And I have stood, besides, in the very shadow of death, and Renwick says, he says. Lina, that if I had not been here, nothing is more certain than that our brother would have gone the way of all life! That the disease ran its course, and did not destroy, because a sovereign elixir was found in Flora's words when she preceded me into Wayland's chamber, and said, "Agnes is here." Do you believe this? If it be true . . . . . .

But whether all that has occurred, occurred that a life might be saved, or, that two lives might be saved, in a higher sense, judge then. I am aware of it now; we needed both to learn the very lessons we have learned. Well, we shall not forget the text, and the comment, I trust.

Renwick says, looking at me, but clasping Flora in his great, strong arms, "What shall we do without you, Aunt Ag?"He, and they all, will do very well without me, I fancy, with such a measureless content does he regard his little wife, our darling, and every body's darling, Flora; and so happy are they all in each other. I always shall think of this household as of a heaven upon earth. Do you know what makes it heavenly? a very little word, which is however God's greatest name and man's name, in his "best estate."

Why have I come up here? Do you ask it still? From time immemorial the great, strange, and blessed works, have been wrought among the mountains. Never ask to what end, Lina. Have I not here been told of the Tree of Life; have I not taken the Thorn Branch in my hand, and for ever renounced the golden fruit which is ashes to the taste? Away with the old specious dreams, and sophisms, the fancies, and follies: blessed, blessed is our life, and, as another has said, it is of itself a sacrament. Joyfully let us partake thereof. Oh I know, you say, it is an easy thing for the happy to give thanks. Do not even thus rebuke me. I dare not recall the last letter that I wrote you; nor the thought with which it was written. I can only say, God is infinite in mercy.

I thought when I wrote those few words that if I ever wrote you again it would be to tell you how he died, and where we had buried him. I will be mindful of what I know to be your wish, and tell you of the last momentous watch we kept together-Renwick and I.

The doctor had told me that he anticipated a change in his patient at midnight, and that its result would be final; and, he said, that unless I could be prepared for any fate, I must not remain in the sick room with him. You would never have

guessed that my friend was at the point of death had you seen me after he communicated this counsel, that night. No stoic could have betrayed a colder indifference. At ten the house was still as the grave. Only in the kitchen were other members of the family astir. Jonathan and Mary, they alone of the household, beside Renwick and I, kept the watch.

At eleven o'clock George said to me, in a voice so strong that it startled and alarmed me, "Agnes, read something for me." I looked at Renwick, he bowed his head in token that I was to comply. I had in my pocket a little book-Jean Paul's "BEST HOURS"-I drew nearer to him, and read, “Canst thou forget, in the dark hour, that there have been mighty men amongst us, and that thou art following after them? Raise thyself like the spirits which stood upon their mountains, having the storm of life only about and never above them. Call back to thee the kingly race of sages and of poets, who have inspirited and enlightened nation after nation."

"Is there not a more elevating thought than this? a name greater than any other known among men, that you might name?" said Renwick in mild reproof, unconsciously uttering the very thought Jean Paul had expressed, and I read the next passage-"Remember Jesus Christ, in the dark hour-remember him who also passed through life-remember that soft Moon of the Infinite Sun, given to enlighten the night of the world. Let life be hallowed to thee, and death also, for he shared both of them with thee. May his calm and lofty form look down on thee in the last darkness, and show thee his Father."

I closed the book here, Renwick advancing took my place, I stood back, a solitary in the gloom, while he watched narrowly every symptom-it was the watch of an eye clear to discern the awful conflict going on. How was it with me during that suspense while I stood alone, waiting for the knowledge which was to set the seal to my own fate as well as his? I had comforted myself in our estrangement with high thoughts of Friendship-of Labor. And doubtless had we not met again I should-nay, I should never have forgotten, but I would have become as insensible as I fancied that I was already. I foreseen how I could, how I should wait, and watch, and petition for that life! "They sin who tell us love can die"-and yet I can reconcile this belief with the knowledge to which I have attained as to how it is "inwardly" with Helen McLeod!

Had

A solitary, a homeless, friendless orphan; this I felt myself to be while I

waited and watched. At last, at last Renwick turned from the bedside-looked at me and his voice faltered when he said, "Go now and thank God for his mercy; Agnes, our friend will live!"

The happy pastor has been up here with his bride to day, and Salathiel was with them-but the poor old man had less of the infernal in his look, and more of the picturesque, than I have seen before. I believe, however, that my blindness has been only less profound than Helen's, since I came into this region; but if I was blind I do now see, as does also Helen, the village partners-the happy wife of Is

lington. Very, very beautiful is sheyou meet her glance and feel that an angel has blest you. Flora believes that sorrow has indeed made of the bride an angel. So do we all believe.

They came up here for a purpose today-when that purpose was accomplished, I said to Helen, “You are richer than when I came; I am glad to know that not a soul needs me now, that I am going." But what their answer was I shall not say. Life! Life! let us drink freely and largely of the grand libation! Oh then, Thorn-crowned, we thank thee for the

cup.

And now, they call me by another name than Agnes Bond-oh Lina!

WATCH their mien of trembling joy, Their glance, with timid secrets laden: He is a rosy village boy,

And she a graceful village maiden.

His proud look hints, her blushes tell, What bliss begins when school-time closes;

He shielded her when snowflakes feli,
And now 'tis almost time for roses.

Have lips yet given voice to heart?
I know not-but each day shows clearer
How conscious blushes draw apart

The steps resistless Love draws nearer. Their world is changed; historic names For her are shrunk to merest zero; And poet-loves and novel-fames

Are poor beside the living hero.

For him-all sweets of earth and air,
The softest breath of soft May morning,
Too coarse, too harsh, too common are
To match that girlish beauty's dawning.

The walk upon enchanted ground;

The school, the street, are lands elysian; A song of spheres is every sound; Each glance a beatific vision.

O Teacher, sage! in vain you pore
O'er black-boards wide, with science
laden;

The blindfold boy lends deeper lore
To village youth and village maiden.
O Time! secure these children's dreams
From ills that darken and destroy us,

And make life all that now it seems, As full, as fresh, as pure, as joyous.

II.

How soft the May-time hours steal on;
The merry school girls laugh and call;
Sweet sing the birds; elm-blossome fall;
The violets come; but he is gone.

Those steps that each to each did cling,
Are parted by a wider space;
And long from that slight girlish face
Has autumn dried the tears of spring.

How calmly flows the tide of time
O'er all the wealth of smiles and dreams,
And its forgotten beauty seems
To live but in my careless rhyme.

Yet not in grief the end is told,
Death closed the tale and left it pure,
With no dark chances to endure
Of withered joys or love grown cold.

Who knows what gathering dangers died
When those clear eyes were closed to

earth,

And what new dreams and deeds had birth

When the new mystery opened wide?

And in her heart may yet be room
Where one dim memory has remained,
The thought of one brief love unstained,
To tinge an aimless life with bloom.
O Time! thou followest close upon
The prayers of our presumptuous hours;
"Tis well thou gatherest in thy flowers
Ere the frail bloom grows sick and wan.

"BY a horse shall Ilium perish,' ran the

prophecy in Old World times. 'By a horse America shall live,' saith the Oracle to the New World. Let the words be pondered. A wise people will beware how it slights an oracle, for the tripod, if derided, will avenge itself. But a people of cunning understanding will at the same time be careful in what manner it gives heed to the voice prophetic, or the words of the spirit are notoriously words of crookedness, and delight to fulfil themselves at a time when no man knoweth, and in a mode which no man reckoneth of. It needs a crafty wit, a strong arm, and a wilful spirit to deal with the juggling fiends. It were better thou hadst never been born, than with simple understanding or faltering heart, seek for a secret from the children of darkness. They have the truth if thou canst rob them of it. Only for a sword's point at the breast, and an iron hand around the throat, will they give up the treasure; and then, in sooth, they will palm off, not truth, but a snare; not gold, but poisonous copper, unless thine eye be as true as thine arm. Dull folk and craven have been led into all kinds of troubles by the bantering voices of the air, from the time of the wise men of Egypt to that of the weird women of the heath, and from the days of the Delphic whispers to the moment of the last squeak at Mountain Cove. But the crafty and the daring throttle the treacherous imps with gloves of steel, and straightway they whine like spaniels. It is on such, their masters, that they dare not practise those

"Equivocations of the fiends

That lie like truth," wherewith they so delight to lead Adam's unwise children to perdition.

Whether America will be outwitted by the imp, and find herself at some day literally saved by a horse, but at the same time destroyed by him-the promise being kept to the ear, but broken to the hope-time alone can tell. Allow us, however, to express entire confidence in the ability of Brother Jonathan to crack wits with an oracle, and to entertain an humble trust that the genius of that mysterious Oriental land which so many have come from, but which no one was ever known to go to,-celebrated in verse and prose as Down-East, will not find itself at last overmatched by a pettifogging Diabolus from the realms of air.

How the Old World prophecy, which has been above placed parallel with the oracle uttered to the New World, had in fulness of time its accomplishment, the world has known for a score of centuries. How Ulysses Polymetis, ingenious gentleman, Diomed Hippodamoios the MarsBruiser, and other worthies hiding in the belly of the wooden horse, got themselves dragged within the city barriers, which for ten years they had beaten their heads against with even less than the usual comfort, profit, and consolatory reflections anticipated by persons who dash their crania against stone walls; how at midnight they emerged from the fir-tree ribs, clove down poor old Priam, cut up the ministry, slew, burned, and scattered, and sent Æneas, that hero so pious and at the same time so fascinating, to be flung hither and thither by the seas, and tossed from tender Carthaginian Queens to tough Italian Kings-all these things the world has rang of since that night of wrath. Nothing availed it that Jove thundered with the guns of all Olympus; nothing that Minerva drove the chariot of her champion through the battle; nothing that Neptune Enosichthon rocked the foundations of the mountains and stamped on the seashore till Distheiron heard the rafters of his hell a-cracking. The celestial energies were simply wasted. Valor was nothing, divine rage nothing. The Fates did their work not by gods, not by horses, but by an imp almost too pitiful to announce the

crack of doom to a rat's-nest. It would have been all the same with the great city Ilium, if Zeus had masked his guns, and vastly more to the benefit of sea-faring men in coming times, if the sea-green king, instead of crazing the stony brains of Ida, and scaring the underground proprietor, had driven his steeds to the other hemisphere, and spent the afternoon in knocking over the mountains at Tehuantepec.

Since the parallel has been suggested, why not pursue it further? It is well known that the overthrow of Troy was not all that came of the wooden horse. The inventors of the snare met various rewards for their ingenuity. The excellent Polymetis, with all his tact and experience, was obliged to make a ten years' cruise of it to Ithaca, and narrowly escaped the gridiron of the Cyclops at that; another leader finding no room for himself at home, where a benevolent neighbor had

kindly volunteered to occupy his place in bed and at board; had no choice but to seek new quarters in the far West: another was transfixed by lightning, and the King of men himself crossed the threshold of his house only to receive the adulterer's axe in his brain. While on the other hand, the last of the Trojans (so the story goes) landed on the Italian shores, and there planted a seed. It sprouted, and Rome came of it-Rome, Cæsar, a senate publishing decrees for a world, empire, conquest, glory, and, as great as all, an epic song which sounded throughout the earth long after Roman renown had died, and the tombs of the emperors been trampled on by barbarians.

And the Iron Horse, the earth-shaker, the fire-breather, which tramples down the hills, which outruns the laggard winds, which leaps over the rivers, which grinds the rocks to powder and breaks down the gates of the mountains, he too shall build an empire and an epic. Shall not solitudes and waste places cry for gladness at his coming? Shall not cities be formed from his vaporous breath, and men spring

up from the cinders of his furnace? Shall Hercules in his labors be greater than he in his sport, for at his shriek will not savage men flee to their fastnesses, and monsters amongst the hills clamber growling to higher crags? Shall he not strengthen leagues, crush treason, conquer enemies? Shall he not run from ocean to ocean, an iron Mercury, the swift herald of the State, beautiful but bearing terror, "swallowing the ground with fierceness and rage?" And by and by let us hope that an epic will come of these marvels. Today's pigmy may be to-morrow's giant, and upset the statue of the giant of the day before. I myself may yet stand on the pedestal of Hercules. So let us with all confidence assure ourselves, diminutive as we may be in our own eyes, that if we overmaster the obstacles which just now frown in the pathway of our progress, we fall heirs to a renown greater than that of the son of Atreus and his followers. Their exploit was but the gymnastic feat of a youth, ours will be the triumph of the full grown man. With what unction

can the bard sing how for many years we beleagured the vast barrier that girds the States of the Pacific; how Senatorial thunders shook the spheres and editorial earthquakes rocked the very earth under foot, and that, too, to far better purpose than the commotions of the sea-green agitator of yore; how we choked the truth out of the quibbling fiend, and at last by main force broke down the wall, and rode through in triumph on the Iron Horse, to the full satisfaction of the Oracle, and

utter and final confusion of our evil genius. Grant, however, that the poet do not have such disasters to rehearse of Telamon Benton and Whitney Polymetis, as befel the authors of the wooden iniquity.

The Epic of the Iron Horse! Think of it ye shepherds of the people, and bestir yourselves if you would be catalogued in the second book. Think of it ye mighty men of finance, if you would be done up in heroic verse for coming generations to admire, and for future Alexanders to envy. Think, ye who say that the Divinities have left us, how it will be sung that the God of the Silver Bow reappeared at the mint and in Wall-street -or that Hephaestus, encouraged by the blackness of the tariff, opened rolling mills in the iron mountains, and, at the instance of some fair Thetis, exerted once all his cunning in the construction of a locomotive, as erst he did on the armor of Achilles. The clangor of the mail flung on the ground frighted the Myrmidons.

Τὰ δ ̓ ἀνέβραχε δαίδαλα πάντα.

Imagine, then, the vulcan-wrought engine rushing from sea to sea, dispensing lightning from its sides and thunder from its wheels-the one-eyed smiths, from the doors of their workshops in the mountain, watching the progress of the prodigy with grim delight!

Ah, well! 'tis a long way to the Epic of the Iron Horse, and we greatly fear that after all, the assurance of being sung in twelve books would be but a dull spur in the sides of our men of might, who would figure as its front rank champions. Still -and let us rejoice therefor-the heroes are not all dead yet. Even the Agamemnons of the new Iliad are not insensible to the grandeur of the enterprise. The downfall of the mountain's gate will be greeted with a shout, which the cliffs of the present time will not have done echoing as long as there is a generation of men on the earth to listen to the reverberations. And not alone because of the spoil gained by the victory, will this exulting cry be raised, but also because of the glory of the triumph. Nature never yields great successes to men too sluggish, or too covetous to heed the grandeur of the event. Troys will not be overthrown but by heroes worthy of an Iliad.

The history of the conception and birth of the project of communication by rail between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans reveals the existence of a susceptibility to infatuation in the minds of men possessed apparently of comprehensive intelligence of mind, which may well be recorded for the instruction of the next young nation

that finds itself started in the world with a wild continent on its hands. When, many years ago, the vanguard of western emigration emerged from the gaps of the Alleghanies, our pioneers, leaning on their rifles, looked down upon the immense valley before them, and believed that beneath them lay a land which would be a possession for themselves while living, and an ample inheritance for their children, and children's children, for ever. The great globe had not such another valley. Fully five hundred leagues it extended from Lake to Gulf, and fully as far would the hawk fly westward, crossing the world's mightiest rivers in his flight, before he reached its opposite boundary. That mountain barrier, they said, must ever be the further wall of the Republic. Beyond lies the heritage of Bruin and red Ishmael-given to those savage brothers as a possession through all time. But what matters that? Europe may pour all her nations into this basin, and for all there will be room. Even with these it would be centuries before civilization pushed her outposts to the foot of the Western mountains. So our infatuated predecessors went down into the valley and pitched their tents, nothing doubting, happy in the delusion that their remotest posterity would there be accommodated with cornland and house-room, and with here and there a township to shoot a deer in. Before forty years had passed away, however, they found with dismay, that it might be necessary to remodel their calculations. People began to be oppressed for breath. Neighbors jostled on the prairies. One could with difficulty turn round in the crowd. The backwoodsman, who complacently stuck his stakes on the banks of the Ohio before there was scarcely a corporal's guard of white men west of the Muskingum, was yet a hearty man, and able to bring down a buck at three hundred yards, when they put up a sixstory hotel on the site of his log-cabin, and when fifty thousand men, women, and children, nightly went to bed within a radius of three miles from the spot where he spread his bear-skin on the evening of his arrival. Within half a century of the time when it was insanely proclaimed that there was room enough for every body in the Great Valley, a cry of agony arose from the multitudes actually jammed, wedged in between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, while yet thousands were pouring in upon them every day.

As the danger of suffocation increased, people naturally turned their eyes toward the West, to see what chance of ventilation there might be in that quarter. There

was little in the prospect to allay the panic. Beyond the prairies the mighty barrier loomed up, long as a continent, high as the heavens, firm as brass; and from the ramparts Bruin and red Ishmael looked off, seccure in their fastness as eagles of the crag. Had it been in the nature of our countrymen to despair in any extremity, they might now have been pardoned for giving way to total discouragement. But that was not according to their fashion. They doggedly determined to breathe as long as any fresh air was left, and, in the meantime, to contrive if it were possible, some way, of getting a draft through the Republic before the citizens perished like the prisoners in the black hole at Calcutta. Steadily the frothing line that marked the tide-wave of emigration moved across the prairies. Huger, more inexorable than ever, the great walls frowned upon the forlorn hope that moved to the assault; wile Bruin and Co. grinned derision not utterable in the imperfect speech of human kind. But lo, as the scouts approached, the gates flew open of their own accord. Ishmael, followed by his worthy brother-in-arms, scrambled down from his perch in dismay. A gust of fresh air sucking through the Great Valley gave immediate relief to the fainting populace, and that portion of the multitude which happened to be nearest the newly-discovered vomitory, rushed out of doors to the instantaneous relief of the sufferers within.

It

In this manner drainage was opened, which must for ever secure the Mississippi States against ruinous pressure of population. It might now be supposed that our countrymen would have folded up their arms and breathed at ease. is not their fashion to fold up their armsit is not their nature to breathe at ease. Relieved from one tribulation, they know no peace till they have found another, and the dissipation of one anxiety is but the signal for the production of a new one. Fumbling the portfolio of the learned Dr. Sx, a few days ago, I found a satisfactory account of the origin of this trait of the nation's character in the following heretofore unpublished apologue of

(C THE RED PEDLER.

"Soon after the birth of Brother Jonathan, the fairies assembled from all quarters, according to the time-honored custom of their race, for the purpose of making presents to the child. One brought him a jack-knife, another a tuning-fork, another a spelling-book, another a sea-serpent, another a map of North America-all which gifts, with many others, the urchin scrutinized with sur