"Oh yes," said General Tracy; "I'll find you as many as you like, on the condition that they be educated at a ladies' charity-school, where they stitch romance into their samplers, write verses in their copy-books, and learn to scrub the floors to etherial music.--But come, my Flowers," he added, turning to his nieces, "will you take a walk? and we will go and see some real cottages, and see some real peasants." His proposal was willingly agreed to; and Mr. Tracy--who was of a speculative disposition--was speculating whether he should go with them, or not, when the butler entered and put his negative upon it, by saying: "Please, Sir, here is a young man come to ask about the head gardener's place." "I will see him in a minute," said Mr. Tracy. "Show him into the library." While the father of the family, after looking at one or two more paragraphs in the newspaper, walked into his library, to see the person who waited for him, his two daughters had gone to put on bonnets and shawls; and the old General sauntered out, through the conservatory, to the lawn before the house. Nothing could be more beautiful, or more tasteful, than the arrangements of the whole grounds. Large masses of hardy exotics were planted round, now, alas! no longer in flower; but a multitude of the finest and the rarest evergreens hid the ravages which the vanguard of winter had already made, and afforded shelter from the cutting winds to some few autumnal flowers, which yet lingered, as if unwilling to obey the summons to the grave. The old man gazed upon the gardens, and vacant parterres; upon the shrubberies of evergreen, and upon the leafless plants beside them; and a sad and solemn spirit came upon him as he looked. Poetry, the magic mirror in the mind, which reflects all external things with hues more intense than the realities, received and returned every sad image, that the decay of nature's children presents, in colours more profound and dark. He thought of the tomb, and of corruption, and of the vanity of all man's efforts upon earth, and upon the sleep that knows no waking, and the perishing of our very memory from among our kindred and our race. The warm life that still throbbed high in his old heart, revolted at the idea of cold extinction, he felt that it is a terrible doom that rests upon all the children of the dust; but threefold terrible, to the only being conscious of its inevitable coming, filled with the first of the waters of life, instinct with appreciation of all its excellence. He had been in battle, that old man, he had faced the cannon and the bayonet, had heard the eager balls whistle round his temples, screaming like vultures for his blood; he had seen thousands dying about him; but he had never felt what a dreary thing death is, as in the presence of those fading flowers.