My truest and my rarest,
And yield thee to the keep of Him
Who blessed our happier years.

Once more good-bye! and bless thee!
My faltering lips caress thee.
When shall I feel thy hand again
Go kindly o'er my hair?
Let the dear arms that fold me
One last sweet moment hold me:
In life or death our love shall be
No weaker for the wear!

HOWARD GLYNDON.

A NIGHT IN BEDFORD, VIRGINIA.

"The general has been sending his ambulance"--Bless these ambulances!
they are as common in Virginia as hen-nest grass or clumps of
sassafras--"to the depot every morning for three or four days for
you."

"The deuce he has! Then why didn't he let me know by letter, as I
asked him to do?"

"Can't say, really."

This conversation took place in the main street of the extraordinary
city of Lugston--a city so very peculiar that I must give it an entire
article some day.

Repairing forthwith to a newspaper office, I wrote to the general
how sorry I was that he had been put to so much trouble--I had not
received the letter which he must have written--obliged to go home
in the morning--hoped at some future time to have the pleasure, etc.,
etc. Then I went to my lodgings on Federal Hill, and, behold! there
was the letter. "Although the ambulance"--ever blessed!--"had been so
often to the depot, it would be there on Monday morning, and again on
Tuesday evening. Don't fail to," etc. Whereupon I called for paper
and wrote the general that, in spite of the necessity for my returning
home the next day, I would be at Blank Station on Tuesday evening and
meet that ambulance--blessed ambulance!--or die in the struggle. Go I
would, and go I went--if that is grammar.

A newspaper editor--there is no end of editors in Virginia: wherever
there is a tank, a tan-yard or a wood-pile, there you find one--a
learned professor who had a flourishing school a few miles up the road
(public instruction is playing hob with most of the private schools
in Virginia), and a judge on a lecturing-tour (how is a Virginia
judge to support his family without lecturing, wood-sawing or other
supplementary business?) entertained me most agreeably on my way to
the station.

A cadet from Annapolis was the first object that met my eye when I got
out.

"'S death! a Virginian in that hated uniform?"

I said no such thing, felt no such thing, but was inwardly pleased
that Uncle Sam's money (he gets ten millions a year out of Virginia