The wedding day was drawing nigh. One little week remained of the appointed time; and a joyous man, no doubt, was colonel H----d, as hour after hour winged its flight, and each diminished the space that lay betwixt him and his assured felicity. Poor weak creatures that we are, whose brief history is but a record of hope and disappointment, ever deceived by the mirage of happiness that glitters afar in the desert of life, and recedes from before us as we pursue, till outworn, we sink into death with our thirst unslaked, our desires ungratified. One little week remained. What matters the brevity of time when a moment is fraught with power to destroy. Behold the gallant ship with tightened cordage and outspread sails, dashing from her prow the glittering spray as she dances on the leaping wave to the music of the breeze; cheerful faces crowd her deck, for she is homeward bound from a distant land; and now her port is almost reached, a hidden rock has pierced her side, the eternal sea rolls over the sunken wreck. The warrior has charged and broken the foe; the shout of victory rings in his ears, and fancy twines the laurel round his brow; but treachery lurks in his armed array, and the clarion of conquest sounds the note of defeat. The mighty city with its thousand domes, its marble palaces, and its crowded marts, over which ages have urged their onward flight, and still it grew in wealth and strength, has felt the earthquake's shock. Black mouldering ruins and a sullen sulphurous lake are left to mark the spot where once its "splendors shone." And the heart, the human heart, with its high aspirations, and its treacherous whisperings of unmixed joys, its blindness of trust in coming events, its strange forgetfulness of the hours gone by, its sunny morning of boundless hope, its stormy night of dark despair.