for kissing the place to make it well. What if his hair is that of an old man, so that the heart remain young! Helen remembers only that his life is spared she loves him, and that is all-sufficient for happiness.
After all, it is but a common and everyday tale which we have been relating, and who does not know many such? If it were not so, alas! for earthly ties and affections, thus placed at the mercy of accident or disease, even of time itself. We verily believe that there are many Helens in the world, in seasons of joy as thoughtless and light-hearted, in trial, in suffering, as devoted and true, although the first is often misunderstood, and the last denied. Nor do we envy those whose experience hitherto renders them sceptics in our sweet faith.
“But the luggies?” methinks we hear some of our gentle readers exclaim, fancying that we have altogether forgotten All Hallow E’en, with its mystic spells, or tired, it may be, of so much moralizing. “It was strange about the luggies.”
Aye, and no less strange than true, and we have known or heard of many a coincidence equally striking and inexplicable, which we will tell them some day when we are in the mood.
THE WANDERING MINSTREL.
From the wand’ring minstrel lone;
Of lays of mirth and pleasure
Even memory is gone.
Seek ye for words of gladness
’Mid the mourner’s bitter woe,
Ask ye a tale of love from him
Whose hopes have been laid low;
Kneel ye to call to earth again
The loved ones who are gone,
But ask no gayer measure
From the wand’ring minstrel lone.
Through a world of ceaseless care,
Watches at last fate’s lowering clouds
Sweep by, without despair;-
So is it with the stricken heart
Whose dreams of joy are o’er,
Through its drear path of life deceived
By hope’s mirage no more;-
So is it with the heart ye seek
To gladden as your own-
The sickening, unpitied heart
Of the wandering minstrel lone.
To the pale and trembling lip,
And bid it dream it tastes the draught
It, waking, could not sip?
Would ye ask for tones of gladness
Whose echoes must be sighs?
Would ye seek for sunny smiles of joy
In wan and care-dimmed eyes?
Then ask not lays of pleasure
When their memory is gone;
Ye can list no gayer measure
From the wand’ring minstrel lone.
ROSE ACTON.
THE POINT OF HONOUR.
BY CAMILLA TOULMIN.
“Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellish- ment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. But a woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her own soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hope- less, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”-WASH- INGTON IRVING.
I am always interested in the conversation of old persons. I love to hear the reminiscences of their youth, and provided the memory be faithful and retentive-as is often the case-I marvel greatly at the rich storehouse a septuagenarian’s mind must be. Yet I can understand how they who have seen and survived so much, seem un- conscious that their own race at last is nearly run. It must appear so common a thing for death to claim the younger and stronger, and leave them with the sands of life still unshaken. I can under- stand how they build houses, and plant trees, that shall never shelter their own grey hairs. Their contemporaries, nay, the children of their school- mates, have played their parts in the theatre of the world; they have been heroes, statesmen, bards, or on the lower and more sheltered rails of for- tune’s ladder, they have breathed away existence, each in the circle of his own individual world. “After life’s fitful fever,” they already “sleep well,” while, perhaps, some aged friend or relative is left to point the moral to a story which has passed like an acted drama before him.
Such were my reflections one evening, while listening to the dear old lady, whom I will call aunt Jessy. It was chilly October, and the in- creasing darkness without was an excuse for idleness, while we drew round the cheerful fire, instead of ringing for candles.
“Tell us a story, aunt Jessy,” exclaimed one of the party, and “do-pray do,” was echoed by all. I wish I could remember her precise words, for if the following memoir prove not interesting, the fault must be mine in the telling. And yet I will set out by confessing, as she did, that the incidents are decidedly common-place, the situa- tions anything but romantic, and the characters natural, because they are exactly of the class which composes two-thirds of society. The melo-dra- matic writer chooses some amiable brigand or interesting pirate for his hero; the tragic muse lifts down a hero from the pedestal of history, and induing him with life, speech and motion, makes him, it must be owned, often do things he never did, and say things he never said; the playwright generally prefers a sentimental youth of the poetic
R
