"No one-it is nothing, dear, dear papa!" cried the child, bursting into tears, and pressing her cheek to his own, with deep sobs. He drew her closer to him, and then I saw from his eyes that he wished to speak to me. I bent down. of retaining on his stomach what had grown to | weak arm and placed it around the neck of be the very necessity of his existence. I shall Aurora. As he did so the fresh wound upon mention but one sad act, because it concerns her cheek caught his eye, and he asked who my narrative. In one of his mad moments they had hurt his darling? had introduced into the apartment his little Aurora, hoping that the sight of the child would tend to calm his horrible delirium. It was an ill-advised act, and the result was most afflicting. The unhappy man had not recognized his daughter; his tottering brain had conceived the idea that the figure before him was that of a beautiful fiend come to betray him. In his horror and fear he had broken from those who held him, and, with his hand, struck the child violently, inflicting a cruel wound on her cheek. Aurora fainted and fell, as though struck by lightning, and they hastily bore her from the apartment. I arrived on the day succeeding this terrible scene, and entered the chamber of the unfortunate man. In a corner, erect, motionless, and silent, stood the eternal figure of Jugurtha, and in his measured and respectful salute I discerned no change. Marquis was in an apathetic state, and two physicians were whispering at his bedside. I I drew the curtain, and looked upon him. shall never forget that face. It makes me thrill now the simple memory-with a strange and awful horror and compassion. I would I had never seen it. A deadly pallor quite covered it; the eyes were deeply sunken in what appeared to be immense caverns beneath the lordly brows; the lips scarcely met over the teeth, and the whole countenance was as gaunt and sinister as that of a corpse. I turned away, and drawing one of the physicians aside he was a man of great celebrity -asked if there was any chance of recovery? ing throughout the night. No remedies can now reach him." "Do you remember, Will," he murmured, "that night? Your words were not wholly vain. Do you know I prayed that night? My child and you broke my stubborn heart! I have prayed often since, with sobs and tears; but my terrible, fatal habit brought me here inexorably. Yes; and yet-and yet I dare to hope--I do not yield to utter despair-Lost! lost!' that rung in my ears a long time. But 'tis no longer my haunting dread! Will-come closer-you see I'm-faint-" Here Marquis paused for some moments, overcome by weakness, and gasping for breath. "Poor and-wretched," he added, in a murmur. "I try to trust in my Saviour. Will my dear old friend-take care of my wifeand my child-" The voice died away, and soon afterward Mrs. Cotesbury and Aurora were warned that too much excitement was injurious to the invalid. "It is only to spare their feelings," said the old physician as the door closed; "he can not live another hour." And so it proved. In less than an hour Marquis Cotesbury had passed away; the cold body which lay before me was all that remained of that splendid and matchless being. The soul had fled to the awful account with its Creator. Let me not dare to penetrate that vail and speculate upon the mysteries it shrouds. "Mr. Cotesbury's case is quite hopeless, Sir," I shall pass over a year now, and terminate was the reply. "We do not anticipate his liv-my narrative in a very few words. I was left the executor of my friend's estate, and his will directed that a life-interest in his entire property should inure to his wife, to revert on her death to his daughter in fee-simple; and in case of Aurora's death without issue the immense property was to go to various benevolent institutions. I bowed my head with a grief and suffering too deep for tears. In response to my further questions Dr. said there was little likelihood of any further delirium. Nature was worn out. His passing away would probably be quite tranquil. Mrs. Cotesbury died in less than a year after her husband, and Aurora never lived to reach seventeen. The unhappy scenes of her childhood seemed to have broken her strength, and she slowly passed away in a decline which term And so it proved. At three in the morning he began to sink, and with this giving away of his strength his mental powers seemed to revive. He smiled faintly as his eye met mine,inated her days. I was with her when she died, and murmured, "Thank you, Will-you always loved me." He then asked for his wife and daughter, They came in hastily. Poor Marquis took a hand of each, and said: "My wife, my child, I shall soon die; can you forgive me?" and we had much conversation about her father, my friend, whose memory she seemed to love and cherish with a sort of fearful fondness, which impressed me strangely. I remember the smile on her face as she was going away from me; it was like that upon the wan countenance of Marquis Cotesbury. We placed The tones of his voice were unspeakably ten- | her "pure and unpolluted flesh" in a grave beder and sweet; and poor Mrs. Cotesbury could tween her mother and her father. There, waitonly sink upon her knees, and, with long-re-ing the final trump, they take their repose. May pressed love, cover the thin hand she held with kisses. A smile of happiness diffused itself over the wan face of Marquis, and then he raised his they rest in peace, and rise to the life everlasting-the roses blooming on their graves be changed to the pure lilics of eternal peace. OUR WIVES. "'M a clerk in the office of Plutus Pilpay; His income's at least seven hundred a day, Fine broadcloth his coat, while coarse home-spun I wear; All's one! with us both, back and feet must go bare His house is a wonder-in fact, I've been told There are gardens and aviaries, velvet and gold— There's a chapel, in which 'tis a pleasure to pray; And here, every Sabbath, my master, Pilpay, His table is splendid with crystal and plate, And there's no tedious Lazarus begs at his gate Seven horses he keeps, though I know that he rides But of all his live stock-and he's others besides-- Mrs. Pilpay's the fashion, as far as the art Her bonnets break many a feminine heart, And the neighbors cabal o'er her clothes. How she rustles along to her pew in Grace Church, While poor I for some corner laboriously search Mrs. Pilpay kneels close to the altar, while I I wonder if He for whose mercy we cry For sometimes I've seen In her hands books suspiciously bound- Mrs. Pilpay's on every Wednesday "at home" He on such state occasions is bound not to come For a husband is all very well in his place- Mrs. Pilpay a very fine woman is thought- A splendid complexion-I know where 'tis bought! I've heard people say she was gay, indiscreet, But, bless you, he's too much engaged in "the Street" Many times at my desk, when the checks I fill out And I've lunched upon crackers and apples, and doubt I think, spite of Pilpay's magnificent life, Splendid wife, splendid house, and the rest, I have got a home too, and a dear little wife My home's but an attic-a back one, what's more; Wife makes up the bed, cooks the meals, sweeps the floor, Nor e'en to mend shirts is too grand. And in one of the coziest ends of the room, My home's rather poor, as you see, but I swear A sunshine that breaks from my wife's golden hair, It gilds the bare wall with a magical tone; It turns our plain platters to gold; Yet we have not got that alchemistical stone My wife does not purchase her dresses up-town, But she makes better show with a dimity gown Her bonnet needs no finer roses than those That ruddily glow in her cheeks; Nor has Mrs. Pilpay such pearls as the rows So though I'm a small clerk with Plutus Pilpay, And although he is worth seven hundred a day, I'm richer than he in the treasures of life, RACHEL'S REFUSAL. "Because there will be no end to the peri"The soul has inalienable rights, and the first of these patetic patients to overrun your woods and hills sick school-girls; renewable belles; par is love." A JUNE morning blessed the earth with fra- sons with bronchitis ; lame old beaux; super grance and dew, and Rachel, standing on the threshold with a little sun-bonnet in her hand, lingered a moment to look; the bonnet was only in her hand, for her pale, dark complexion feared no New-England sunshine. As she stepped into the scented grass that waved its tiny brown spires about the door-step, the full morning sun lit her heavy braids with that hue beloved of old in the dear Italian land, a gold-threaded darkness, that matched well the fire and sweetness of her deep eyes-eyes that had a blue expression and a black depth. Rachel was a singular compound-she was neither beautiful nor pretty, but peculiarly attractive. No one passed or met her without asking her name, and every where she went she was afterward remembered with a sudden thrill of interest and feeling. Part of this was owing to her aspect; tall, slight, at times haughty, yet free and careless in action as a deer; eyes that oftenest spoke the soul of softness, yet, forever changeful, could burn with passion, flash with anger, or crystallize with scorn; a head powerful and noble; a figure transfused into gracefulness by the power of vivid emotions; a voice that vibrated to every thought within; a fluency of speech as marked and expressive in her as it is wont to be vapid and insignificant in other women; and a certain picturesqueness of dress and attitude that suited her-and suited me, for I loved her. We were on our way to the woods that divine summer morning, she said, to gather kalmia blossoms for a wedding in the village. I knew we went for another purpose-to decide once for all how blessed or how bleak my life should be; but that I alone knew. Slowly we ascended the road up the hill-side, both silent; the sweet odors of June hung delicate spells in the dew-freshened air, the keen mountain-wind slept, and the morning shadows lay long and light across the red road. My silence was heavier than hers, for she spoke first. "Look there, Fred!"-we were remotely connected, and improved the link into cousinship"now do you see Gray Lake?" I followed the direction of her "spirit-small hand," and caught a sparkle of water in the edge of a deep shadow cast by the village mountain. "Is it there the water-cure is established, Rachel ?" "Yes. Dr. Villeneuve, an old Frenchman, has bought the old Pine Woods factory, and is fitting it up for a boarding-house, and laying pipe from the lake for baths." "There's an end to the peace of Taunton," said I, as we turned off the high-road into a wood-path dim with foliage, and full of the indescribable forest scents that whoever has trodden therein knows, but can not analyze. "Why?" said Rachel, wondering. annuated professors; interesting dyspeptics; and, last and worst, strong-minded women." Rachel laughed merrily at the climax. "Why do you hate them so bitterly?" said she. "Did you ever see or know one ?" "Heaven forbid!" "I have," said Rachel, meditatively. "I once saw a Woman's Rights Convention." "You!" said I, utterly astonished at the idea. "Yes; I went with full intention to see what this odd and painful insurrection of a sex could mean. I went to find out women's rights, and I only heard their wrongs-not their wrong." There was a deep, pathetic vibration in her tone as she stopped, and my lips opened to question her further, when with a sudden exclamation of delight she sprang forward like a child, and grasping the stem of a tall kalmia, bent its crowned head down for me to see. "Is not that lovely ?" said she. "Beautiful!-beautiful and strange," said I, answering my thought rather than her words; for the picture was singularly charming; her face, wan, spiritual, and unearthly in its brilliant and rapid expressions, surrounded by a cloud of those perfectly-tinted, roseate inexpressive blooms. Life, love, intelligence-and for its shadow beauty, proud and fatally honeyed, inodorous, soulless. Far beyond, the hemlock wood was full of dawn-pink blossoms, each tiny and quaintlyangled cup as perfect as if it were the sole flower of earth-some clusters white as clouds at noon, except for the deep crimson specks and lines within-others delicately flushed like snowdrifts at sunsetting-and others yet of that deep,' cool pink that precedes a Spring morning, and foretells an April day of showers. Soon were Rachel's arms filled; and as the day was yet in its early hours, we wandered down a well-known path that brought us to a rude and rocky seat on the edge of Nepasset brook, which brawled loudly beneath us, and silvered the gray rocks with ripples and foam. I took from Rachel her gay burden, and anchoring the stems with a stone in a tiny bay of the brook, that they might not wither, we both sat down, and for a moment sat in silence-the clean, aromatic odor of the hemlocks, the irrepressible mirth and warble of the water, the soft wind that whispered above us, and then died away in a vague murmur, wandering through the woods-all these, with mystical charm, laid silence upon our lips like a finger; and when Rachel spoke at last, she said, "I used to come here with Ellen." Ellen was my dead wife; and now I loved Rachel. Yet I had loved my wife truly, and as a man loves the woman he marries for love. She was tender, impulsive, imperfect; good and gentle to me, if not to others. I did not wor ship, but I loved her deeply. She left me one little child, and died. They misjudge men who say they can love but once. I believe it is true of women; but rarely, almost never, of men. I loved Rachel now as I had never loved before. I knew her to be my superior in genius, in education, in character, but also to have under these traits the fervent and deep heart that is the pre-eminent heritage of such a character; and while she satisfied my mind and elevated my life by her unconscious greatness and goodness, I knew she had it in her power to fill my heart in its unsounded depths with love so intense, so pure, so vivid, that I trembled at the mere and audacious imagination that it might be mine. Here I had come to ask it; and she had even here spoken of my dead wife softly, tenderly, reverently-for she, too, had loved her, and knew my sorrow at her loss. I took the tiny hand that lay upon the rock beside me and kissed it. She knew that I thanked her, yet she sighed, and cast a little flower I had given her far into the water. Then we both sat speechless. A sudden start of Rachel's aroused me. Her face was of a deadly pallor, and the teeth set in her small lip, while both hands were pressed upon her side till the veins grew cord-like under the fine skin. She I dipped some water from the brook in a leaf and brought it to her, and I saw that the living color had returned to her face, the bitten lip was released, and though she panted and was speechless, the stress of pain was evidently past. leaned her head upon the rock against which the seat rested, and I could see the grasp of suffering release its hold, her hands relax, and her whole aspect assume that languor which follows such pangs. She turned toward me with a lovely smile, recognizing my anxiety, and said, "It was only a side-ache, Fred." er one deep and unconfessed wrong that is theirs peculiarly. They would all be happy and quiet if men knew how to rule them. Evil or mistaken rule underlies all rebellion." "What is the matter with man's rule, that you charge it with such entire failure? Are we all tyrants ?" "No, only unconsciously in the wrong, most of you. There is but one way to guide women, and that is to love them enough. Women do not live happily from reason, or in duty merely. Their fullest life is in emotion—a thing that is, in old Sir Thomas Brown's quaint phrase, 'an arabesque,' only to men." "But your strong-minded women do not say so, Rachel. Indeed, I think they would consider themselves insulted by your view of the subject." "Very possibly. They do not all know it consciously. They attempt to be reasonable that they may insure a hearing from men, who always call loudly for reasons; and women, having no more rational answer to give than their own instinctive nature affords, go seeking after some more common and better-appreciated truth-rake up from the dust of years all their inequalities in the social scale for a special pretext, and then illogically go on to wrangle for power, hoping thereby to compel peace. Do you suppose any woman would care a straw for her own property or individual prerogative if her husband loved her well and truly enough to make her feel her self lost and gained in him ?" I smiled involuntarily, thinking how Rachel betrayed her habitual views and most peculiar characteristic in this view of the case; but I answered, with grave earnestness, "Are all women capable of that devotion and disinterestedness ?" "But do you see no physician—take nothing who love them, and are not too proud or too selffor it?" said I. "Yes, I asked the doctor. He says I must only be patient while it lasts." "And he thinks it will leave you in time?" "Yes," said she, but with a strange vibration in the tone that haunted me long after, and now haunts me forever. I thought then she was nervous possibly, and that my kindest act would be to divert her a moment from herself-an easy task with her, who scarcely had a self; so I said, "You were speaking of women's wrongs, Rachel. Do you, then, believe their so-called rights to be but the antithetical expression of these wrongs?" A little spark glimmered in her eye and fired her cheek. ish to demonstrate it." "Rachel! Rachel! what heresy to your sex! Is not a woman a rational creature?" "Yes, in a measure, but far more an emotional one; and every thing in this world grows as it was made in the beginning, after its kind. If a columbine lives and glitters in the cleft of a rock, fed by sun and dew, will you try to show me that it ought to have tubers at its root because potatoes do, and they are both plants?" I laughed at the illustration, and Rachel flushed with a little scorn. "What makes you laugh? I wonder if there was ever a man made, who gave a woman credit for any candor!" "I do, Rachel; but your illustration amused me. I think you are right in a measure, but "I think them less than that, Fred. Wo- recollect, all these women are not dependent on men's rights are mere pretexts, assumed to cov-men; how many of the strong-minded are un |