before dreamed of. Before so
brave a wooer what could her little arts avail? As many better and worse
women than she have done before her, she gave herself to him, thinking,
thereby, to hold him in silken bonds, through which he might not break;
but what was all her life to her, was merely a passing incident to him,
and one day she learned that he had returned down stream. The idea of
following him probably never even occurred to her, but, like others
before her, she thought that the sun had fallen from heaven, because her
night light had gone out. Her parents, who knew nothing of this
intrigue, calmly set about making the arrangements for her marriage, a
matter in which, of course, she would be the last person to be
consulted. She must have watched these preparations with speechless
agony, knowing that the day fixed for the marriage must be that on which
her life would end, for she must long have resolved to die faithful to
her false lover, though it was not until the very last moment that she
summoned up sufficient courage to take her own life. That she ever did
so is very marvellous. That act is one which is not only contrary to all
natural instincts, but is, moreover, utterly opposed to the ideas which
prevail among people of her race; and her sufferings must, indeed, have
been intense, before this means of escape can have presented itself to
her, even as a possibility. She must have been at once a girl of
extraordinary strength and weakness: strength to have made the resolve,
and, having made it, to fearlessly carry it into execution, dying with a
lie on her lips, which should conceal her real reasons, and the fact of
her rapidly approaching maternity; and weakness in that the burden laid
upon her was greater than she could bear. Poor child, ignorant, yet
filled with a terrible knowledge, false, yet faithful even unto death,
strong in her weakness, with a marvellous strength, yet weak in her
first fall.

She has lived her life, and that which she has done,
May God within Himself make whole.

AMONG THE FISHER FOLK

A palm-leaf sail that stretches wide,
A sea that's running strong,
A boat that dips its laving side,
The forefoot's rippling song.
A flaming sky, a crimson flood,
Here's joy for body and mind,
As in our canting crafts we scud
With a spanking breeze behind.

_The Song of the Fisher Folk._

This is a land of a thousand beau