Shall I tell you how Ezekiel was transformed into the most ridiculous of lovers? how his self-conceit translated Lucy’s indifference into maiden coyness? how he looked often in the glass and thought he was not so _very_ old after all? how he advised Lucy to tuck away all her bright curls, because they “looked so childish?” how he named to her papa an “early marriage day,”--not that he felt nervous about losing his prize--oh, no (?)--but because “the society’s business required his undivided attention.” Well; Lucy, in obedience to her father’s orders, stood up in her snow-white robe, and vowed “to love and cherish” a man just her father’s age, with whom she had not the slightest congeniality of taste or feeling. But papa had said it was an excellent match, and Lucy never gainsayed papa; still, her long lashes drooped heavily over her blue eyes, and her hand trembled, and her cheek grew deathly pale, as Ezekiel handed her to the carriage that whirled them rapidly away. Shall I tell you how long months and years dragged wearily on? how Lucy saw through her husband’s mask of hypocrisy and self-conceit? how to indifference succeeded disgust? how Harry Graham returned from Europe, with a fair young English bride? how Lucy grew nervous and hysterical? how Ezekiel soon wearied of his sick wife, and left her in one of those _tombs_ for the wretched, an insane hospital? and how she wasted, day by day--then _died_, with only a hired nurse to close those weary blue eyes? In a quiet corner of the old churchyard where Lucy sleeps, a silver-haired old man, each night at dew-fall, paces to and fro, with remorseless tread, as if by that weary vigil he would fain atone to the unconscious sleeper, for turning her sweet young life to bitterness. FRANCES SARGEANT OSGOOD. “I’m passing through the eternal gates, Ere June’s sweet roses blow.” So sang the dying poetess. The “eternal gates” have closed upon her. Those dark, soul-lit eyes beam upon us no more. “June” has come again, with its “sweet roses,” its birds, its zephyrs, its flowers and fragrance. It is such a day as her passionate heart would have reveled in--a day of Eden-like freshness and beauty. I will gather some fair, sweet flowers, and visit her grave. “Show me Mrs. Fanny Osgood’s monument, please,” said I to the rough gardener, who was spading the turf in Mount Auburn. “In Orange Avenue, Ma’am,” he replied, respectfully indicating, with a wave of the hand, the path I was to pursue. Tears started to my eyes, as I trod reverently down the quiet path. The little birds she loved so well, were skimming confidingly and joyously along before me, and singing as merrily as if my heart echoed back their gleeful songs.