In one of the squares at the extremity of Liverpool, some sixty
years ago, there resided a young orphan, called Elizabeth
Woodville. She had no relations surviving; her parents had long
been dead, and an only brother, a few weeks previous, had, by
youthful excesses, been brought to an untimely end. The latter
event preyed upon her spirits and constitution, not only from
the mere fact itself of his death, but also from the horrible
circumstances connected with it. He had been conveyed home a
corpse, after his nightly revel; and at the moment when Elizabeth
was dreaming of her parents, in the far off happy land, she was
awoke to listen to the awful tidings, and view their confirmation
in the ghastly features of one who, whatever, and how many his
faults and crimes were, had always loved her. She seemed now to
be alone in the world, with no acquaintances save the flowers
which her fair hands fostered every morning, and the toys of her
brother, when a boy, which were all collected and arranged before
her. There was the pencil, with which he and Arthur Govenloch
alternately sketched her own features, in puerile art; and along
with it were the silken cords which bound her to a seat, when she
was refractory. That seat was still there, with the green faded
cushion, and in it, for hours, she often sat, held by the illusions
of memory. His fishing rod and basket kept their old places, fixed
to the ceiling. Even the marbles of the boy had been preserved, and
she thought of their sports in the garden, and remembered a long
and successful chase, through amidst the trees and over the grass
plot, into the arbour, which Arthur, followed by her brother, had
after her, when she stole away their marbles. His Holy Bible, too,
with the three names inscribed on the fly leaf, lay with its gilt
edges; and she pictured once more to her fancy, the beautiful and
happy sabbath eves, in summer, out on the flowery lawn, when their
young minds drank in the holy words of peace and life. She fondly
hoped that the solemn, yet sweet truths of mercy therein contained,
would have been so strongly impressed upon her brother’s heart,
that all the infidel thoughts which had latterly sprung up, and
effected his temporal ruin, must have failed to uproot them. It
had never been conned by them as a task book, but had always been
opened by them as a holy romance of truth from heaven, pointing
to Eden as the cradle, and the skies as the home, of our race;
with the lovely and the wise Jesus as the hero of every scene,
reflected above or below. Her whole heart was among these objects
of remembrance, and her happiness was in the past. She played
delightfully, and her sweet voice accompanied the harp, but only
the songs and hymns which had pleased her brother, and his friend.
She often thought of that friend. There was only one of the dead
who engrossed all her thoughts, and that one was her brother, even
to the entire exclusion of her parents; and there was only one of
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