.
How we smiled at that part of the service when I said "I thee endow"!
But as to the "love and cherish," I meant to keep that vow.

We were only a couple of strollers; we had coin when the show was good,
When it wasn't we went without it, and we did the best we could.
We were happy, and loved each other, and laughed at the shifts we made,--
Where love makes plenty of sunshine, there poverty casts no shade.

Well, at last we got to London, and did pretty well for a bit;
Then the business dropped to nothing, and the manager took a flit,--
Stepped off one Sunday morning, forgetting the treasury call;
But our luck was in, and we managed right on our feet to fall.

We got an offer for Melbourne,--got it that very week.
Those were the days when thousands went over to fortune seek,
The days of the great gold fever, and a manager thought the spot
Good for a "spec," and took us as actors among his lot.

We hadn't a friend in England--we'd only ourselves to please--
And we jumped at the chance of trying our fortune across the seas.
We went on a sailing vessel, and the journey was long and rough;
We hadn't been out a fortnight before we had had enough.

But use is a second nature, and we'd got not to mind a storm,
When misery came upon us,--came in a hideous form.
My poor little wife fell ailing, grew worse, and at last so bad
That the doctor said she was dying,--I thought 'twould have sent me mad,--

Dying where leagues of billows seemed to shriek for their prey,
And the nearest land was hundreds--aye, thousands--of miles away.
She raved one night in a fever, and the next lay still as death,
So still I'd to bend and listen for the faintest sign of breath.

She seemed in a sleep, and sleeping, with a smile on her thin, wan face,--
She passed away one morning, while I prayed to the throne of grace.
I knelt in the little cabin, and prayer after prayer I said,
Till the surgeon came and told me it was useless--my wife was dead!

Dead! I wouldn't believe it. They forced me away that night,
For I raved in my wild despairing, the shock sent me mad outright.
I was shut in the farthest cabin, and I beat my head on the side,
And all day long in my madness, "They've murdered her!" I cried.

They locked me away from my fellows,--put me in cruel chains,
It seems I had seized a weapon to beat out the surgeon's brains.
I cried in my wild, mad fury, that he was a devil sent
To gloat o'er the frenzied anguish with which my heart was ren