l you, reader, that Wayland Morris and
Alice Orville are man and wife; and that they, in company with Fred.
Milder and wife, and Susette and husband, are bound for New Orleans, to
surprise Winnie Lester in her regal home. Your intuition has revealed
all this to you e'er now, and you have pictured in your minds how blank
with amazement young Mrs. Lester's pretty face will be when she beholds
this "family-group" in her elegant drawing-room, all eager to welcome
and be welcomed, and overflowing with exuberant life and gladness, as
people ordinarily are when they get safely off one of those beautiful,
but treacherous western steam-palaces.

All this your vivid imaginations will easily portray in far more glowing
and picturesque colors than our poor pencil can paint. So we leave you
to conjure up all the bright visions you choose with which to deck the
futures of our young debutants in the great drama of wedded life. And
some of you young writers, who thirst for fame's thorny laurels, may
touch your inspired pens to paper, and give us a sequel to this hasty,
ill-finished tale, a true production of our "fast" age.

In conclusion, let us say, that years after these events transpired, as
the "Eclipse" passed up and down the Mississippi, on her trips to and
from New Orleans, the jocular clerk was wont to call the attention of
his passengers to a beautiful English cottage, surrounded by vines and
shrubbery, which stood on the Tennessee shore, and exclaim, "The
dwellers in that cottage learned their first lesson of love on the
guards of the Eclipse."

COME TO ME WHEN I'M DYING.

A SONG.

Come to me when I'm dying;
Gaze on my wasted form,
Tired with so long defying
Life's ever-rushing storm.
Come, come when I am dying,
And stand beside my bed,
Ere yet my soul is flying,
And I am cold and dead.

Bend low and lower o'er me,
For I've a word to say
Though death is just before me,
Ere I can go away.
Now that my soul is hovering
Upon the verge of day,
For thee I'll lift the covering
That veils its quivering ray.

O, ne'er had I thus spoken
In health's bright, rosy glow!
But death my pride hath broken,
And brought my spirit low.
Though now this last revealing
Quickens life's curdling springs,
And a half-timid feeling
Faint flushes o'er me flings.

Bend lower yet above me,
F