presented, that some means might be found to avert it.
But the dreadful crisis had arrived. Had the whole board of authority been
present, I should be glad to believe, for the honor of humanity, that they
would have been moved to relent, as they would not have been able to shift
the responsibility from one to the other, as is the wont of such bodies
when the members act separately.

When the poor woman had so far recovered from the first shock as to be
enabled to articulate, she pleaded her ability to maintain herself without
assistance, and her choice rather to starve than be removed. She appealed
to him as the father of a daughter, and painted the ruin which would fall
upon her own, exposed to the corruption and example of the place to which
he was taking her. She appealed to him as a Christian, and reminded him
that they had sat together before the sacred desk, and partaken of the
symbols of the body and blood of the Son of Him who was in a peculiar
manner the father of the widow and orphan. But her auditor was destitute
of the imagination which enables the possessor to enter into the feelings
of another; and these affecting appeals fell dead upon his worldly and
unsympathizing nature. The man even extended his hand to urge her forward
to the conveyance provided! At that moment, when all hope was dead within
her, and the worst that could happen in her opinion had arrived, a change
came over the unhappy woman. She suffered herself unresistingly to be led
forward to her doom. The fine chords of the mind and heart, lately so
intensely strung, had parted; her countenance relaxed, and her features
settled down into a dead, unmeaning apathy; never again, during the short
remainder of her life, to be animated by one gleam of the feelings which
had so lately illumined but to destroy.

My kind, my indulgent mother! Her generous heart needed not the eloquence
of my youthful feelings to induce her to rescue the poor orphan, and to
cherish her as her own child. And never was kindness more richly----

I had proceeded thus far in writing this narrative, when I discovered that
I was overlooked; and a gentle voice over my shoulder said: 'You should
not praise your own wife; it is the same as if you should praise
yourself!'

E. B.

APOSTROPHE TO HEALTH.

HYGEIA! most blest of the powers
That tenant the mansions divine,
May I pass in thy presence t