ts obscurity and linger on Father Hooper's
lips.

"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face
round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other. Have
men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled
only for my black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely
typifies has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows
his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when
man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely
treasuring up the secret of his sin,--then deem me a monster for the
symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around me, and, lo!
on every visage a black veil!"

While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father
Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile
lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and
a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years
has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is
moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the
thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.

THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT.

There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in
the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston,
or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts
recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists have
wrought themselves almost spontaneously into a sort of allegory.
The masques, mummeries and festive customs described in the text
are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these
points may be found in Strutt's _Book of English Sports and
Pastimes_.

Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the
banner-staff of that gay colony. They who reared it, should their
banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged
hills and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep
verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a more vivid hue than
the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all
the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter's fireside.
Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile,
and came hither to find