“'No, sir, stay, I command you, I insist. Woman, what do you want? in the name of virtue, what do you want?' The widow commenced her piteous appeal again, when, quite overcome, I rushed from the room, followed by the voice of the ruined professor, who feared that his reputation was for ever gone. 'Woman, in the name of Jehovah, what _do you_ want?'” Poor Frank! Death's dark garniture hath clothed his piercing eye; friendship and sorrow no more thrill his heart, and the noisome worm revels in the home of high and noble daring. He died! not on the sick-bed, with mourning friends gathered around, but on the battle-field, fighting for his country, on the victor soldier's bed--the body of his foe. And of all the warm leal hearts that were stilled, of all the true spirits that floated up to God, from thy glorious but bloody field, Buena Vista! silence fell not on a nobler breast--not a truer soul went up than rose from thy bosom, Frank--true friend of my early manhood! THE CURIOUS WIDOW. |During my first course of lectures I became a boarder at the house of a widow lady, the happy mother of a brace and a half of daughters, the quartette possessing so much of the distinguishing characteristic of the softer sex, that I often caught myself wondering in what nook or corner of their diminutive skulls they kept the rest of the faculties. Occupying the same room that I did, were two other students from the same section of country as myself, and possessing pretty much the same tastes and peculiarities. One thing certain we agreed in, and that was a detestation of all curiosity-stricken women; for never were poor devils worse bothered by researches than we were. Not a pocket of any garment left in our rooms could remain unexamined, not a letter remain on our table unread, nor scarcely a word of conversation pass without a soft, subdued breathing at the key-hole telling us we were eavesdropped. Matters came at length to such a pass, and so thorough became the annoyance, that nothing but the difficulty of obtaining suitable accommodation elsewhere, prevented us from bidding a tender adieu to the widow, and promising to pay her our board bill as soon as our remittances arrived. As the evil had to be endured for a while, at least, we soon invented and arranged a plan for breaking her of her insatiable curiosity, and making her, what she was in other respects, a good landlady.