Poor Annette! Step by step her husband plunged on in the downward path. Ray after ray departed from the light of her beauty. Wider and wider became the gulf between the manufacturer and his son-in-law. But, horror of horrors! the crisis soon came! The resource of gambling failed at last with Leroy, and _then_—he resorted to forgery!—ay! he forged the name of George Delisle, the father of his wife, and fled the country in order to escape the penalty of his crime! * * * * * But a few days have gone by since we saw Annette. Only five years have elapsed since her marriage. What a change! The lily has supplanted the rose—the eye has lost its fire—the step its buoyancy—the form its grace. She is a doomed and broken hearted woman. Disease has “marked her for his own.” Loss of sleep—mental anxiety—the disgrace—the shame—the ignominy of her husband’s career, are hurrying her rapidly to a premature grave! Mothers, be warned! Virtue, Integrity and Religion are the only safe companions for your budding and beautiful daughters! * * * * * TO THE NIGHT-WIND IN AUTUMN. BY THE AUTHOR OF “TECUMSEH.” Whence art thou, spirit wind? Soothing with thy low voice the ear of Night, And breathing o’er the wakeful, pensive mind An influence of pleased yet sad delight. Thou tell’st not of thy birth, O viewless wanderer from land to land: But gathering all the secrets of the earth Where’er, unseen, thy airy wings expand, At this hushed, holy hour, When time seems part of vast eternity, Thou dost reveal them with a magic power, Saddening the soul with thy weird minstrelsy. All nature seems to hear, The woods, the waters, and each silent star; What, that can thus enchain their earnest ear, Bring’st thou of untold tidings from afar? Is it of new, fair lands, Of fresh-lit worlds that in the welkin burn! Do new oäses gem Zahara’s sands, Or the lost Pleiad to the skies return? Nay! ’tis a voice of grief, Of grief subdued, but deepened through long years, The soul of Sorrow, seeking not relief, Still gathering bitter knowledge without tears. For thou, since earth was young And rose green Eden purpled with the morn, Its solemn wastes and homes of men among, Circling all zones, thy mourning flight hast borne. Empires have risen in might, And peopled cities through the outspread earth, And thou hast passed them at the hour of night Listing the sounds of revelry and mirth. Again thou hast gone by— City and empire were alike o’erthrown, Temple and palace, fall’n confusedly, In marble ruin on the desert strown.