d by. A broad avenue cuts through the centre, and
stretches away to the west, down a gently undulating slope. Rows of tall
pines stand on either side, their branches forming an arch overhead, and
hung with long, trailing moss, moving and whispering mysteriously in the
gentle wind. Solemn cypress trees mark the by-paths; delicate flowers
bloom along their borders, and jessamine vines twine lovingly about the
branches of palmetto and magnolia trees. An air of enchanting harmony
pervades the spot; the dead could repose in no prettier shade.
Exquisitely chiselled marbles decorate the resting-places of the rich;
plain slabs mark those of the poor.

It is evening now. The shadows are deepening down the broad avenue, the
wind sighs touchingly through the tall pines, and the sinking sun is
shedding a deep purple hue over the broad landscape. A solitary
mocking-bird has just tuned its last note, and sailed swiftly into the
dark hedgerow, down in the dead-yard.

A young girl, whose fair oval face the sun of eighteen summers has
warmed into exquisite beauty, sits musingly under a cypress tree. Her
name is Anna Bonnard, and she is famous in all the city for her beauty,
as well as the symmetry of her form. Her dress is snowy white, fastened
at the neck with a blue ribbon, and the skirts flowing. Her face is
like chiselled marble, her eyes soft, black, and piercing, and deep,
dark tresses of silky hair fall down her shoulders to her waist. Youth,
beauty, and innocence are written in every feature of that fair face,
over which a pensive smile now plays, then deepens into sadness. Here
she has sat for several minutes, her head resting lightly on her right
hand, and her broad sun-hat in her left, looking intently at a newly
sodded grave with a plain white slab, on which is inscribed, in black
letters--"Poor Miranda." This is all that betrays the sleeper beneath.

"And this is where they have laid her," she says, with a sigh. "Poor
Miranda! like me, she was lost to this world. The world only knew the
worst of her." And the tears that steal from her eyes tell the tale of
her affection. "Heaven will deal kindly with the outcast, for Heaven
only knows her sorrows." She rises quickly from her seat, casts a glance
over the avenue, then pats the sods with her hands, and strews cypress
branches and flowers over the grave, saying, "This is the last of poor
Miranda. Some good friend has laid her here, and we are separated
forever. It was misfor