ted by the wreck of the storm, my thoughts being
yet full of Mr. Clay, of his enemies and disappointment, there rose
before my mind a scene such as Audubon may once have witnessed:

The light of day is dying over the forests of the upper Mississippi.
The silence of high space falls upon the vast stream. On a
thunder-blasted tree-top near the western bank sits a lone, stern
figure waiting for its lordliest prey--the eagle waiting for the swan.
Long the stillness continues among the rocks, the tree-tops, and above
the river. But far away in the north a white shape is floating nearer.
At last it comes into sight, flying heavily, for it is already weary,
being already wounded. The next moment the cry of its coming is heard
echoing onward and downward upon the silent woods. Instantly the
mighty watcher on the summit is alert and tense; and as the great snowy
image of the swan floats by, in mid-air and midway of the broad expanse
of water, he meets it. No battle is fought up there--the two are not
well matched; and thus, separated from all that is little and
struggling far above all that is low, with the daylight dying on his
spotlessness, the swan receives the blow in its heart.

So came Death to the great Commoner.

Oh, Georgiana! I do not think of Death as ever having come to you. I
think of you as some strangely beautiful white being that one day rose
out of these earthly marshes where hunts the dark Fowler, and uttering
your note of divine farewell, spread your wings towards the open sea of
eternity, there to await my coming.

VIII

It is a year and four months since Georgiana left me, and now
everything goes on much as it did before she came. The family have
moved back to their home in Henderson, returning like a little company
of travellers who have lost their guide. Sylvia has already married;
her brother writes me that he is soon to be; the mother visits me and
my child, yearningly, but seldom, on account of her delicate health;
and thus our lives grow always more apart. None take their places, the
house having passed to people with whom, beyond all neighborly
civilities, I have naught to do. Nowadays as I stroll around my garden
with my little boy in my arms strange faces look down upon us out of
Georgiana's window.

And I have long since gone back to nature.

When the harvest has been gathered from our strong, true land, a growth
comes on which late in the year causes the earth to regain