This last consideration is most unfortunately omitted in the anticipatory summing-up of the chances and consequences of married life, by those whose misfortune it is to be poor like ourselves. Reflect upon it as you may, and palliate as you please, poverty marriages are in themselves an evil and a disgrace. In a favored land like this, no industrious single man (unless peculiarly unfortunate) has a right to be pennyless at the age of twenty-five; and such as are imprudent, as well as those who wrap the golden hours of manhood in a napkin, should, by special enactment of law, be not only debarred from the enjoyments of matrimony, but also shamed from the presence of worthy people. As love-fevers are managed in these days, the habiliments of the altar are too often the sport of an illusion, as fatal in its effects as ill-timed in concert. Marriage, under proper regulations, is indeed a boon and a blessing; but when made to minister to the forlorn hopes of the inconsiderate, the poverty-bound, or the helpless, it is a curse of the deepest die. It has darkened the face of creation as a simoon from time immemorial, encompassing the wretchedness of millions, who, had they timely resolved, first to better their conditions, then to marry, might have been independent and happy all their lives. _August 20th._ Ten more days have passed--so many saw-teeth. It is painful to trace the pale appearances which have assumed the place of the rose-tint upon my husband’s cheek. Returning from his daily toils, I find him stubborn in manner and bitter in words. All my efforts to humble his towering will have failed. So, between poverty, contention, and disappointment, our pathway to the future is unflowered. * * * * * When she had concluded to remove to Boston, there to reside permanently, a new tide rushed in upon her destiny. SHE WAS LOST. The fountain of her tears was dry. Despair laid its iron fingers upon the strings of her heart. And now began that career of madness and crime which rendered her name a signal of terror to the licentious, who thronged the dens of prostitution. She laughed and was happy in her revengeful determination.--Revenge! at whose shrine of blood she did reverence! “And where her frown of hatred darkly fell, Hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell.” For a period of over four years, she led the van in the battle of Extermination to Man, the plunderer of her life’s joys, her innocence--Man, the rock of her ruin! She saw but to conquer. The devotees of pomatum swarmed about her, lavishing sickening adulations upon her charms. She inwardly mocked at their hollowness, and Murder whetted its beak upon their lies. Twice were her hands imbrued in the blood of her paramours; and, had her existence been prolonged a few more days, it is highly probable that a printer, of a name similar to that borne by the object of her first love, would have fallen a victim to her avenging steel.