“Anne became the wife of another, and never, never, can I enough admire her refined womanly deportment. Her whole soul, with all its unutterable wealth of loving, was now his; and yet in my presence all was chastened to a tranquil content, as if she, truthful as she was, dreaded I should know her deep fount of feeling, lest it might enhance my own sense of solitude. ‘Most excellent wretch,’ Othello would have said; every where I traced the evidences of her benevolence, and every where was she mindful of my happiness. “Holy and generous woman! the earnest, the true-hearted—earth was no place for thee. Enough, she died—died ere a shadow had fallen upon her bright nature—ere the thought had assumed shape that the creature of her idolatry had brought a desecrated gift to the altar.” * * * * * How many of that class—deemed by the throng so cold and passionless—have for their solitary life some such cause as that which made my friend a bachelor! Surely there lives not man or woman who has not at some period loved; and thousands, like the heroes of fiction, make but one cast of the heart. * * * * * THE MAIDEN’S SORROW. BY WM. C. BRYANT. Seven long years has the desert rain Dropped on the clods that hide thy face; Seven long years of sorrow and pain I have thought of thy burial place. Far on the prairies of the west, None who loved thee beheld thee die; They who heaped the earth on thy breast Turned from the spot without a sigh. There, I think, on that lonely grave, Violets spring in the soft May shower; There, in the summer breezes wave Crimson phlox and moccasin flower. There the turtles alight, and there Feeds with the spotted fawn the doe; There, when the winter woods are bare, Walks the wolf on the crackling snow. Soon wilt thou wipe away my tears; Yesterday the earth was laid Over my father, full of years, Him whose steps I have watched and stayed. All my work is finished here; Every slumber, that shuts my eye, Brings the forms of the lost and dear, Shows me the world of spirits nigh. This deep wound that bleeds and aches, This long pain, a sleepless pain— When the Father my spirit takes I shall feel it no more again. * * * * * SONG. BY C. F. HOFFMAN, AUTHOR OF “GREYSLAKE,” “THE VIGIL OF FAITH,” ETC. Why should I murmur lest she may forget me? Why should I grieve to be by her forgot? Better, then, wish that she had never met me, Better, oh, far, she should remember not!