In the still hush of the night, after finding myself once more in my own room--_my_ room, with its cabinets of shells and mosses, that I had collected when a boy in my various trips to the seashore, all religiously left arranged as I had left them, its guns, fishing-rods, stuffed rabbits and birds, its preserved rattle-snakes and cases of insects, all of which had stood for so long a time in their respective places that they had become a part of the room--in the still hush of the night the divine image of my most beautiful stage-coach companion arose before me. The evening was warm and soft, and gleaming in the gorgeous moonlight lay that wild, weird ravine, and the ever downward, foaming water-fall. Its musical utterings, the delicious moonlight, and my own newly awakened and hitherto invulnerable heart, all conspired to make me poetical and inspired, or at least to imagine myself to be so; and pardon me if I gave utterance in verse to some of my feelings. But do not in the least imagine that you are going by any means to be presented with a fatiguing copy of my passionate numbers; in the first place I am very diffident, and in the next--but never mind the next, I will tell you in plain prose that I felt convinced in my heart, I felt a rapturous presentiment that the unutterably lovely being I had that day beheld would ere long be my own dear little wife, forever and forever. An indistinct dream of having somewhere, at some time before, known her haunted me and tormented me, but I racked my brains in vain to recollect the spot or time, and finally came to the conclusion that it had been in another state of existence we had met. I had been home but a few days when business letters came, demanding the presence of my father or myself in Philadelphia. My father expressed a desire that I should go, and a certain internal prompting urged me to comply with his request. The next morning bright and early found me seated in the same stage-coach in which I had met her. The due progress of steamboat and cars deposited me safely the day after in the goodly city of Squareruledom. The first leisure moment at my command, I paid my respects to the family of my father's brother. I found my good uncle and aunt at home; but my little pet Emily--their only child--whom I had last seen a rosy romping little imp of twelve--was unfortunately out. My uncle urged me very hard to make his house my home during my stay in Philadelphia; but I had taken up my abode in the family of an old college chum of mine, who had lately commenced the practice of the art of healing, and who I knew would be none the worse from a little of my help in a pecuniary way. I therefore declined my kind uncle's request, with a promise to come and see them often.