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married; what have they to do with loving, or | ing, rather than a right. being loved ?"

"Very much, for I did not mean to confine the word love to its technical sense; they have fathers and brothers whom they love if they are worth loving, often if they are not; and they have eyes to see the troubles of their married friends. I tell you, Fred, it is not by luxury and indulgence that women live blessed, but by finer and neglected ministries-looks, tones, caresses; by those pulses of affection that daily forebode the divine influences binding us to one Father; the strength-giving love, which David, in a rare ecstasy, discovered, and declared, 'Thy gentleness hath made me great.'"

Anne Clay, poor,

hard-working, anxious as she is, is the most enviable woman I know."

Rachel did not know how she shook my very soul with the wistful, pensive cadence of that last sentence; but I would hear her through.

"I acknowledge, Rachel, your case is proven; yet I do not see that you are any nearer righting these wrongs than the noisier advocates of

women.

"I am not; for any remedy I can see, must take generations to accomplish; first, women must make themselves noble and lovable; then they must train their children to be so; as well as to appreciate both nobility and loveliness. The old French sneer of 'La femme incomprise,' had, like most sneers, a deep and bitter truth

"Your theory is beautiful, Rachel, but either because I am a man, or because it is so novel an idea, I do not quite see into the practical re-beneath it. When men and women can unsults; give me an illustration."

derstand each other; when men are true, and
women generous; when the right and lawful
authority of man is so love-tempered that a wo-
man's due obedience is sweet and glad,
'Then reign the world's great bridals, pure and calm.'
Then women will have no wrongs, nor any
rights, nor any self."

"And men?"

"Men will respect their goodness, love their loveliness, be too proud not to protect their dependence, and too 'tender and true' to be unkind, even in thought, to the sensitive and timid heart that beats only with and for their own."

"There are plenty before your eyes, Fred. Look at Flora Larned whom we both know; was there a sweeter, happier little maiden in all Taunton than she when she married Mr. Larned? Now, in spite of every mere outside appliance, how pale and listless she is, just like that blanched weed in the cleft of this stone, and for the same reason, want of sunshine. Mr. Larned admires her, and is proud of her; he tells all his friends what a pattern wife he has, but he never tells her so. He comes home from his office tired and harassed. Flora brings his slippers, pulls his chair to the fire, wheels the Rachel's face glowed with a deeper tint than table to his elbow, arranges the lamp, hands her rose-red flowers imparted. Never had I him the paper, and is too glad if he says, 'That seen her so lovely, rapt in so warm and lofty an will do.' He brings home all the petty annoy-enthusiasm. Certainly my hour was come! ances of the day, and bestows them at secondhand on his wife, who can not knock him down, and will not retort; he is quite safe in speaking to her as he dare not to a man or a client; as politeness forbids him to speak to a lady. Yet at heart he loves Flora, and when she dies, as she will soon, he will be very unhappy; why can not he see this now?"

"Rachel!" said I, in a voice broken and pleading, "do your part in this great work. Save one soul alive by the strength of your own. Take me and make me what you will— a man worthy to mate with such a woman as you are. Be my good angel-my wife! Rachel! Rachel! you can make me blessed forever-you can, if only you will. At least, speak to me!"

For as I spoke she had withdrawn to the verge of the rock, and cast herself against the crooked trunk of a hemlock-tree, like one who gropes

Rachel pained me more than she knew. I remembered my own failings, I wished to my soul I could have heard these just and practical truths before. I spoke again, in a sort of half-con-blindly for protection against some unforeseen scious desire to vindicate my sex, if not myself. ill; her face was pale, her large eyes full of "But is there no instance on the other side distress, her hands held toward me with a gesof the question? does no man whom we know ture that asked me to cease; but I was impelled treat his wife as you would have him, Rachel ?" by a mad and irrestrainable passion-I would "Yes, not a few either, for I know more un-speak, and she did not answer. Then I graspcommon men than most people do, simply be-ed one of the cold hands, and pressed it to my cause I instinctively shun the commonplace in lips. I felt it shudder; and, looking up, I saw every thing. There is Anne Clay; her husband the other hand covered her face, and over the is an invalid, in very moderate circumstances; delicate palm fell a slow, heavy drop. her whole life is a series of hospital services and strict economy; but how serene, how rosy, how cheerful she is! Mr. Clay admires and loves her; and shows it. He is more polite to and careful of her because she is his wife, and instinct restrained me from any further demonthat very word has the strongest claim upon his respect and attention; he knows how well she loves him, and how it strengthens her, as it does all women, to be loved. He shows her all the devotion he can, and receives her care as a bless-distress.

I came nearer, unforbidden, and drew her head upon my shoulder, where it lay quietly, shaken with deep and infrequent sobs. Yet, though she kept that position, a certain indefinable in

stration. I did not even feel encouraged, though the action seemed to imply so much hope; but with no hope could I dally at that hour. For once I forgot myself, absorbed in her evident

At last she withdrew herself, all weak and trembling, from my arm, and looking in my face with the earnest air of a little child, her long lashes pointed and shining with tears, and her cheeks wet and pale, she said to me, in a heart-broken and heart-breaking voice,

"Dear Fred, I can not possibly marry you." The very simplicity and tenderness of the answer compelled me to know that it was final; yet that vague and false voice that ever suggests hope to a certain but new despair impelled me to say,

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"We could have been friends, Fred, if you would consent. I am sorry, and I am afraid you will be some time."

She said this in her childlike way-innocently, but not calmly-and her voice struck me, as it were, to the earth, tolling in such blameless accents of sorrow the knell of my dead life. I threw myself along the rock, and if, man that I was, some tears inbittered in that moment the pure wave of Nepasset brook, I care not who hears it, for never had man nobler cause for tears, even such as mine-hot as scalding lead, and as heavy-but their weight in dropping no way lightened my brain.

Rachel stooped and gathered her kalmia boughs from the rock, and said, gently,

"Come, Fred! I can not go home alone." So I rose sullenly, like a beaten hound, and followed her airy steps and her lithe figure, now for once languid and drooping, till we stood in the porch of her father's house. There I gave her the flowers, which I had hitherto carried, and she asked me to come in.

"No," said I. "The down-train leaves in an hour, and I must be in New York to-night.” I steeled myself in heart and voice, and said, "Good-bye, Rachel!"

"Rachel! Rachel!" exclaimed I, "do not make this answer final. If you think that I shall never fulfill your ideal of a husband-because you know that I failed often in patience and tenderness toward Ellen-believe me, you never shall complain of that. I am instructed by a remorseful memory, and I love you as I never loved her-as truly, but with the deeper-God be with you!" passion of ripened judgment and disciplined emotions. Dearly as I loved her, I worship you. At least, give me time to hope!"

While I spoke Rachel's face varied with contending thought; blushes, and tears, and pallor swept her features like the flying shadows of torchlight; but her face assumed a fervent earnestness and glow as she answered me:

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"Good-bye, Fred: the word in all it means

Then she picked from its green, glittering leaves a delicate Ayrshire rose, exquisitely frail, and held it toward me. I took her hand with it and kissed them both, for I could not speak. In an hour the down-train screamed, and tore through the gorge of the Pontoosuc, and from my window I saw the porch of Mr. Guyon's house, the Ayrshire rose-bush, the closed door

"It is for no such reason, Fred, that I refuse-not Rachel. you. I know you did love Ellen deeply, and I am sure you would love me even more, if I could be your wife. And I believe you could be all I should ask, for I know you; but I can not-I can not marry you! You must not ask me now another question; you shall be told before very long why I must decide as I have done. Till that time let us be friends-can not we ?"

She held out her little hand to me with a sweet yet pathetic smile, and I took it; but I was hurt to the quick, and I spoke hastily.

"Friends! No, never! Of all shallow pretenses, that friendship which a woman offers to the man she refuses is the shallowest. Friends! No!-a thousand times, no! All or nothing! Rachel, forgive me. I do not mean to speak in passion, but my heart is burned with a hot iron, and it will writhe."

She looked at me like an accusing angel, her large eyes wide open and shining with dew; her face pale and fixed; her hair had caught upon a little hemlock branch, and falling, hung now in long tresses beside either ear, and the sun that burned in the mid heaven pierced those tangled masses of silk with fine rays of fire, and threaded them with gold. In the great calm of concentred passion, like one who dies drowning, I noted all this; and she spoke :

That night my dream was merged in the realities of life, as people call them. Doubtful distinction! Was I, then-a man more living in the chicanery and dirt of stocks, speculations, and Wall Street, than I was inhaling the pure breath of the woods-loving, hoping, or even suffering, and in despair? Let the angels answer that question. I should hazard my reputation as a business man were I to attempt it.

But while I lived this life day by day, and in the stir and collision of men outnoised the pertinacious babble of memory, there were long evenings, longer nights, when I must cheat my Nemesis into silence; and to this end I threw myself into a whirl of amusements. Parties I did not frequent; what could a man do there who neither danced nor drank? Fortunately for me, there chanced to visit the city, after a month or two, the living genius of the drama — a woman whose intellect fathomed the depths of nature, and reproduced them on the heights of art -an actress of such splendid genius, such unearthly aspect, such terrible power, that in her counterfeited anguish I saw my own sounded and re-echoed; and I learned the first lesson of consolation-that what man has borne may be endured by man, and that there is no solitude in the crown of sorrow-the only royalty

to the tragedienne for the sake of her deeprooted and spiritual affinity with the countrygirl; while I learned, unconsciously, a more all-sufficing charity, and a deeper insight into the great might of circumstance.

that all men share. Night after night I trem- | potent in the other, and I did a deeper homage bled and thrilled over the ever-new spectacle. I saw this woman, now exulting in the glow and revenge of power; now radiant, buoyant with the new beams of girlish love and hope; now haggard and murderous with hate, or lofty with scorn and pride, opening her colorless lips with the desperate, breaking, tortured cry of a lost heart; or full of jealous and insatiate passion; or again glowing with generous and regal womanhood.

I watched her for weeks. I studied her as one studies a painting of profound expression, or a complicated and brilliant piece of music.

And in gazing at this strange similitude I found a curious peace, and owed to this artist that draught of Lethe such genius alone can give; while I felt my mental vanity and aspirations withered by the blaze that showed my mind to be such an infinitely little rushlight, in comparison with the preternatural powers of a

woman.

Yet this did but delay, even as it does in description, the final pang reserved for me. Autumn passed away, bearing with it this, the highest intellectual gratification I have ever

The jewels that adorned her lost lustre beside those eyes of Judah, deep-set as stars that pierce the midnight rack of storms, and superhuman in their mystic, luminous gloom, as are the eyes of spirits who revisit earth because neither heav-known or shall know; and this foreign woman, en nor hell may hold them from their idols. Neither the exquisite arts of dress, nor the lavish gorgeousness of gems so well became her as the simplest classic robe. Decorations fell off in ashes from the fire that informed every tone and gesture with matchless and mighty genius; and for me a subtler magic and passion worked in every line and gesture of the artiste. I saw through all her personations a strange and startling shadow -a gleam, rather-of my own

Rachel.

in whom the mysterious influence of race blent with and enhanced the magnetic power of genius, withdrew herself from America, leaving in many hearts an image of feverish and scathing splendor.

November turned the gay forests sere, and warned southward file after file of clanging birds: it was almost winter: I had heard nothing from Rachel.

One day I left my up-town lodgings as usual for my office down street. There was no sun: As in heated iron the central radiance of the the air, full of a foreboding chill, curdled all mass becomes a vivid and dazzling whiteness, my veins; and looking up, I perceived the sky far more intense than the red sparks it throws was full of an ominous gray scud, drifting slowout-as in floral ashes the shadowy form of the ly and brokenly from the east. Something in perfect archetype hovers and is discerned by the the atmosphere was disturbing. That vague apseeker-so through this world-tortured and self-prehension that comes with certain states of the consumed soul I beheld a tremulous and spiritual glitter of what might have been- -a transfiguration of reality; and the shape it wore was the likeness of Rachel Guyon.

So had her deep eyes burned over me, only that no material fire alloyed their divineness; in such aerial motion had she glided over the wood-paths to Nepasset brook; and with such a living sweetness in her smile turned toward me, speaking.

With just such languid grace and drooping lids had she trodden the homeward path from our last meeting; so wan, so tearless, so deeply grieved, yet unrelenting, had she bent upon me a fixed and level gaze at parting; but yet not so for where the madness of pleasure, untranquil triumphs, stained glories, and the hundred policies of vice had left their marked grasp branded irrevocably upon the actress, there my Rachel was true and pure. She was light; the other, color.

It was as if one hand had sketched from one ideal two antithetic pictures: one, the angel in its spotless calm and power; the other, that same angel, fallen but informed with power still -the infernal strength of evil-red and hissing fire burning in the same veins that once the cool tide of etherial life tinted with translucent blue. I recognized the dramatic nature latent in one that thrilled and transfixed me

weather settled over me as thick and gray as the clouds above, and I seemed to feel a distinct pressure upon my temples, as of an iron ring; but well knowing that it was only an atmospheric influence, I doggedly pursued my way, and on entering the office, for once, with the same reasonless expectance, went to my desk before removing either hat or coat. There, on its green surface, lay a telegraph notice.

I opened the envelope with a quick hand, and unfolded the printed strip. It ran thus: "Come by first train. Rachel is very ill-must see you. T. GUYON."

I was at the nearest carriage-stand before I could re-fold the slip. The first train left at nine: it wanted ten minutes of the hour. The driver knew my need and drove madly. I flung him his fare; and as I set my foot on the last car-step it was off. How those next hours passed I never knew, except that a vision of past nights haunted me. I saw the actress in all her rôles; but at their tragic height of terror, in the climax of passion, chiefly in the dread personation of death, that mobile and evil face changed with slow shading to the pure and quiet lines of Rachel's features, and in those traits exalted pain, passion, and death to the strength, the transfiguration, the divinity of an unvailed soul. Strange and foreboding hallucination! yet it wore by; and after weary dreams my

I speak of this, for I remember how that whole scene was stamped on my brain in the moment that I entered-the cheerful fire on the hearth; the white draperies all about; the scent of a tiny cluster of flowers in a crimson vase on the shelf; the engravings of Scheffer's Christus Consolator, and the St. John of Correggio; the quaint old furniture; the fanciful mirror; the white flame of the candles. Yet I paused scarce a second, taking in once and forever this impression of warmth, perfume, delicacy, purity; while without the mad southeast wind howled, and the storm wept passionate streams, and the river, swollen and turbid, roared over the dam. Without was the tragedienne; within my Rachel.

mind became one whirl of dread and recollec-|ceiving so great a burden at once, for a moment tion. I remembered Rachel's frail figure, her flings it off altogether, and asserts its absolute want of strength, that fearful spasm of pain, and lonely personality in the pursuit of outward, and now recurred to me the brevity with which indifferent things. she spoke of it, her peculiar tone, her languor afterward; and then, as one cheats himself with fancies, fearing a dreadful truth at hand, I said, soliloquizing: "I was troubling myself idly; one of the thousand forms of neuralgia had for a moment grasped her side; it was soon over; and for her sudden exhaustion and weariness, what better reason could I ask than the wear and tear of such a mind as hers on a physique never robust?" Presently the cars stopped, but not at a station, the passengers crowded out to find what was the matter; a flue had burst in the locomotive, and for three hours we lay inactive upon the Valley Curve, as they called it, like a crushed snake, now and then panting out a forked tongue of fire against some unseen enemy; and those hours I endured. At length another engine came; my sullen patience grew less and less; the familiar stations nearer Taunton passed one after another; the November sky deepened toward night, and distilled in fine rain, that a strong southeaster bore heavily against the dimmed windows of the car. We had passed Green River factories, we screamed up Pontoosuc Gorge, but I could not see the house-I could see nothing. I was in a fever. I made my way to the platform of a baggagecrate, and before the train fairly stopped I leaped to the station-platform, grasped Tom Guyon's hand, and in one moment more was beside him in the doctor's gig. We drove a mile be-lost-she murmured softly yet clearly: fore I dared speak.

"Is she-?" I could not frame the question. "No better," said Tom; "a slight attack of fever within two weeks has developed the heart disease rapidly. Dr. Slade is there now," and as he spoke we were there. Her mother met me at the door.

"Not just yet," said she, in answer to my eyes and hand; "the doctor will come for you as soon as it is possible; now come in here and get quiet a little, for you do not look a safe visitor for a sick room.'

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Her calm, restrained voice also calmed and restrained me. I entered the room she led me to, drank steadily some hot draught she brought, rearranged my aspect to something more like myself than the disheveled and ghastly creature that had looked toward me from the mirror; I was even sitting still in my chair when Doctor Slade came in and shook hands with me. "Go right up to her room," said he; "it is the first door on the left, at the head of the stairs."

I went with almost helpless tremor, and as I opened the door her mother glided past me, and I saw Rachel. I do not know how to explain the fact, yet true it is that in the very heights of human anguish the human soul has yet a strange propensity to impressions of the most trivial kind. It seems to be cast from its poise by the overwhelming pressure, and, incapable of re

I sat down beside her, and looked till I could see no longer at that wan, transparent face; those eyes, larger than ever, more spiritually brilliant; those fingers, slight as if moulded of the frailest pearl, and rounded pearl-like at the ends; yet I looked but briefly at that vail of clay, informed and penetrated by the lustrous and glorious soul. I bent toward her parted lips, her slender, burning arms were clasped upon my neck, she drew my head down to hers, and turning to mine that face most like a passion-flower in its pure ardor, whispered-as if I must know the fact first, and then the accessories after, but first the fact, lest it might be

"Fred! dearest! darling, I love you! I did love you then-all the time-dear Fred!" She sighed, and was silent.

I wanted to die; I had enough of life. Rachel in my arms; her tender face on mine; those words. I could not speak, for my heart throbbed like sobbing. She knew it, for she knew me-oh! how well she knew me! Presently she sighed again, and, withdrawing her arms, bade me rise and lift her. I took her weightless figure from the pillows and put myself in their stead, so placing her that while her head rested on my arm I could see that inexpressibly beautiful face, now rosy with celestial bloom; and when she had ceased panting from the slight exertion, she turned her great bright eyes upon me and said:

"I could not tell you why, Fred, that day; it was very hard, but I did it to spare you. I knew two months before that I had a heartcomplaint-that I could not live long; you saw one of its spasms. I told you I should cease to suffer soon, but I did not tell you why. I could not bear to expose you to months of agony and suspense-away from me; and I knew you ought not to be here, so I refused you." "Oh, Rachel! Rachel!"

66

"And all the time I loved you with my first, only passion, Fred. I wish it had pleased God to let me live, you would have loved me so much.”

I had no answer to that. She went on: "Don't, my darling! God knows best; and this is sweet. I am not going to die without you."

She did not refer to what I had said about friendship, but now the recollection pierced me. “Rachel,” said I, "can you possibly forgive me what I said about friends ?"

"You did not mean it, Fred." Then she paused, and resuming, said:

bles through them. Then again the spirit is tortured. It sobs. It shrieks. Fain it would be delivered from its prison-house. Then, hopeless, it sighs itself into silence.

In one of these pauses a story came back to me; a mournful tale of one who died young; a story I used to like to dream over in other days, imagining to myself how every word that told of

She reached her hand to my face and mutely a dead hope and a dead love had been spoken. caressed me. The very scent of lilacs and laburnums haunted my fancy. I saw the old farm-yard; the June twilight, so long and bright; the dew-beaded flowers and grass, and the trees, all in blossom, shaking their odorous boughs downward, over the heads of Joseph Thorne and pretty Mabel Emerson.

"I must hasten every word, for I want you to promise me one thing-that you will try and make your child-Ellen's—a true man, like the men we talked of then, for my sake, Fred; and you must come to me-there?"

"I will!" said I; "I will truly, Rachel, with higher help."

"Yes, and perhaps we can both help you, out of heaven."

Can any one describe a lovely woman? Say that she has blue eyes, and fair hair, and a sweet mouth, and it might apply equally to fifty blondes whom you may chance to know, of entirely varying character. I think one gains a truer esti

She looked as if she were upon its shore al-mate of the nature of beauty by being told what ready.

"Now put me down," said she.

I replaced the pillows, and again that face sheltered itself against mine, those arms clasped me, that panting heart beat like the drum of a réveille against my breast; the storm howled bitterly; the rain dashed on shutter and pane; the fire darkened, smouldered, fell; and a candle flickered and sunk. But presently the war without ceased, the moon streamed past one white wavering curtain, and cast the shadow of a leafless branch upon the wall. Rachel stirred in my arms, her lips parted in a short, sharp cry; she looked up with that same pain-stricken smile and whispered faintly-I heard but one word-it was:

"Darling!"

"My wife!" burst from my lips involuntarily-passionate assertion of what should have been immortal truth, of what was helpless misery. Another silence, and then another mur

mur

"Good-by!" I bent nearer; my lips touched hers-cold, fluttering, parted. So her life vanished.

I do not know what followed. I knew nothing more for weeks, except that I lived. Time, which poets call the Consoler, is not such to me. Week after week my grief deepens, and my life pines for what it lost.

I live for and in my child, to make him what she wished-to fulfill my promise to her.

God forever bless you, Rachel! where you lie in your green grave on Taunton Hill-side; and bring me to be with you-soon-soon!

NE

thoughts it awakens. Joseph Thorne, unknown to himself, was a poet. He had known Mabel all his life, and he said that seeing her always made him think of long summer days, when the blue sky looks not only bright, but deep, and still, and solemn; of lovely flowers, growing all alone in desert places; of a rippling stream, with the stars shining on it; but most, oh, most of all, of sweet music. Perhaps, however, he was the only one who had ever looked into her heart; ever seen, beneath her gay, smiling exterior, the deep-flowing fountains of tenderness and selfsacrifice.

Most persons thought her merely a pleasant, light-hearted maiden, whose presence, like a sunbeam, always carried brightness with it, and to whom sorrow and weariness were unknown.

Her mother had died in her infancy, and her father, the richest and busiest farmer in all Westvale, had never found time to learn any thing of her inner nature. Perhaps he was not even capable of understanding her. It was enough for him that she was well clothed and well schooled; that her bright face was always ready to welcome him home at night, her dextrous hands to preside over his early breakfast. Nor had Mabel any female confidants. Kindly and gentle to all, there was a maidenly shyness and reserve underlying her nature which made it impossible for her to unvail to careless eyes the altar of her heart, the very holy of holies, where the love of which she was capable, the dreams and fancies so brightly tinged with the glory of her youth, all lay an unclaimed sacrifice, till the Heaven-elected priest should come, and her whole being should acknowledge him and do him reverence.

JOSEPH THORNE-HIS CALLING. [EVER have I heard any thing so like to the Like herself Joseph Thorne was bereft of one musical, half-uttered wails of a prisoned parent, but his mother, a true, pure woman, had spirit as the sad, sweet complaints of Ole Bull's been spared to him. He had grown up from violin. Sometimes the spirit lingers tenderly childhood with one strong, all-absorbing pasover the memories of old hopes-hopes that long sion. He worshiped music. The earliest deago faded into memories-and its tones are not light he could remember was the low, plaintive all mournful, for a thrill from the past joy trem-interludes of the flute and viol between the sing

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