'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!'

'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing--will be on you both! The
blessing of God--will be on you--and if the dead can come back--to
comfort those they love--I will come back--and comfort _you_!'

I do not know--I can not know till the veil which hides her world from
ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times--many
times--since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING
HER WORD!

For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in
hers. Then, in a low tone--so low that I had to bend down to hear--she
said:

'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my
mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!'

The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the
better land!

In a moment she said:

'Farewell my friend--my child--I will come----' Then a low sound
rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the
winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams
rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.

And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer
afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad
life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long
years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant
as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up,
and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we
placed over her in the long ago:

FRANCES MANDELL:

Aged 23.

SHE SUFFERED AND SHE DIED.

WEEP FOR HER.

TAKE CARE!

When the blades of shears are biting,
Finger not their edges keen;
When man and wife are fighting,
He faces ill who comes between.
JOHN BULL, in our grief delighting,
Take care how you intervene!

SHOULDER-STRAPS;

OR, MEN, MANNERS, AND MOTIVES IN 1862.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL--MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES,
AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS.

This is going to be an odd jumble.

Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life
and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the
foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually,
within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time
of Noah's flood, and th