought' them so entirely unfounded that Mrs. Wilde 
 had ceased to speak of a want of confidence for which 
 she could give no definite reason. 
 
 As the marriage day drew near, her feeling of dread 
 the presentiment of evil rendered her absolutely 
 melancholy, although she made every suitable prepa 
 ration for the festivities .of the occasion, and en 
 deavored to appear cheerful and happy. 
 
 There was nothing on that bridal morning that 
 seemed portentous of evil ; no dark cloud in the sky, 
 no threatening storm, no blight upon the flowers that 
 were scattered in the way, and no sudden faltering in 
 the voice that pronounced the mystic words of the 
 marriage ceremony. The sunbeams shone upon the 
 stained glass of the church, and painted with its vary 
 ing tints the long aisles and marble slabs, hiding with 
 its uncertain light the ravages of time on the brow of
 
 93 GATHERKD WAIFS. 
 
 the aged, and lending a richer glow to the fairness of 
 youth, while they seemed to fall with a brighter light 
 where Burton stood in his bold, strong beauty, and 
 Maiy in the trustingness of her love. 
 
 Was it not a morbid fancy that would dream of 
 anything bvit happiness on that morning, with its 
 glorious flood of light shining on so much youth and 
 beauty? And Mrs. Wilde began to reason that all 
 must be well, and accused herself of morbidness, even 
 when that presentiment of evil had taken the strong 
 est possession of her. 
 
 London was to be the future home of Burton and 
 his bride, and immediately after the marriage they left 
 in a one horse carriage for that great metropolis. 
 
 A year passed away, and April came again. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Wilde had occasionally received letters from 
 Mary, but, though the father noted nothing of the 
 kind, Mrs. Wilde continually spoke of a constraint and 
 lack of freshness in her letters which seemed most 
 unlike the freedom and frankness that had ever marked 
 her character. They all appeared as if coined in the 
 brain alone, there were no little home incidents 
 no bubblings from the heart; and Mrs. Wilde an 
 swered them with forced cheerlulness and a heart full 
 of a strange pity. 
 
 "I know," said Mrs. Wilde to her husband one 
 evening after a late return from business, "I know 
 that you have little sympathy in my boding thoughts 
 lor our poor Mary ; but to-night as I sat here alone, it 
 is true with thoughts full of sadness and foreboding on 
 her account, suddenly it seemed to me as though her
 
 THE PHANTOM WITNESS. 
 
 93 
 
 presence filled the room, and as I raised my eye 
 toward the entrance, she stood there just as she looked 
 on the morning of her marriage, save that she was 
 deadly pale, and that the smile that played around her 
 mouth and the light that circled her eyes was very 
 sad. Her wreath of orange flowers too was broken 
 and partly torn from her hair, and her white robe was 
 all stained with blood which was still trickling from 
 her side, while she raised her arm and pointed toward 
 the old Burton mansion, and then her eyes met mine 
 with an imploring gaze. I know you think I was 
 dreaming, but surely it was no dream; it was a com 
 munication sent me from the world of spirits, telling 
 me that our poor Mary is murdered." 
 
 The next morning, to gratify his wife's entreaties 
 and with the hope of removing the strange idiosyncrasy 
 which seemed to have taken possession of her mind, 
 Mr. Wilde went with her, accompanied by two work 
 men to whom he had imparted his purpose, towards 
 the Burton estate. 
 
 As they approached an old, ruined summer-house, 
 Mrs. Wilde suddenly paused, and turning deadly pale, 
 said, "I believe it is here." 
 
 The men listlessly proceeded to the work which 
 appeared so idle and vain, while Mr. Wilde regarded 
 them with painful indifference, and his wife looked on 
 with an expression of agonized suspense. Raising a 
 board in the last layer of the floor, the workmen started 
 as they saw the soiled end of a ribbon, another board 
 was raised, and there lay Mary, her fair hair still floating 
 around her, though her sweet features only told of the
 
 94 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 earth mould and the worm. Her white bonnet, worn 
 for the first time on the morning of that fatal marriage, 
 lay near her, and the wedding ring still circled her 
 skeleton finger. 
 
 Then the strong man bowed himself, and a burden 
 was laid upon that father's heart too heavy for passing 
 years ever to remove; while as the mother saw the 
 realization of her dread forebodings, she turned away 
 with a heart scarce sadder or more certain of evil than 
 when that fair girl left her home a bride. 
 
 Was this a home for crime? Would it turn away 
 from the lanes and alleys, from the dark and loathsome 
 cellars, or from the gorgeous saloons of the gambler 
 and drunkard, and come to this suburban cottage 
 home, with its jasmines and roses, its air of taste, 
 elegance and refinement scattered everywhere ; and the 
 fairy child a girl so beautiful resting in a fair 
 mother's arms. And there was Burton, so bold, so 
 handsome, and alas ! so bad. 
 
 As the officers of justice came upon him, he had just 
 entered the room, and leaning his hands on the back 
 of a chair, was regarding with a look of fond affection 
 his wife and child. 
 
 Could crime darken a picture so fair? Even those 
 stern men, so used to the deceptive forms of guilt, 
 started back as though it were impossible that a crimi 
 nal could form one in a tableau so touching. But the 
 evidences were too strong against him, and Burton 
 was made a prisoner. 
 
 His wife, innocent and unsuspecting of his crime,
 
 THE PHANTOM WITNESS. 95 
 
 had loved him with a sincere devotion, and had little 
 dreamed on her marriage day that the hand that so 
 fondly held her own was scarce washed from the 
 blood of a victim as full of hope and beauty as herself, 
 and that many of his wedding gifts to her had been 
 purchased with the gold he had so coveted. 
 
 But hers was a fate to be deplored with even greater 
 bitterness than was that of Mary Wilde, for Mary had 
 died, as the confessions of Burton revealed, unconscious 
 that it was his hand that had dealt the fatal blow ; while 
 she lived to see the husband she had loved a condemned 
 felon, and even her innocent babe looked on with sup 
 pressed horror as the child of a murderer.
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
 They kept the even tenor of their way. 
 
 Gray. 
 
 you think it is time for Richard to be 
 here, mother?" said Margaret Manning, as she 
 dropped upon the spindle the yarn that she was spin 
 ning, and walking to the window, looked earnestly 
 along the path that led to the cottage. 
 
 " He will soon be here, for it is nearly six o'clock," 
 replied her mother, laying down the cards with which 
 she was preparing rolls for her daughter to spin, and 
 picking up the broken brands beneath the tea-kettle, 
 that hung on the crane in the huge fire-place. 
 
 Their home the brown gable-roofed cottage 
 was situated on an eminence in a wild, hilly tract of 
 country, on the sea-coast of Maine. The morning 
 sun rose from out the mighty ocean, and set at even 
 ing behind rugged hills covered with pines and firs. 
 Dwelling houses were sparsely scattered over the 
 region, and not even one could be seen from Mrs. 
 Manning's cottage, not so much because of distance as 
 of the intervening hills and woods. 
 
 Mrs. Manning had come with her young husband 
 from the " Province of Massachusetts Bay," twenty- 
 96
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 97 
 
 rive years before, and careful industry and patient toil 
 had reared for them their comfortable cottage, and 
 reclaimed from the waste their little farm. The early 
 advantages of Mrs. Manning had been of a superior 
 character, and it was necessary for her to bring into 
 exercise all the energies of a strong heart and culti 
 vated intellect, when she was left a widow with three 
 children, and no other resource than their rather 
 unproductive farm. 
 
 Robert, her oldest son, now twenty-three years of 
 age, was a person of energy, manliness and decision ; 
 and though but a boy of twelve at the time of his 
 father's death, he had at once assumed the almost 
 entire care and management of the farm. His char 
 acter early matured in the exercise of those faculties 
 which are seldom called into play in the midst of 
 affluence. The spirit and activity of boyhood were 
 not crushed or depressed in him, b'ut they were di 
 verted from their usual channels. Fishing, skating or 
 where hazel-nuts grew thickest, were no longer sub 
 jects of absorbing interest ; but he would listen with 
 eager and careful attention, whenever he heard the 
 neighboring farmers talking of the best time of sow 
 ing grain, planting vegetables, or cutting timber and 
 firewood ; and his mind thus became strong and 
 thoughtful, and he was early looked upon by all 
 around as a person of sound judgment, sterling sense 
 and much intelligence. 
 
 Richard, the youngest of the family, had from the 
 age of nine to sixteen, been an invalid ; and for this 
 reason had been able to gratify and cultivate an ear-
 
 98 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 nest thirst for study. The number of books that had 
 fallen into his hands had been limited, and therefore 
 the better mastered. He pored, and dreamed, and 
 thought over them, till he seemed to inhale their 
 essence, and incorporate them with his being. Books 
 of English study grammar, mathematics and history 
 their own cottage had afforded ; while their minister 
 a strange, silent old man had always been ready to 
 lend him what few books his library furnished, and 
 had been to him a kind and able instructor. But 
 " Shakspeare," "Pilgrim's Progress," and the works 
 of Swift, were almost the only books of recreation 
 that had fallen into the boy's hands, and on this strong 
 food the powers of his young mind expanded ; while 
 his interest and, as far as he was able, participation in 
 the cares and labors of, the family, imparted to him an 
 early character of thought and energy. 
 
 Margaret was one year the senior of Richard, and 
 from his having been so much confined by sickness, 
 had been his constant companion. There was be 
 tween them a beautiful sympathy of mind and heart 
 a consciousness as it were of each other, derived not 
 so much from words, or direct communication, as 
 from a sort of intuition. They possessed the same 
 strong and delicate feelings, and the same deep and 
 absorbing sense of the beautiful, whether found in the 
 pages of the poet, or seen in the sunshine and shade 
 of the actual \vorld. 
 
 Beauty and Genius ! As often does it dwell at the 
 cottage hearth as in the princely halls of affluence ; 
 and it seems to spring in greater strength, and more
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 99 
 
 perfect loveliness, through the stubborn soil of poverty, 
 than when surrounded by the fostering care of wealth. 
 The aspiration is higher, the struggle deeper, the suc 
 cess more glorious. 
 
 For more than two years, Richard had been in the 
 employ of a mercantile firm in the town of Ports 
 mouth, ten miles distant. He had entered upon his 
 new duties with the earnestness and ability consistent 
 with his character, and, perhaps, the more eagerly, 
 that during the years in which he had been an invalid, 
 the idea of his inability to share in the labors of his 
 brother, had constituted his one trouble. 
 
 Walter Hayne, the only son of their nearest neigh 
 bor, whose house, however, was three-quarters of a 
 mile distant, was employed in the same firm with 
 young Manning, and they "took turns" in visiting 
 their homes, each coming every alternate Saturday, 
 and returning on Monday. 
 
 It was now the evening for Richard's return, and 
 the hour had long past, at which he usually reached 
 the cottage. The shadows deepened around, and the 
 firelight gleamed more brightly. It was a home for 
 comfort : that broad stone hearth, the ample fire-place, 
 in which now a pitch wood torch, placed upright, 
 sent its bright, fitful gleams, and made the shadows 
 dance around the room ; and the little bright grains 
 that were mingled with the sand brought from the sea 
 shore, and scattered in tasteful figures over the white 
 oaken floor, glistened like tiny diamonds; while "the 
 pewter plates on the dresser caught and reflected the 
 flame, as shields of armies the sunshine." On the old
 
 IOO GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 fashioned round table, covered with a pure white 
 cloth, was spread the evening meal, ready for the 
 little family to partake, as soon as he arrived. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Maybe without a further thought, 
 
 It only pleased you thus to please, 
 And thus to kindly feelings wrought, 
 
 You measured not the sweet degrees ; 
 Yet, though you hardly understood 
 
 Where I was following at your call, 
 You might I dare to say you should 
 
 Have thought how far I had to fall. 
 
 Milnes. 
 
 It was one of the changing days of April, min 
 gling in its character the different seasons of the year. 
 Great patches of snow lay scattered among the brown 
 hills; the brooks leaped and gurgled beneath their 
 thin icy glazings, and the brown and withered leaves 
 of the preceding autumn, lay scattered beneath the 
 trees, whose buds were swelling for the leaves of an 
 other summer. The sunlight fell upon the sea, and 
 the foamy crests of the waves sparkled, as though 
 from their deep troughs they had caught up diamonds. 
 To the north, the faint blue of the White Mountains 
 was seen through the clear atmosphere, mingling with 
 the deeper blueness of the sky, where the light fleecy 
 clouds were floating like ships drifting upon a wave- 
 less sea ; while to the west, the tall pines and dark firs 
 seemed to set the landscape as in a frame-work. 
 
 Richard Manning stood there alone upon the shore 
 alone in the pride, the glory, and the happiness of
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. IOI 
 
 youth. The sea, the sunlight, the rugged hills, the 
 waving trees, and the ocean breeze, as it came up and 
 mingled with the strongly scented air, that swept 
 through the pines, all seemed to breathe into his soul, 
 that high enthusiasm, that thirsting for beauty and 
 truth, which is at once the hope and the prophecy of 
 youth. 
 
 It was to him one of those days that mark a life 
 time ; the emotions of which remain forever stamped 
 upon the soul fossilated, as it were, within the in 
 most recesses of the being and give form and 
 strength to every sentiment of love, and truth, and 
 beauty. 
 
 Manning had, through the recommendations of his 
 present employers, a few days before, received a 
 lucrative offer from a mercantile house in Boston, to 
 become its agent at Cadiz. It was proposed for him 
 to go at once to Boston, and make himself familiar 
 with the business to be entrusted to him, and then 
 proceed to Spain the ensuing September. He received 
 the proposal with the utmost pleasure, and would at 
 once have accepted it, had he not felt that there were 
 others than himself to consult. He therefore prom 
 ised to give his answer as soon as he should have 
 visited home, at the same time expressing his inclina 
 tion to accept the offer. 
 
 But it was not alone the thought of his family that 
 made him hesitate : he thought of another of Mabel 
 Grey the bright vision that had floated into his soul, 
 and tinged every purpose and feeling, like the blush-
 
 IO2 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 ing hue that touches the leaves of the white rose when 
 first they open to the sun. 
 
 Mabel Grey was indeed beautiful enough for a 
 poet's love ; and even a stranger could scarce have 
 looked into those soft brown eyes, and marked the 
 sunny brightness of the smile that played so often 
 about her sweet rosy mouth, without feeling toward 
 her a sense of irresistible attraction. Her manners, 
 too, were fascinating as her beauty ; and she had 
 received all the advantages of education and polish, 
 which her position, as the child of wealthy parents, 
 afforded. 
 
 Her home was in Boston ; but she had been in 
 Portsmouth for several months, on a visit to her 
 cousin, Mary Weston, to whom Walter Havne had 
 been for some time engaged. From being clerk in the 
 same house, as well as from much that was congenial 
 in character and disposition, a strong friendship had 
 sprung up between Hayne and young Manning. 
 Manning had sometimes called at Mr. Weston's with 
 his friend, and there he had first met Mabel Grey. 
 
 Every facility had been afforded to their intimacy : 
 and she had awakened in his soul all that love, of 
 which, a deep and earnest nature is capable; while 
 he rejoiced in the consciousness that his affection was 
 returned. He knew it from the increased brightness 
 of her smile, and the loving light that filled her eyes, 
 whenever he drew near her ; and he heard it, when, 
 in addressing him her voice murmured a softer ca 
 dence, than when she spoke to others. 
 
 The father of Walter Hayne, as we have said,
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 103 
 
 resided about a mile from the cottage of Manning's 
 mother ; and Mrs. Hayne, wishing to receive a visit 
 from Mary Weston previous to her marriage with her 
 son, had extended the invitation to Mabel Grey, partly 
 to supply her with a companion in their retired home, 
 and partly because she knew that Mary could not 
 otherwise well leave home, while Mabel was visiting 
 at her father's, and both of them were now spending 
 a few weeks at the fine old homestead of Mr. Hayne. 
 
 Of Mabel, young Manning thought, as he stood 
 there, upon the seashore ; and of every bright vision, 
 she formed a part. 
 
 Hitherto, he had felt that there had been little need 
 of words between them ; for both were young, and it 
 seemed to him, that their beautiful consciousness was 
 sweeter than words could make it. 
 
 Now, that he was about to form so important a 
 decision, involving his absence for several years, he 
 felt that she should be at once consulted ; and before 
 going to his mother's house he determined to call for 
 a while at Mr. Hayne's, that he might in words, ex 
 change with her the pledges of a love, which each 
 had silently acknowledged, and unfold to her all his 
 plans and purposes. 
 
 With eager step, a cheek flushed with strong emo 
 tion, and eyes radiant with the light of youth, and 
 hope, and love, he entered the dwelling. 
 
 He came out with pallid face, and his large eyes 
 looking cold and stony. 
 
 A few hours before, and he was a boy, bright and 
 joyous as the sunshine of spring; now, that which
 
 104 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 had made existence beautiful the ethereal essence of 
 joy had vanished, and might never more be gathered 
 to fall upon his heart. 
 
 Mabel had received him with that air of fondness 
 which left not a doubt of the success of his errand ; 
 and her voice lost none of its loving tones, as she told 
 him that she had long been engaged engaged, she 
 said, before she had ever had the happiness of know 
 ing him. 
 
 In the anguish and confusion of the moment, he 
 forgot, or heeded not, the way that led to his mother's 
 cottage ; but after wandering, he knew not where, he 
 at length reached it. 
 
 " Richard," exclaimed Mrs. Manning, marking, as 
 soon as he entered, his wild and haggard look, and the 
 paleness which the flickering light rendered the more 
 ghastly, "what has happened? are you ill?" 
 
 " I am well, quite well," he answered, in a hoarse, 
 constrained voice; and then, at once, made every 
 home inquiry with an appearance of usual interest. 
 
 Margaret, aware of her brother's feelings towards 
 Mabel Grey, immediately conceived that his strange 
 manner was somehow connected with her, and fore- 
 bore to make any remark which could possibly em 
 barrass him ; but before retiring to rest, she stole softly 
 into his room. 
 
 He was sitting silent and immovable in his chair, 
 and gazing fixedly on the lengthening wick of the 
 candle, that was burning on the table before him. 
 He heeded not the approach of his sister, nor turned 
 his eyes toward her, till, bending over him, she whis-
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 1 05 
 
 pered, " Is anything the matter with Mabel, dear 
 Richard?" 
 
 He started suddenly; then turning his head slowly 
 toward her, he looked up and said, " Mabel is soon to 
 be married to another. Do not talk of it, Margaret. 
 Good night." And they spoke of it no more ; save 
 that on the succeeding Sabbath afternoon, when lean 
 ing over his shoulder, she read on a scrap of paper 
 that was lying in a book which he held before him 
 these lines : 
 
 My boat is on a stormy sea, 
 
 The breakers wild are chasing me; 
 
 And rocks, and shoals, and sands are near 
 
 O, whither, whither shall I steer ! 
 
 She took the pencil from his hand and wrote 
 beneath them : 
 
 Look, there is a light 'mid darkness gleaming, 
 See, there is a star from Heaven beaming : 
 I know, I'm sure, that light will safely guide, 
 That star, it points beyond this whelming tide. 
 
 And with a look of sorrow that went to her heart, he 
 looked up and said, " the clouds are too heavy, I can 
 not see the stars through them." 
 
 A few months later, and Manning stood on the 
 deck of the vessel that bore him from his native land. 
 
 It is strange, the power of a breath of wind, a ray 
 of sunshine, a strain of music, or a gleam of beauty, 
 to awaken to high endeavor to revive forgotten 
 hopes.
 
 IO6 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 He leaned over the vessel's side, feeling that for 
 him life had no longer any purpose the wealth of 
 his affections had been frittered away his manhood 
 insulted. A breath of wind 'stirred the hair about his 
 temples ; he slowly raised his head, looked at the sea, 
 reflecting in its calm beauty the Tyrean colors of an 
 autumn sky. He removed his cap and as the light 
 breezes played upon his forehead and among his hair, 
 a new inspiration stole over him ; and he resolved 
 that however blighted to himself, his life to others 
 should not be a failure. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath." 
 
 It were hard to tell which is the happier those 
 hearts that are deep as mountain wells : whose even- 
 strong emotion becomes an ecstasy or an anguish, and 
 where love the one love of the heart, is strong as its 
 own fibres ; or those which are capable of no intensity 
 of feeling, and dream not of the depths which they 
 have never fathomed. 
 
 Mabel Grey was not, perhaps, really an evil-minded 
 woman, but there were no depths in her soul. Never 
 had she met with one whose society had been more 
 pleasing to her than young Manning's, or one for 
 whom she had exerted more her powers of fascina 
 tion ; and yet she had no purpose to injure him 
 permanently, nor would she have done so, even for a 
 brief period, had not her own pleasure and vanity 
 been concerned.
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 107 
 
 She kept her engagement to another, neither 
 from love or truthfulness, but because it secured the 
 wealth and luxury, which, she well knew, the bride 
 of Manning must, at least, for a long time forego. 
 
 Receiving a love as light and volatile as that she 
 gave, she married married as thousands,, as ten 
 thousands marry everywhere. Both were pleased, 
 and the world said, it was a " good match." And 
 when, after a union of several years, death made her 
 a widow, for a few days she seemed inconsolable, 
 and then her tears were dried, and she never thought 
 to weep more. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Like a still serpent, basking in the sun, *~ 
 With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold, 
 Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won 
 A coil upon her victims fold on fold, 
 She wove around them with her graceful wiles, 
 Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles." 
 
 Dwelling in the beautiful home of his childhood, 
 Walter Hayne had been for many years married to 
 his early choice Mary Weston, when they received 
 a visit from their widowed cousin Mabel. They wel 
 comed her to their home, and saw no serpent coiled 
 at their feet; no "shrinking Mimosa" closing its 
 leaves " at the hoof-beats of fate." 
 
 Mrs. Hayne was a woman of open and unsuspi 
 cious temper, and thought as little, when engaged in 
 domestic affairs, of leaving Mabel to be entertained 
 by her husband, as she would have done of leaving
 
 IO8 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 her to listen to the prattle of her boys. But at length 
 a sorrow, such as in her life before she had never ex 
 perienced, stole over her first, like a shadow 
 then, darkening her whole being. 
 
 She saw intuitively that Mabel was more silent in 
 her presence than when left alone with her hus 
 band. If she unexpectedly entered the room where 
 they were seated, the tones of her voice would 
 change, and she would conclude an unfinished sen 
 tence in a manner different from what she believed it 
 would have been had she not entered. Still, her de 
 portment was of that character which can only be felt 
 
 so little tangible, that, brought into words, it seems 
 like jealousy ; and she shrank from speaking to her 
 husband of what might appear like a want of trust in 
 him. She knew, moreover, that he was unconscious 
 of Mabel's artful and enticing ways ; and unconscious, 
 too, of that which her own aching heart saw too well 
 
 the silent admiration which he was bestowing upon 
 her. 
 
 Happy in the heaats of those who loved her, 
 Mrs. Hayne had never before longed for beauty for 
 those rare charms, which everywhere attract the 
 heart. But now, as she gazed on her beautiful 
 cousin, with a sense of anguish, she would contrast 
 the delicately tinted cheek with her own flushed with 
 the heat of over-exertion ; and from the fair white 
 hand would turn to her own, " brown as an oak-leaf 
 in winter," and then with a struggle she would ivink 
 back the tears that came unbidden. 
 
 As weeks faded into months, she kept hoping
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 109 
 
 that Mabel would say something about returning to 
 her home. And she would, indeed, sometimes men 
 tion it, but never except in the presence of her hus 
 band, and, as it seemed to poor Mrs. Hayne, only 
 to elicit from him renewed invitations to lengthen her 
 visit, till she almost begun to despair of ever rid 
 ding herself of her guest. 
 
 Mr. Hayne had for several weeks been engaged 
 in getting ready for sea, a vessel in which he was 
 concerned, and therefore had remained in Ports 
 mouth, from whence the ship was to sail for Liver 
 pool, only returning home on Saturday and remain 
 ing over the Sabbath. 
 
 Much as she loved her husband, this was a great re 
 lief to Mrs Hayne ; while Mabel consoled herself 
 in his absence by getting up a flirtation with a you'ng 
 man, named Stanley, a stranger in the neighborhood, 
 but who, as agent of a firm with which Mr. Hayne 
 had dealings, had frequently called on him for pur 
 poses of business. 
 
 Mrs. Hayne had, from the first, felt for him an 
 irresistible repulsion. It seemed to her that there 
 was something evil and sinister in his expression ; 
 and she was ill pleased, when she found him made 
 a constant and welcome guest at her home, by one 
 who had little right to assume the liberty. She 
 could, however, easily enough have born this, had not 
 Mabel continued her fond and devoted manner to her 
 husband whenever he returned home. 
 
 Worn out with her own outraged feelings, one even 
 ing when Stanley's visit had extended into midnight,
 
 HO GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 she said to him with a manner as polite as the words 
 were freezing: "Mr. Stanley, if it would be as con 
 venient for you, I prefer that your visits here should 
 be made on evenings when my husband is at home. 
 I shall then be happy to receive those who may choose 
 to honor us with their society." 
 
 The words were spoken for Mabel, for she felt that 
 in some unaccountable way, she always contrived to 
 keep Stanley away on the evenings of her husband's 
 return. Taking Mabel by the hand, and bidding her 
 "good night" in a low tone, and bowing coldly to 
 Mrs. Hayne, he at once left the house. 
 
 The next Saturday night came Mrs. Hayne walked 
 to the garden gate, hoping to meet her husband alone. 
 But she had stood there only a few moments, when 
 Mabel came gliding toward her with some light excuse ; 
 and, then, as Mrs. Hayne replied only in monosyllables 
 to all her attempts at conversation, she turned and 
 began to cull the flowers which Mrs. Hayne had cul 
 tivated beside the path. 
 
 She picked the choicest rose-buds and all the 
 sweetest flowers, and then, coming again toward Mrs. 
 Hayne, remarked : "I have gathered some of your 
 most beautiful flowers to give Mr. Hayne. As you 
 have cultivated them, he ought to enjoy them." 
 
 How these words mocked her ; and Mabel knew 
 that they mocked her, but stood too much in fear of 
 her cousin to offer the bouquet to her husband, in her 
 pi'esence, without some plausible words for a prelude. 
 
 Oh, how Mrs. Hayne's heart burned as she saw the 
 flowers her flowers and listened to the low witching
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. Ill 
 
 sound of Mabel's voice. Then she thought if she had 
 only remembered to gather them for him herself; but 
 Mabel had been such a distraction to her, that she had 
 almost forgotten how to think. 
 
 She listened now for her husband's step with a sense 
 of dread, rather than of longing. She kept waiting 
 on, Mabel ever flitting near, till she thought that he had 
 been unexpectedly detained, and would defer his return 
 till morning. But not once, while the two were wait 
 ing there, was the object of their watching named, and 
 they entered the house without a word. 
 
 Mrs. Hayne dragged through the long hours of the 
 succeeding Sabbath, till late in the afternoon, she sent 
 for Robert Manning, and telling him her anxiety, 
 requested him to go at once to Portsmouth, and 
 ascertain what kept her husband. 
 
 He came back with the strange intelligence, that 
 Mr. Hayne had, himself, sailed for England. That 
 unexpected events had prevented the captain of the 
 ship from fulfilling his engagement, and as she could 
 not be detained without much damage to the owners, 
 Mr. Hayne had, at the moment of departure, deter 
 mined to take passage himself and manage her finan 
 cial affairs ; while the mate, who was a good sailing 
 master, assumed the office of captain. But he had 
 left no letter, nor even a message to his wife. 
 
 Burning with anger and the desire of vengeance, 
 Stanley had, on leaving the house of Mr. Hayne, met 
 at the door Robert Manning, who had come to request 
 Mrs. Hayne to accompany him to his mother, who
 
 112 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 had been taken suddenly and alarmingly ill, and whom 
 he thought it not safe to leave alone with the inexpe 
 rienced young girl who lived with her, while he went 
 several miles for a physician. Each started in surprise 
 at meeting the other at so unusual an hour; but Stan 
 ley passed on without a word, and at once conceived 
 the thought of forming from the unexplained circum 
 stance, the dagger wherewith to strike. 
 
 Early the following morning, Stanley proceeded to 
 Portsmouth. He found Mr. Hayne on board the ship, 
 and taking him aside, exerted all his art and cunning 
 to excite in his bosom suspicion towards his wife. 
 
 Mr. Hayne, with an open and generous temper, a 
 stranger to art himself, and blind to its existence in 
 others, was a man of quick and violent passions, and 
 was at once roused into fury. The vessel was ready to 
 drop down the bay ; while at the same moment, oc 
 curred the uncertainty and confusion occasioned by the 
 captain's unlooked for detention. Thus, the plan of 
 going himself to manage the financial affairs of the 
 ship, was no sooner suggested to his mind than he 
 eagerly seized upon it, and was far away on the ocean 
 before he became conscious of his rashness and folly. 
 
 He thought of Robert Manning of his honorable 
 and unblemished name ; of Stanley a stranger, 
 whose character was entirely unknown to him ; and 
 for the first time, he now perceived the wiles by which 
 Mabel Grey had lured him, and he thought of them 
 with bitterness and scorn ; while in his contrition and 
 pity, his wife his gentle, patient, loving wife, seemed 
 dearer to him than in all his life before.
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. I 13 
 
 It was the morning of the day that the ship sailed 
 tor Cadiz, whence she was bound, from Liverpool, 
 that Mr. Hayne encountered on the wharf a poor, 
 haggard and wretched looking being, in whom, how 
 ever, he immediately recognized Stanley. 
 
 Stanley had, a few days after Mr. Hayne set sail 
 from his native land, been dismissed by his emplovers 
 on account of his dishonesty ; and the same night, 
 reckless and half drunk, had shipped as a common 
 sailor, on board a vessel bound for England. Disease, 
 dissipation and poverty had reduced him to the con 
 dition in which Mr. Hayne now met him. 
 
 " Stanley," said he, grasping him firmly by the 
 shoulder, " tell me why you lied about my wife." 
 
 There was something in that determined grasp and 
 firm, noble look, which made the wretch fear more to 
 evade than truthfully to answer the question ; and 
 trembling, he told in what manner Mrs. Hayne had 
 incurred his hate, and how revenge had caused him to 
 fabricate the tale with which he had deceived her 
 husband. 
 
 Not once while Mr. Hayne listened, did he relax 
 that firm grasp, or open his lips, save once, when the 
 name of Mabel Grey occurred, unconsciously, and 
 with a bitter sneer, he repeated it through his closed 
 teeth. But when Stanley had finished, the sense of 
 his own folly was stronger upon him than resentment 
 at the man's villany ; and he stopped short his words, 
 when bowing low, he began to beg forgiveness with, 
 " Stanley, you are a poor sick wretch, and I am not
 
 114 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 the man to revenge myself on you. Come with me to 
 the hospital, and you shall be well cared for." 
 
 He procured his admission into one of the best hos 
 pitals in the city of Liverpool ; accompanied him to 
 his ward, and turning to an attendant, while he pointed 
 to the bed on which poor Stanley now lay, said, with 
 an earnestness that startled the young man : "There 
 is a villain ; but, if you do not treat him like a Chris 
 tian, it will be the worse for you ; and take that for 
 your pains ; " and he threw down a twenty pound 
 note. 
 
 A few hours later, and Mr. Hayne was sailing down 
 the river Mersey. 
 
 CHAPTER v. 
 
 Why do you look so pale ? 
 
 I have seen a ghost, father, Clive answered The ghost of my 
 
 youth, father, the ghost of my happiness, and the best days of my 
 life, groaned out the young man. I saw Ethel to-day. 
 
 Thackeray's "A T eivcomes. ' ' 
 
 " The trees of the forest shall blossom again. 
 The song-bird shall warble its soul-thrilling strain, 
 But the heart Fate hath wasted no spring can restore, 
 .And its song shall be joyful no more, never more." 
 
 It was a happy moment for Richard Manning, when 
 he welcomed to the shores of Spain the chosen friend 
 of his youth. The warm clasp of the hand, and the 
 familiar tones of the voice, came back to him as the 
 echo of his boyhood. 
 
 And it was no less a comfort to Walter Hayne, with 
 his soul longing for sympathy, to meet a friend with
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. 115 
 
 whom he could freely converse of the unhappy cir 
 cumstances that had caused him to leave his home. 
 But when he spoke of Mabel Grey, dwelling with 
 bitterness on the thought that she was the secret spring 
 of all that misery, Manning was silent; while, whis 
 pering low, he thanked God that he had been saved 
 from taking to his heart the frail, light thing. 
 
 Ten years had greatly changed young Manning. A 
 boy no longer, he stood erect in the full glory of his 
 manhood; while over the firm lip, the smooth calm 
 forehead, and the soft earnest eye, was thrown that 
 mystic spell of intellect, which imparts a strange charm 
 even to features the most rugged and irregular. 
 
 In the conflict of life he had met the full tide of 
 battle, and had come off conqueror. Forgetting him 
 self struggling to do good to others, to create around 
 him an atmosphere of happiness, unconsciously he had 
 breathed the air into his own soul. A wanderer in 
 many lands, hearts had blessed him everywhere. 
 
 And wealth the wealth that the world loves, had 
 poured in upon him like rolling seas. Every enter 
 prise in which he had engaged had been freighted 
 with success. 
 
 He had long thought of returning to his native land? 
 and had placed his affairs in a position to leave Spain 
 though he still lingered, as if loath to quit that beauti 
 ful land. But the sight of his friend, and the idea of 
 having his company in a voyage across the Atlantic 
 decided him to take passage in the ship now bound 
 for Boston.
 
 Il6 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 No sooner had they landed, than Mr. Hayne, eager 
 to reach home, took passage for Portsmouth, in a 
 schooner, which was about leaving the wharf. Man 
 ning remained in Boston, to enjoy, for a few days, the 
 society of his sister, who had long resided there with 
 her husband a man capable of appreciating her 
 high-toned and beautiful character. 
 
 It was the first evening of his arrival that he met 
 Mabel Grey. She was among the guests in a small 
 party that had been invited at his sister's before she 
 knew of his arrival. She was beautiful as ever, and 
 no sooner did she recognize in Manning, the bov that 
 she had held captive, than she again brought into play 
 all her powers of fascination. 
 
 Once the perfection of his ideal, the embodiment of 
 that mystic dream which can steal over the soul but 
 once, he gazed upon her with a sad and mournful 
 interest. But she had blighted his youth ; she had 
 darkened the hearth-stone of his friend ; and her every 
 blandishment, her every softened tone, fell on his 
 heart coldly as moonbeams on flowers. 
 
 A week passed away, and Manning was returning 
 to his early home. The coach road, now passed close 
 to the dwelling of Hayne, and he could not resist the 
 impulse of running in for a moment, even before he 
 reached his old home, to congratulate both Hayne and 
 his wife on their restored happiness. 
 
 "Where is Walter? my husband?" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Hayne, the moment Manning presented himself. She 
 had not before heard of the ship's arrival in Boston, 
 and when she learned that a week had passed since
 
 A STORY FROM REAL LIFE. I 17 
 
 her husband sailed from there, she knew that some 
 other terrible calamity had befallen her. 
 
 There had been a severe storm upon the coast ; and 
 they had heard of a schooner having been wrecked, and 
 several bodies washed ashore, at the " Isle of Shoals." 
 
 With sad forebodings, Manning, with several others, 
 proceeded to the island. The bodies had been buried 
 for several days. They were disinterred, and Man 
 ning at once recognized in one of them the features of 
 his poor friend. 
 
 It was no ordinary grief that overwhelmed the 
 stricken widow. Letters, indeed, she had received 
 from her husband, teeming with love ; but the long 
 ings to hear once more from his lips the accents of 
 affection, were lost in the wailings of despair. 
 
 The care of everything now devolved upon Man 
 ning. It was for him to be the friend of the widow, 
 and the guardian of her boys. For years he watched 
 over her interests with unchanging kindness. There 
 was in their intercourse that confiding freedom, which, 
 perhaps, could not have been, had either ever thought 
 of regarding the other as anything more than a devoted 
 friend. 
 
 But five years from Mr. Hayne's death, the friends 
 were married a strange, mysterious marriage, in 
 deed scarcely love ; but a friendship so deep, so 
 confiding, so sublimated, that it was near akin to 
 that holiest passion. And gradually even the image 
 of Mabel Grey faded from the husband's soul, and 
 the ideal of his early youth became merged in the form 
 of his wife.
 
 THE REQUITED 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought 
 as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 r I CHOUGH but a few miles from town, the mansion of 
 Colonel Willey was a retired and lonely dwelling; 
 beautiful indeed in summer, surrounded as it was by 
 magnificent shade ti'ees and broad gardens, where every 
 natural irregularity of the ground being allowed to 
 remain, gave it a peculiar appearance of wildness and 
 beauty. On a low hill, or rather broad mound, was 
 a small grove of beech trees, just as they had sprung 
 spontaneously from the soil, while around the hill, 
 there wound a wide gravelled walk from which little 
 foot-paths in the grass led, some toward the house, 
 and others to arbors whose age and brownness were 
 concealed by the grape-vines and honeysuckles which 
 hung over them, and which made a welcome shelter 
 from the summer sun. 
 
 A mile away was the ocean ; and though in storm 
 the sound of its wild roar and dash of the surf upon 
 the rocks, or the peculiar "rote," which comes when 
 the storm is over, like the sobbings of a hushed child, 
 might give more loneliness to the place, boating excur- 
 118
 
 THE REQUITED. 
 
 119 
 
 si cms when the weather was fine, and the sea smooth, 
 made it a still more attractive residence. 
 
 But in winter, it looked dreary here and desolate as 
 such lone dwellings cannot fail to do. A band of 
 joyous children of bright, glad boys and girls had 
 long ago made those broad gables and wide halls echo 
 with their gushing laughter and bounding tread ; and 
 now they had all gone forth from this home ; the 
 daughters as brides ; the sons, to places where they 
 might find scope for genius and enterprise. 
 
 One child alone remained Marion, the youngest 
 tjie lamb of the flock* Some said it was because she 
 was the youngest that she seemed so among them the 
 dearest of all. She was the sunbeam of the old house ; 
 and the children from afar came home longing even 
 more to look upon her golden hair than the silvered 
 locks of their parents. 
 
 Younger than the rest by seven long years their 
 pet and their darling, she had, as to companionship, 
 as to the flow of mutual thought and feeling, been as 
 an only child. And thus, partly from circumstances, 
 partly from natural constitution, she had been a soli 
 tary and dreamy child sitting alone among the dead 
 leaves that lay beneath the beech trees on the hill ; 
 creeping into the shelter of overhanging rocks; or 
 watching the waves and sea-birds on the shore. 
 
 Wandering so aimlessly dreamingly, was she in 
 haling from those dead leaves, breathing from the salt 
 air that came from the sea, finding among the moss 
 and sea-shells that essence which helps to make the 
 immortal mind?
 
 120 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 Those hours were indeed, though she could not 
 comprehend it, and those who loved her and watched 
 her with a curious smile might not know it, those 
 hours were educating her character, sounding depths 
 in her soul, giving a power and intensity to her emo 
 tions which only such dreamy solitude has power to 
 nurture. Yet for this she was a happy child happy 
 as the birds in the wood; glad as the foam that danced 
 upon the waves. 
 
 Marion was nineteen now ; a woman, beautiful in 
 deed, but not strikingly, brilliantly beautiful; not a 
 queen that one half fears to approach. A sense of 
 beauty was not the first impression which one receive'd 
 in looking upon her; it was a feeling of confidence 
 and affection. The light from her soft brown eyes, 
 the golden hair parted across her white forehead, and 
 the mingled expression of strength and gentleness 
 which layabout her beautiful mouth, formed a counte 
 nance to excite love rather than to arouse ambition or 
 admiration. 
 
 Her soul was free free as the eagle that soars high 
 in the blue sky. The past was a joyous memory. 
 The future, far away, seemed as beautiful as the sun 
 set clouds which she had watched so earnestly, and 
 whose flaming glory, when she was a child, she had 
 believed she could touch with her hands, if she might 
 only climb the hill above which they floated. 
 
 O, the joy of free girlhood ! The happiness of the 
 child is too evanescent ; that of the woman, often 
 serious in its intensity of joy. But the girl's it is 
 light and sparkling as the foam that plays on the top
 
 THE REQUITED. 121 
 
 of the sea wave ; glad as the lark that sings in the 
 morning ; bright as the sunbeams that fall among 
 flowers. 
 
 And yet hers was a sleeping soul ; and those 
 draughts of Lethe which she had inhaled when alone 
 on the sea-shore, which she had breathed when wan 
 dering among the scented pines ; would make for her 
 a more startling awakening. Aye ! The waking of a 
 long sleeping soul and of a matured intellect; intense, 
 overwhelming in its joy, or terrible in its thrilling 
 anguish ! 
 
 Yes, she was a woman ; with a still joyous soul ; 
 with a world of passion and of love lying all quiet and 
 unappropriated down in the depths of her heart 
 so still and quiet that she dreamed not that they were 
 lying there. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Strange that Destiny should often come creeping like a child to 
 our very doors; we hardly notice it, or send it away with a laugh ; 
 it comes so naturally, so simply, so accidentally as it were, that 
 we recognize it not. We cannot believe that the baby intruder is 
 in reality the king of our fortunes, the ruler of our lives. But so 
 it is continually. John Halifax. 
 
 It was a February day, and the bright sunbeams fell 
 upon the cold white snow like the soft halo which 
 envelops the forms of aged saints in the pictures of 
 the old masters. 
 
 The old house was still. The stillness of winter in 
 the country ! The city dwellers do not dream of it ; 
 the watching of every snow track ; the wondering of 
 who is every passer-by ; all that community of interest
 
 122 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 in little things which springs up where there are no 
 great general subjects as reservoirs for the mind's 
 activity. 
 
 Marion had been in the city considerably \vith her 
 sisters, but she was not contented there. Her heart's 
 home was the country the old house among the 
 beech trees. Little dreamed she that on that still 
 winter day she was to meet her destiny that the first 
 leaves of the future's unread volume were to be cut. 
 
 It was afternoon as she w r atched from the window 
 the approach of a powerful black horse and marked 
 with interest the fearless skill of the rider. The fiery 
 beast seemed to act to be used, as it were, as an ex 
 ponent of some ardent and exuberant nature : and it 
 was with a feeling of pleasure that she saw the horse 
 man dismount at their door, where, with the eager 
 hospitality of the country, he was met by her father. 
 
 Frederick Merton had, within a few days, arrived 
 from his southern home at the neighboring city in 
 order to complete there a course of study in the legal 
 profession. He had called upon Colonel Willey at the 
 request of his father who had been an intimate friend 
 till the wide separation of their homes had made them 
 as strangers. It was with much pleasure and cordial 
 freedom that the old man welcomed to his hearth the 
 son of his early friend, and introduced to him his wife 
 and Marion. 
 
 As they entered the room where Marion was sitting, 
 a ray of sunlight streaming in from a western window 
 fell upon her, investing with singular beauty her 
 golden hair and white forehead. The young man too
 
 THE REQUITED. 123 
 
 was strikingly handsome, with his regular features, 
 the dark, deep bloom of health mantling his face, 
 black wavy hair, and deep blue eyes lighted up with 
 the hope, happiness and animation of youth. 
 
 They met each other with conscious pleasure ; with 
 that sentiment of prepossession, that n.agnetic attrac 
 tion of soul which we can never explain but which 
 we know does more than anything else in bringing 
 about a friendship. Even that ray of light which fell 
 upon the young girl's hair, shed a fascinating influence 
 upon Merton's ardent imagination and crowned her 
 with the beauty of an angel; while to Marion, he 
 seemed as the ideal of her dreams. Was this love? 
 No: love true love, long as life, strong as death, 
 is not the birth of an hour. Such a sensation may 
 prove its germ, but is no more itself than the acorn 
 is the oak, or the little coral the island which it forms. 
 As unlike as the gourd which shaded Jonah to the 
 cedars which grew on Lebanon. 
 
 From that day Merton was a constant and welcome 
 visitor at Colonel Willey's. There was his rest, his 
 place of happy repose ; and soon Marion learned to lis 
 ten watchfully for the sound of his horse's hoofs. Now 
 for the first time, she really had a companion ; one 
 who could understand her character, enter into her 
 moods, and rightly construe even her silence. 
 
 The spring days came, and he wandered with her 
 to the beach to listen to the rolling of the surge ; or in 
 childish fashion, hold to the ear those peculiarly 
 formed shells which seem so well to remember and 
 mimic the roar of their ocean home. He walked with
 
 124 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 her to the grove and watched the sunlight and the 
 floating clouds ; and he caught the spirit of her soli 
 tude and brought into words all those thoughts and 
 feelings which had been coined in the recesses of her 
 spirit. Thus months passed on, and Marion Willey 
 loved. Her soul awakened from its sleep. She loved 
 with all the intensity of a silent, earnest nature ; and 
 she loved too before she was bidden. 
 
 And is it true that in a woman's heart the spell 
 must only be awakened by the power of a word, and 
 that till that word is uttered, there must be no con 
 sciousness of love, and if never spoken, the whole 
 world of a past must be to thought and memory as 
 though it had never been ? 
 
 Frederick Merton knew that he himself was happy 
 and that to Marion's life he was a joy. Beyond that 
 he looked not, he thought not ; or, if the thought 
 sometimes forced itself upon him, he pushed it away 
 impatiently. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Parting is death, at least as far as life is concerned. A passion 
 comes to an end ; it is carried off in a coffin, or, weeping in a post- 
 chaise, it drops out of life one way or other, and the earth-clods 
 close over it and we see it no more. But it has been part of our 
 souls, and it is eternal. Thackeray. 
 
 Nearly two years passed on in that mystic maze of 
 happiness which youth and love alone may know ; 
 and they parted. A strange parting. They whose 
 souls had mingled as "kindred drops of rain," who 
 had seemed as twin spirits, parted almost as strangers 
 might have parted ; and they met no more.
 
 THE REQUITED. 125 
 
 Merton removed to a distant part of the same State 
 and in less than a year married a proud and beautiful 
 heiress. It was not perhaps wealth, considered as 
 wealth, that so enticed him. Heaps of gold, piles of 
 stock certificates, might have been of no value beside 
 the fair, sweet girl, whom he perhaps loved as well as 
 his nature was capable of. But that which gold had 
 brought the noble mansion and splendid appoint 
 ments, the rich jewelry and costly fabrics with which 
 beauty was adorned, enchanted and bewildered him ; 
 and that bewilderment he imagined to be another 
 sentiment and called by another name. 
 
 Aye, it is not always the flippant, the shallow- 
 brained and the foppish who are most taken with 
 fashion, dress and beauty ; but men with broad fore 
 heads and oftentimes deep hearts men conscious of 
 their vanity, and knowing not that they themselves are 
 affected by them. 
 
 And day by day Marion wilted " like fern in the 
 frost." Her step grew feebler, and her brow paler, 
 
 till they made her a grave below her wrecked hopes. 
 
 ******** 
 
 It was a strange coincidence that brought Frederick 
 Merton to the house of Colonel Willey on the very 
 day of Marion's funeral. The coffin was placed in the 
 room, the old familiar parlor, where he had first seen 
 her ; and as he entered the room, the sunlight came in 
 through the same western window and fell upon the 
 fair head pillowed in the coffin, just as three years 
 before he had seen it fall in her young, joyous beauty. 
 
 Merton was not a bad man ; nor would he have
 
 126 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 wantonly harmed one lock of her golden hair. But 
 such men as he, there are and ever will be, so long as 
 there are souls to suffer and hearts to break. In 
 words he had never betrayed her ; he had only broken 
 her trust ; and standing beside her coffin, he tried to 
 consider himself an innocent man. He did almost 
 consider himself so ; and had the story of that wronged 
 girl been told to him, he would have listened indignant 
 as David did when, in a parable, the prophet Nathan 
 set before him his own sin ; and would have been as 
 tonished as David was to have heard it said, " Thou 
 art the man." 
 
 QHAPTER IV. 
 
 " ' God is great,' say the Mohammedans; God is just, also, as 
 every page of the history of mankind would teach us if we could or 
 would read it aright.'' 
 
 In the beautiful mansion which he had inherited 
 from his deceased wife, Merton dwelt with his only 
 daughter and her husband, Charles Harding, who 
 had been his favorite student and whom he had re 
 ceived as partner at the completion of his studies. 
 
 In the circle of Mrs. Harding's acquaintance, her 
 most intimate friend was Catherine Grey, a young 
 widow of much personal beauty and of singular pow 
 ers of pleasing. At their home she was a frequent and 
 welcome guest. But Mr. Merton had never liked her, 
 although he did justice to her beauty, sprightliness 
 and intelligence. There was a light in her eye which 
 he had never fancied ; and to his deep seeing judg 
 ment, she was gradually obtaining a preponderance of
 
 THE REQUITED. 127 
 
 power over the minds of his daughter and her husband 
 which he felt to be especially dangerous to the latter. 
 
 Terribly startled as he was, he was scarcely sur 
 prised, when late one evening, pale as death, his 
 daughter entered his room and gave him an unsealed 
 note from Mrs. Grey to her husband, which had been 
 placed in her own hands through the innocent careless 
 ness of the child that had brought it. It contained the 
 closing particulars of a concerted arrangement for 
 their leaving town the next evening, never to return. 
 
 It was perhaps well for Mr. Merton that the neces 
 sity for immediately deciding on what course of action 
 to pursue, afforded him no time to yield to the agony 
 of his feelings. 
 
 Mrs. Harding was his only child, and in her all his 
 earthly hopes were centred. Harding too had been 
 his favorite student, his beloved friend, and the son 
 whom his own proud heart had chosen. Nor did he 
 now think him to be a bad man. He believed that 
 the strange, winning beauty of Catherine Grey had 
 made him forget himself ; and in striving to stretch 
 out an arm to save, he felt as he might have felt were 
 he snatching a child from the charmings of a serpent, 
 and knew as well that the rescued one would after 
 ward bless him for it. 
 
 Scheme after scheme for removing Harding from 
 the poisonous atmosphere which he breathed, pre 
 sented itself to Mr. Merton' s mind and was abandoned, 
 till he remembered that a few months before, while 
 journeying together through a town about sixty miles 
 distant, Harding had expressed great admiration for
 
 128 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 the house and grounds belonging to an estate which 
 was for sale, and the disposal of which was in his own 
 hands. He had even said that had he the means, he 
 would purchase it for his own residence. 
 
 Desirable as the property was, the large price re 
 quired for it had hitherto prevented it from being 
 sold : and the moment Mr. Merton thought of Hard- 
 ing's remark, he fastened upon its purchase as the 
 surest and best plan for bringing about the immediate 
 separation he desired. 
 
 Early in the morning he entered the parlor to await 
 the appearance of Harding ; but he was already there. 
 With his back to the door, leaning his arm upon the 
 mantel-piece, and gazing thoughtfully into the fire, he 
 did not notice the entrance of Mr. Merton till he laid 
 his hand heavily upon his shoulder. " Chai'les Hard 
 ing," said he, with a face of ashy paleness, but with a 
 voice clear and firm as when in the vigor of his days 
 he pleaded at the bar, " Charles Harding, three 
 months since I heard you say that you so much ad 
 mired the Horton estate that nothing but the large 
 sum demanded for it, prevented you from purchasing 
 it. The purchase, Charles, I will make for you, pre 
 sent to you as a free gift, and only ask that for vour 
 honor's sake, your children's sake, and if it may have 
 any influence with you, for your wife's sake, you will 
 take immediate possession. The business here I will 
 arrange satisfactorily." 
 
 Harding looked up. He started almost in terror. 
 Had his friend grown old so suddenly? That ashy 
 paleness and the thrilling earnestness of those words,
 
 THE REQUITED. 129 
 
 roused him from the enchanting spell ; and he remem 
 bered his own honor, and the claims of those who 
 loved him. 
 
 The evening which had been fixed upon for his 
 elopement with Catherine Grey found Harding leaving 
 in the company of his wife for the new and beautiful 
 home which the careful affection of Mr. Merton had 
 provided for him. 
 
 CHAPTER v. 
 
 Methought, the billows spoke, and told me of it ; 
 The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd 
 The name of Prosper. Shakespeare. 
 
 It was night, and Merton was alone in his deserted 
 mansion. Boxes of such goods as were to be removed 
 lay piled about ; a few embers were burning dully on 
 the hearth ; and he was sleeping upon the sofa. Sud 
 denly he was awakened by the howling of the wind as 
 it swept through the trees and rolled over the chim 
 neys. His first consciousness was that of deep depres 
 sion, but without recollection of the cause which had 
 produced it. 
 
 Collecting his thoughts, he lay and looked into the 
 dying embers. As he looked, they moved back into 
 a far off distance, till, through a vista, miles and miles 
 away, he saw there the ocean tossing its white foam ; 
 and walking on the shore, one in whose features he 
 recognized himself not himself as he now was, with 
 sorrow at his heart and frost upon his hair ; but him-
 
 I3O GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 self in the glory of his young manhood. And by his 
 side, and listening with him to the dashing of the 
 surge upon the shore, was a fair girl, and she he saw 
 was Marion. He watched the two breathlessly ; till 
 the sea, the shore, and the faces familiar to memory, 
 changed like the figures seen in a kaleidoscope ; and a 
 grave appeared with a moss-grown stone on which he 
 could read no name, till a sudden gleam of sunlight 
 the very ray it seemed that he had twice seen crown 
 her golden head fell upon the stone, and he read, 
 *' Marion." 
 
 He could look no longer. He shut his eyes, and 
 memories came faster, stronger than the surges on the 
 shore. 
 
 A person whose mind had been differently consti 
 tuted, one of less strength and intelligence, might have 
 referred all that had passed before him to a super 
 natural visitation ; might have believed that he had 
 seen a vision. But Merton, whose business in life 
 had made him an adept in tearing away specious 
 appearances and looking upon facts alone, knew, as 
 he lay there in that still agony, with every faculty of 
 his mind clear and awake, that the scenes upon which 
 he had gazed were created by the concentrated power 
 of a remorseful conscience and a present anguish. 
 And " the burial places of memory gave up their 
 dead ;" and such thoughts as had never been his before 
 came to him. No longer was he an actor in the 
 scenes of his youth, but an unswayed judge. He 
 thought of her whose life but for him might have been
 
 THE REQUITED. 13! 
 
 bright and beautiful, and of the hearth-stone whose 
 light he had darkened ; and with his own sorrow at 
 his heart for his only child, now struggling with her 
 pride and grief, he bowed low his own head in sym 
 pathy with the aged parent, whose locks so long ago 
 he had whitened. 
 
 And then, though he knew it was but the wail of 
 the storm through the trees, there seemed to come to 
 his ear, clear as the voice of Samuel to Saul, "The 
 iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the chil 
 dren I will repay saith the Lord." 
 
 They are all gone now. Even she who told us the 
 story of Marion Willey, whose purity and beauty she 
 quaintly compared to the spotless ermine ; she whose 
 aged cheek flushed so with an indignation which for 
 seventy years she had kept in her heart, when she 
 told of Merton appearing at the funeral with crape 
 upon his hat ; (a fact which we have not incorporated 
 into this story, because it seemed so unnatural) she too 
 has gone to her last rest. 
 
 Frederick Merton died full of years, and men whom 
 their country honored bore his coffin pall ; and above 
 his grave a shaft of pure marble recorded his virtues 
 and his high standing ; and there was nothing to tell 
 of the fair girl, whom his heedless selfishness had lain 
 beneath the gray sunken stone in the village church 
 yard far away.
 
 132 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 Once, when an old woman, we saw Catherine Grey. 
 Even then, she was beautiful ; but her expression was 
 sad, gentle and subdued, for she was a penitent, and 
 had been reconciled to and forgiven even by the woman 
 she had wronged.
 
 AUNT RACHEL. 
 
 Give me no steady centre to these mighty mutations no stable 
 throne amid these rocking kingdoms and shaking orbs ; no clear 
 and controlling mind to this wild chaos of ideas and passions; no 
 great and glorious result to all this mysterious and awful prepara 
 tion, and Reason herself would become as wild and confused and 
 aimless as they. J. S. Headlty. 
 
 I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body 
 and mind are not so proportioned, that the one can bear all which 
 can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its 
 ground as long as life ; and whether a soul well principled will not 
 be sooner separated than subdued. Dr. Johnson. 
 
 \ ~\ 7"E remember as it were yesterday the first time we 
 saw her, though it was a brief glance, and she 
 was so quickly forgotten that most of us had passed 
 into the supper-room and the rest had reached the 
 door, heedless of the stranger, when one of our party, 
 perhaps more thoughtful than the others, cast her eyes 
 on the quiet little figure that stood near the fire as if 
 irresolute whether to follow or remain. With lady 
 like politeness she received the excuses which one of 
 the gentlemen offered for having preceded her, and 
 entered the room. 
 
 She was very slight, and thin, and pale, her eyes 
 were of a light gray and her hair inclined to redness, 
 but her forehead was broad and smooth and about her 
 
 133
 
 134 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 thin lips there hovered an expression of sweetness and 
 repose. 
 
 We have forgotten now what first led us to feel that 
 beneath that unprepossessing exterior were concealed 
 the pulses of a warm, generous heart and the powers 
 of a strong and cultivated mind, but we remember 
 well the morning that she set her seal upon our heart. 
 
 It was a clear, cold, brilliant morning in March. 
 The whole broad country was covered with a thick 
 crust of hard, glittering snow and every tree was en 
 cased in ice. The oaks and elms and chestnuts and 
 beeches from their trunks upward and outward to their 
 minutest twigs, and the pines and firs with their 
 greenness shining through, sparkled like diamonds and 
 emeralds in the brightness of the sun. 
 
 O, it was a glorious morning, and we have seldom 
 since been so young in feeling, as never we are sure in 
 years, as when we walked forth into its bracing air. 
 
 And Aunt Rachel she enjoyed it ; the broad, icy 
 fields, the difficult ascent of the steep, slippery hills 
 and the "duckies" down them, and the crackling of 
 the icicles as we thrust our way through the bristling 
 underbrush of those diamond-crested woods. We 
 loved even to eat the icicles that hung from the pines 
 with their pungent flavor, strong as though their 
 pointed leaves had been steeped in boiling water. It 
 was a pleasure to taste as well as see the trees. 
 
 As we entered the " Main Road " and were passing 
 along by the " Asylum for the Insane," a clear, pleas 
 ant voice from one of the cells in the upper story 
 accosted us: "Good morning, ladies." We looked
 
 AUNT RACHEL. 135 
 
 up and bowed in reply to the salutation. "It is a 
 beautiful morning," he continued, "and I should like 
 myself to take a walk down on ' Main Street,' but my 
 folks have sent me here to be shut up because they say 
 I am crazy, but I am sure I am not crazy, and I can't 
 see why they should think so." And we thought the 
 same as we listened to the calm, pleasant tones of his 
 voice, till he added, " It will soon make me beside 
 myself to be with this wild, screaming set ; and it 
 doesn't do them any good either to shut them up here. 
 What they want is the Grace of God, and I'll put the 
 Grace of God into them." 
 
 His voice grew wild and excited, but we knew that 
 a whole volume of truth had been uttered in those 
 simple words; "What they want is the Grace of 
 God." 
 
 The Grace of God ! How many has it saved 
 rescued from madness ; how have prayer and 
 watchfulness been blest in conquering self, in subduing 
 rampant passion and the wild, disorderly vagaries of 
 the brain. 
 
 As we listen to the low whispered prayer of a Hall 
 when he felt the billows of angry passion about to 
 sweep over his soul " O, Lamb of God, calm my 
 perturbed spirit," we feel that but for such interced 
 ing prayer and that watchfulness which accompanied 
 it, the insanity to which he was temporarily subject 
 would have won the same mastery over the mighty 
 powers of his mind as over those of Swift, and the 
 glory of his "wide fame" as well as the peace of his 
 " humble hope," would have been exchanged for the
 
 136 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 vagaries of the mad man or the drivellings of the 
 idiot. 
 
 The Grace of God ! We thought of John Randolph, 
 with his sway over the minds of others, with a "wit 
 and eloquence that recalled the splendors of ancient 
 oratory," yet with so little command over himself that 
 his weak frame sometimes sank beneath the excite 
 ment of his temper, and gusts of passion were suc 
 ceeded by fainting fits ; and when the one desire of his 
 heart was denied, when a love, mighty as every other 
 passion of his soul failed him, his grief, ungovernable 
 and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the 
 "taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his 
 brain. But when the atheist became a Christian ; 
 when, in his own words, he felt " the Spirit of God 
 was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a device of 
 artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an 
 existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings 
 of one's own heart ;" his prayer of " Lord ! I believe, 
 help thou mine unbelief," was answered in calm and 
 peace to his soul. 
 
 " The saddest thought," said Aunt Rachel, as we 
 turned away from that gloomy edifice, " the saddest 
 thought connected with that building is, that so large 
 a number of its unhappy inmates have brought their 
 misery upon themselves, are the victims of their own 
 irregular and indulged passions." 
 
 As we turned and looked upon her smooth brow, 
 her serious and serene eyes and her sweet, calm mouth, 
 we marked a look of subdued suffering mingled with 
 an expression of Christian triumph ; and we knew
 
 AUNT RACHEL. 137 
 
 that she had felt "the ploughings of grief;" that she 
 had learned "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and 
 grow strong;" but, though we wondered deeply, we 
 never knew in what form she had been called " to pass 
 under the rod," but we heard a voice that said : 
 
 " Fear not: when thou passest through the waters, 
 I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall 
 not overflow thee." 
 
 Nay, fear not, weak and fainting soul, 
 Though the wild waters round thee roll, 
 He will sustain thy falt'ring way, 
 Will be thy sure, unfailing stay. 
 
 And though it were the fabled stream 
 Whose waves were fire of fearful gleam, 
 He still would bear thee safely through 
 The fire, but cleanse thy soul anew.
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Her hour came the hour that comes only once : her star rose 
 in the horizon that star that rises so often in vain, to be remem 
 bered as a thing of dreams ; and it rose for her in vain. 
 
 H. B. Stowe. 
 
 TT was an assemblage where a few aged guests were 
 looking backward, through the long, dim lapse of 
 years, to their own youth, and love, and bridal 
 something so like a dream that they could not feel it 
 had ever been a reality. And there were those in 
 middle life, feeling much younger than the young felt 
 them to be. And there were youth young men and 
 maidens quaffing the bright-red wine cup of joyous 
 hope, fresh love and wild passion. And there were 
 the bridegroom and the bride just risen to receive the 
 marriage rite. 
 
 The bridegroom was a frail, slight man, in whose 
 deep, calm eyes the fires of intellect seemed quietly 
 burning, as in a resting volcano, rather than flashing 
 in the over excitement of an untamed genius ; and the 
 calm, cold and intellectually beautiful face was pale 
 and attenuated. 
 
 And the bride was very lovely with her wavy brown 
 hair, and bright sunny eyes, and lips just ready for a 
 138
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT. 
 
 smile, and from whose cheek, study or midnight vigil> 
 had never stolen its roundness. 
 
 When all was stilled for the solemn rite, another 
 figure lightly entered, gliding like a spirit till she 
 stood near the clergyman. 
 
 She was a lady of elegant form, and whose face 
 must have been exquisitely beautiful, had health and 
 happiness but given it one glow. Her cheek and brow 
 were white as Parian mai'ble, and round her finely 
 moulded head her black, glossy hair was wound in 
 wavy, graceful folds ; her eyes were large, and sa 
 darkly blue, that at a first glance they seemed most 
 like the liquid black common to the daughters of Italy. 
 But her chief beauty lay in her mouth and chin red- 
 lipped and dimpled beauty still rested there. 
 
 She was attired in a closely-fitting black silk dress, 
 and over her shoulders was gracefully thrown a velvet 
 mantle of the same color. Her black attire was entire 
 ly unrelieved, save by a small pearl pin, placed in the 
 neck of her dress, and a diamond of great beauty on 
 one hand, and on the other a white kid glove. 
 
 She stood near, like a statue her ungloved hand 
 laid across her bosom, and the diamond on her finger 
 glittering there like a star. 
 
 Even the bridgroom turned his eye upon the figure. 
 He met her calm, bright, unchanging eye. He saw 
 the diamond. Its brightness seemed to flash and dim 
 his eye, while memory came back to him, and brought 
 the moonlit evening, years before, when he had 
 placed that same diamond on the hand of the bright, 
 joyous girl, whose sad, unearthly beauty now made
 
 14 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 her seem to him like a spirit from the grave, and said 
 " This is for my bride." His pale face flushed like 
 wine, and then more than its wonted paleness came, 
 and big drops of perspiration oozed from his fore- 
 head ; but not a feature changed. 
 
 The ceremony proceeded. Those large eyes turned 
 not for a moment from the bridal pair, till at the close, 
 when the prayer was offered, her eyelids closed, her 
 long black lashes fringing them like a pall ; and with 
 palm to palm of white hand and glove, she seemed as 
 if praying with strange fervor. 
 
 She noted for a few moments the greetings that were 
 showered on the bride ; then softly moving toward her, 
 drew the diamond from her own finger, and placing 
 it on that of the bride, turned to the bridegroom, and 
 in tones low and clear murmured, " This is for your 
 bride." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 It may be a sound 
 
 A tone of music summer's eve or spring 
 A flower the wind the ocean which shall wound, 
 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Hubert Lansing was a lonely widower, and with 
 health and fortune ruined. He sat alone in his room, 
 conscious that the sands of life were ebbing fast away. 
 The past and the present alike oppressed his soul. His 
 children his daughters to leave them friendless 
 and penniless; and the image of Maria Wilder his 
 early love, his discarded bride vividly was she pict-
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT, 141 
 
 ured to his mind as he last saw her on the evening of 
 his marriage, and the tones of her voice seemed again 
 to fall upon his ear as she parted with his sacred gift. 
 
 Of all whom he had counselled and served, of all on 
 whom he had showered benefits, his heart turned to 
 her as the only one to whose truth and benevolence he 
 could, with unwavering confidence, intrust his chil 
 dren ; but could a mind delicately strung ask her to 
 take them to her home and heart. 
 
 Thus wrapped in agonized thought his daughters 
 entered. The younger was especially his child the 
 inheritor of his intellect ; and she bore, too, the name 
 of Maria. The mother, had chosen the name in mem 
 ory of a sister, but each time the father murmured it, 
 it had been fraught with another memory. This child, 
 too, was the object of his greatest anxiety. There 
 was in her a depth of feeling, an intensity of emotion, 
 a capability of suffering which he well knew required 
 the guidance and sympathy of a strong and affectionate 
 spirit, and to whom could he commit so holy a trust ? 
 
 He stretched his hand toward the child, and said, 
 "Maria." The word fell upon his own heart with 
 strange power. There came back to him all the faith 
 and unreserve tinged with a glow of his early love, 
 and in the fulness of his heart he wrote her : 
 
 "Maria, I am a stricken man the Lord has laid 
 his hand upon me. My wealth is scattered, and that 
 energy of character, that strength of intellect which 
 first won for me your undying love, has waned and is 
 fast waning with my life. Yes, I know that I am
 
 142 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 dying, that the decree is irrevocable, nor can I, like 
 the ancient prophet, pray that it may be prolonged. 
 
 " For seventeen years, Maria Wilder, your name has 
 never passed my lips, nor has my pen traced one word 
 to you ; but now the ' waters of the great deep ' are 
 breaking up. I will not attempt to palliate the past, 
 but with my dying lips I affirm that it was not the 
 prospect of the great wealth which I received with 
 my bride that caused me to break my faith with you, 
 though I know that I was dazzled with the luxurious- 
 ness, the gems of art, and the brilliant gayety by which 
 she was surrounded, and the high position which her 
 father occupied in a nation's trust. 
 
 " Yes, Maria, forgetful of you, I pledged myself to 
 her ; and you were almost lost to me in the whirl of 
 excitement which followed, till, like a spirit from an 
 other world, you appeared before me on the evening 
 of my marriage. 
 
 " Then I became myself again. It roused me to 
 consciousness, as the force of a sudden calamity will 
 sometimes bring to instant reason those made mad 
 with alcohol. 
 
 " The enchanter's wand was taken away. What 
 was luxury, or the works of art, but that which sor 
 did gold might purchase ? And legislative fame, was 
 it not as often won by cunning and low cabal, as by 
 intellectual worth or moral power ? And my bride 
 deep pity filled my heart for her, and she became dear 
 to me as a sister. 
 
 "I was glad when I heard of your marriage. I knew
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT. 143 
 
 that love could never more bloom in your heart that 
 the fire had gone over your soul and left it too 
 * scorched and seared for the flower of a second love 
 ever to find resting-place ' there ; but I thought the 
 path would be very lonely, and might be long, and 
 that it were better thus than to walk the valley all 
 alone. Thoroughly I understand your nature, and 
 knew well that your tents were not easily struck, or 
 readily pitched -elsewhere that your love was such 
 as planted a ' terribly fixed foot.' 
 
 " Think not that in this I had a secret satisfaction; 
 for glad would I have been to have known that you 
 had hated me, could it have given back to you the 
 joyous love which I had blighted, and enabled you to 
 have placed it as a fresh gift upon another altar. 
 
 "And now years have gone over us, and to you 
 alone can I commit my dying trust. 
 
 " Maria, when I am dead, will you receive from me 
 the only legacy which I have to impart my children ? 
 My last gift to you was a ring of betrothal the next 
 are children who called another mother. Tell me that 
 your home shall be theirs, and that your heart will 
 receive them ; and I die in peace. 
 
 "HUBERT LANSING."
 
 144 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Either the human being must suffer and struggle as the price of 
 a more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow, and without 
 intellectual revelation. De Quincey. 
 
 Though the bloom of life has been nipt with a frost, yet the 
 soul must not sit shivering in its cell, but bestir itself manfully, 
 and kindle a genial warmth from its own exercise, against the 
 autumnal and wintry atmosphere. Hawthorne. 
 
 Qui n'auroit pas souffert, n'auroit jamais-senti ni pense. 
 
 Corinne. 
 
 True as it is that there are great sorrows that over 
 whelm the heart sorrows from whose stunning 
 power the soul is never wakened ; that many there 
 are who live with u heads above water and with hearts 
 beneath," walking the earth with firm step and un 
 ruffled brow, yet bearing a heart that looks for no rest, 
 hopes for no joy on the shores of time ; so true is it, 
 that for such consolations of a peculiar character are 
 prepared. To such is given a power, strength, and 
 depth of character, and even an intense capability of 
 happiness of which they have never conceived who 
 have not known the force of a great sorrow. It is an 
 alchemy which creates a new attribute, or rather 
 changes and refines every other principle. To them 
 a new book is opened ; to them a strong angel is sent 
 and lifteth a seal ; to them faith becomes a word of 
 mighty meaning ; not something far off, but near ; it 
 is Jesus walking upon the waves of the heart, and 
 saying: "Peace, be still;" and fulfilling in the soul 
 His promise " I am with you alway, even unto the 
 end of the world."
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT. 145 
 
 Such had been the influence of sorrow upon Mrs. 
 Carlton the once light and joyous Maria Wilder. 
 
 From a dream which had made existence beautiful, 
 and robed earth in the drapery of heaven, she was 
 suddenly awakened to a life which she knew must 
 forever be to her a failure and an abortion. 
 
 And then evil spirits came to tempt her. Despair, 
 with its madness ; misanthropy, with its bitterness ; 
 and gayety, with its heartlessness. But they won not 
 the victory. Strength from heaven came ; hope, born 
 from above, beamed in her soul ; our common hu 
 manity she loved again ; and she gathered the little 
 wild-flowers of peace that grow in many lowly, hidden 
 spots, and are found but by those who seek them. 
 
 She waited not for opportunities to perform great 
 deeds of self-denial or of generosity, for she knew that 
 those who would make others happy, who would 
 have a " dailv beauty in their lives" must, like Naa- 
 man, learn to bathe in other streams than those of 
 Damascus ; and her ever ready kindness and genial 
 smile sent sunshine into many hearts. 
 
 It were at least doubtful, whether such a marriage 
 as hers with James Carlton were wise and well. But 
 if that deep confidence which never veiled a thought 
 or feeling if that sympathy of taste and affectionate 
 regard which made the society of each grateful to the 
 other were enough for such a union, it was theirs; 
 and when, after many years, in which they had grown 
 very dear to each other, death entered their dwelling 
 and bore hence the generous and noble-minded hus 
 band, Mrs. Carlton mourned for him, not, it is true,
 
 146 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 with the wild and untamed agony with which she 
 would have mourned the chosen of her youth, but 
 with a deep, earnest and quiet sorrow. 
 
 Unhesitatingly, and rejoicing that even for him she 
 would not have lived in vain, she answered the letter 
 of Hubert Lansing. 
 
 "Hubert, With a gladness akin to that with 
 which I received your first gift, do I accept from you 
 your last legacy ; and the love the passion the 
 agony which in my youth I gave to you shall be dis 
 tilled into an intense affection which shall ever fall, 
 faithful as evening dew, upon your children. 
 
 "I cannot tell you what consolation God has given 
 me in my own children. It has been through them 
 that He hath ' tempered the wind to the shorn lamb,' 
 and remembered His promise, 'the bruised reed I will 
 not break.' 
 
 "With gushing joy with more than a mother's 
 wonted tenderness, have I gazed upon my eldest, my 
 noble son, my Walter, with his glorious intellect 
 written on his brow, and his loving heart traced upon 
 his lip. I have felt that had he called you the 
 beloved of my youth had he called you father, my 
 love for him could not have been greater. 
 
 " And now a new source of consolation you offer 
 me in the gift of your children. I had not believed that 
 in the arrangements of Providence it would ever be 
 given me to do you another kindness, though I knew 
 that to you or to yours as freely, as frankly, as when 
 you knew me in youth and in happiness would I min 
 ister to your pleasure.
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST GIFT. 147 
 
 " I cannot come to your side. The effort would be 
 too painful both for you and me. Receive my boy as 
 my own representative ; trust to his care your children 
 till my own arms shall embrace them. 
 
 " And now, Hubert, beloved, farewell ; and rejoice 
 with me that Heaven and Love are immortal that 
 the star whose brightness the vapors of earth have not 
 dimmed, will only set in death to rise in heaven. 
 
 k ' MARIA." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Death is a black camel that kneels at every man's door. 
 
 Turkish Proverb. 
 
 Death had done its work. Hubert Lansing had 
 yielded to that "tremendous necessity" that awaits 
 all living. 
 
 The young Walter Carlton had, with his daughters, 
 stood at his bedside, and mingled with theirs his tears 
 of affection and sympathy ; and so much was he the 
 representative of his mother's youth, that in the dim, 
 shadowy fancies of the dying man, he was the Maria 
 of his youth, and with glazing eyes fixed upon him, 
 among the last words his failing lips had uttered had 
 been her cherished name. 
 
 The home of Mrs. Carlton became the happy home 
 of the daughters of Lansing, and with her children 
 they mingled as sisters, and became dear to one 
 another as those of the same hearth-stone, while her 
 own heart owned no difference in the love she bore 
 her own and the children of her adoption.
 
 I SHALL BE/ 
 
 " Before the memory has a tomb in it before it becomes the 
 cemetery, the ' Greenwood ' of the soul ' I shall be ' is beautiful 
 as an old ballad. When graves are digged therein, and willows 
 are planted, and hopes are buried, and no light breaks out of the 
 cloud, then ' I shall be ' is as grand as an old paean. When 
 
 ' The battle is done, the harp unstrung, 
 
 Its music trembling, dying,' 
 then ' I shall be ' is as sublime as an old prophecy." 
 
 A CHILD stood alone on the bank of a little river. 
 ^* She was hardly beautiful, but as she stood with her 
 bonnet hanging on her arm, the wind blowing back 
 the dark hair from her broad, open forehead, the 
 bright hue of health lighting up her dark complexion, 
 and her large gray eyes, full of thought and intelli 
 gence, watching the rippling of the stream, none 
 could have failed to call that face singularly interesting. 
 
 Thus thoughtful she stood for several minutes, till 
 gradually, as though wind or tide were infusing her 
 with some unseen influence, a smile full of hope and 
 joy played about the mouth and circled the large eyes, 
 when, with a spring of joy, she flung her arms above 
 her head and stood still nearer to the stream. 
 
 Suddenly a few lilies, stretching their long stems 
 and floating close to the margin of the water caught 
 her eye. In a moment she held them in her hand and 
 148
 
 " I SHALL BE." 149 
 
 riveted on them a look intense as that she had cast a 
 moment before upon the waves; but the look of 
 intense joy still lighted up her face and then she 
 pressed them to her lips, earnestly lovingly, as 
 though they had been something with life and con 
 sciousness ; then looked again, and seeing that her 
 light touch had dimmed and bruised the delicate 
 leaves, glanced at them half sorrowfully for a moment, 
 kissed them again, and flinging them into the water, 
 said, clear as though a living thing were listening, 
 "take them water, I'll not hurt their pretty leaves." 
 
 Two or three light springs, and she stood on a rock 
 in the middle of the stream. 
 
 Wooded hills rose on either side and every shade of 
 green which eai'ly June presents was painted from the 
 low shrubbery on the river's edge up to the tallest tree 
 on topmost hill and O, above the sky was glori 
 ously beautiful. 
 
 And the child stood in the midst. She looked 
 around, drank in the glorious beauty, till her heart 
 swelling with its tumultous joy, with its intense sense 
 of beauty she burst into tears: smiles could not 
 express it, nor clasped hands; tears alone might utter 
 it. 
 
 And then came thoughts, hopes, aspirations and 
 high resolves. She would be a scholar : she would 
 read all books of all times ; such as she had heard her 
 father read and talk of, which now indeed seemed dim 
 and uncertain, but somehow very beautiful, and which 
 she [loved much to hear, though scarcely knowing 
 why ; but as she grew older, she felt it would all un-
 
 I5O GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 fold Aye ! She would be a scholar ; and she would 
 try to be good, like children she had heard of good 
 and true and generous and meek and loving, as she 
 had heard her mother often pray to God that she 
 might be, and as she had sometimes tried to pray for 
 herself-- O, she was so happy. 
 
 The little foot was put forward for another spring ; 
 she was almost there, but a strong grasp held her 
 back ; she turned ; it was Rover, their faithful New 
 foundland. She looked fondly on the noble animal. 
 She saw that he feared for her and knew that that 
 grasp bade her take care. 
 
 She reached the opposite shore ; and wearied, 
 though she knew it not, more from strong emotion 
 than from bodily fatigue, she threw herself upon the 
 ground, resting her head confidingly on the shaggy 
 breast of the dog. 
 
 She clasped her little hands and began in her soft 
 happiness to repeat, 
 
 " Now I lay me down to " 
 
 "No, no, I mustn't say l sleep,'" she murmured, 
 " I'm not going to sleep now ; * Now I lay me down, I 
 pray the Lord my soul to keep ;' " and her eyes were 
 closed, not indeed to sleep, but to rest from very hap 
 piness. God keep thee child strong in thine inno 
 cence careful in thy truth humble in thy trust. 
 ******** 
 
 She stood again beside that stream a woman 
 such a woman as the high aspirations and the meek 
 trust of her childhood had promised. 
 
 It was no simple wish, no feeble effort of the will
 
 " I SHALL BE. 151 
 
 that had made her an accomplished, intellectual and 
 noble souled being. Often and often when drawing 
 deep from the wells of abstruse science, that in which 
 she might find no immediate delight, but which she 
 knew was disciplining and strengthening her powers, 
 teaching her to think, to coin intellectual wealth from 
 the depths of her own soul ; had she heard a syren 
 voice bidding her come away and be satisfied in 
 gathering the bright and shiny moss which blooms so 
 bright and beautiful around the wells of learning, re 
 quiring no labor, and where pleasure comes at once. 
 But she had not heeded that voice ; and diligent, ear 
 nest, patient study had done more for her even than 
 native genius. 
 
 Nor had there been, nor was there now indeed, no 
 temptation to her moral nature. Many and mighty 
 had been her struggles, and alas, sometimes had she 
 failed ; for what mortal life has been one of unsullied 
 purity ? She had felt the double power of wrong 
 doing in dimming the soul, and in discouraging from 
 further effort. 
 
 It is not indeed wrong-doing, itself considered, that 
 does the worst for the human soul ; it is its degenerat 
 ing influence ; its tendency to crush all effort to do 
 right more, as though the beauty of life were forever 
 marred and its brightness might never more be re 
 stored. Remorse does not, cannot do the work of 
 repentance ; the one debasing, the other elevating the 
 soul ; and though the failure, the sin, be ever so great, 
 we may remember the guilty woman whom men
 
 152 GATHERED WAIFS. 
 
 would have condemned, but to whom the Saviour 
 said not, thou art lost, but, " Go, and sin no more." 
 
 And now she was not alone ; another stood at her 
 side, one fit to match with her own nobleness a 
 twin spirit a kindred soul. 
 
 And a new sense had been developed in her ; love had 
 been born, the love of which childhood is not con 
 scious, and it had enveloped life with a new charm. 
 
 It was such a love as few souls experience, long as 
 life, strong as death, sacred as holiness, and it made 
 to her the future more ravi shingly beautiful than had 
 
 even been the " I shall be " of her childhood. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Again she stood by a river, but this was the river of 
 death, and its cold waves swept from her sight her 
 only son. Then there was a struggle fierce and terri 
 ble ; for in place of the bright picture of a son bearing 
 to other generations the name dearest to her on earth, 
 and living over again, as it were, in him her own 
 happy existence, appeared a dark and chaotic future ; 
 it was " beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourn 
 ing." But faith triumphed, and she heard a voice 
 saying, " Thy dead shall rise again." 
 
 ******** 
 
 And other years passed over her, and a voice came 
 to her also, " Go ye out to meet the bridegroom." 
 
 O, she was now in the full glory of her womanhood, 
 and her earthly bridegroom, her chosen love, he had 
 satisfied the whole desire of her heart, and why, O 
 why, should she be summoned to meet another ! And 
 her children, so strong and beautiful ; must she go
 
 " I SHALL BE." 153 
 
 hence to the- land of darkness and meet them no more ; 
 must " the places that now know her, know her no 
 more forever ;" must perhaps another take her place 
 at the hearth-stone. But hope again became glorified 
 by faith ; and that Star which she had sometimes seen 
 but dimly in the broad sunshine of life, shone fuller 
 and more glorious than ever before in this night of 
 darkness, till she gazed on it joyously as the shepherds 
 of Judea ; and dying, faith heard her say, " I shall be 
 satisfied when I awake in thy likeness."
 
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