One more superstition, connected with the departure of friends, must be noted--the more peculiarly as there is a sad beauty in the thought. Very many nervous and excitable people fear to look after those who are going away on long journeys or dangerous enterprises, under the fear that such a look after them may prevent their return. One peculiar instance of the indulgence of this superstition, and its apparent fulfilment, happens to have fallen under notice, during the present struggle. When the President's first call for volunteers was made, among those who responded was one young lad of eighteen, a mere handsome boy in appearance and altogether delicate in constitution, who left a comfortable position to fulfil what he believed to be a stern duty. He had two female cousins, of nearly his own age, and with whom he had been in close intimacy. Going away hurriedly, with little time to bestow on farewells, he called to bid them good-bye one dark and threatening night. Some tears of emotion were shed, and the sad farewell was spoken. When he passed down the walk, both the cousins stood without the door and watched his figure as it grew dimmer and disappeared in the dusk of the distant street. When they returned to the cheerfulness of the lighted room, the younger burst into tears. "We have doomed him," she said. "We watched him when he went away, and looked after him as long as he could be seen. He will never come back. His young life will fade out and disappear, just as we saw him fading away in the darkness." A month later the young soldier was dead; and something more than ordinary reasoning will be necessary to persuade the two cousins--the younger and more impressive, especially--that their gazing after him did not cast an evil omen on his fate and a blight upon his life. Another near relative has since gone away on the same patriotic errand; but when the farewells were spoken in the lighted room, the two girls escaped at once and hid themselves in another apartment, so that they should not even see him disappear through the door. When last heard from,[10] fever and bullet had yet spared him; and what more is needed to make the two young girls hopelessly superstitious for life, at least in this one regard? They are not the only persons who have seen and felt that _fading out in the darkness_ as an omen; for the same observer who once stood on the bluff at Long Branch, as a heavy night of storm was closing, and saw the "Star of the West" gradually fade away and disappear into that threatening storm and darkness--unconscious that she was to emerge again to play so important a part in the drama of the nation's degradation,--the same observer saw the same omen at Niblo's not long ago, when the poor Jewess of Miss Bateman's wonderful "Leah" fell back step by step into the crowd, as the curtain was dropping, her last hope withered and her last duty done, and nothing remaining but to "follow on with my people."