When fifty-two years old, Daniel Grey amassed a handsome fortune by speculating in certain gold and coal mine stocks, which not only relieved him from the necessity of daily toil in his dusty counting-room, but elevated him to that more than Braminical caste, dubbed in Mammon-parlance--capitalists; whose decrees outweigh legislative statutes, and by feeling the pulse of stock-boards and all financial corporations, regulate the fiscal currents of the State. A few months subsequent to this sudden accession of wealth, his meek and devoted wife--who had patiently shared all the trials and hardships of his early impecunious career, and brightened an humble home which boasted no treasure comparable to her loving, unselfish heart,--was summoned to the enjoyment of a heritage beyond the stars; and Daniel Grey, capitalist, found himself a florid handsome widower, with two children, Enoch and Jane, to remind him continually of the pale wife over whose quiet ashes rose a costly mausoleum, where rare exotics nodded to each other across gilded slab and sculptured angels. That he profoundly mourned his loss no charitable mind could doubt, notwithstanding the obstinate fact that ere the violets had bloomed a twelvemonth over the dead mother of his children he had provided them with one who certainly bore her name, usurped her precious privileges, walked in her footsteps, but wofully failed to fill her place. Mrs. Daniel Grey, scarcely the senior of the step-daughter whose lips most reluctantly framed the sacred word "mother," was a fresh fair young thing, whose ideas of marriage extended no further than diamonds, white satin, reception cards, and bridal presents; and whose regard for her worthy husband sought no surer basis than his bank-stock and insurance dividends. Dainty and bright, in tasteful and costly apparel, the pretty child-wife flitted up and down in his house and over the serene surface of his life, touching no feeling of his nature so deeply as that colossal _parvenu_ vanity which exulted in the possession of a graceful walking announcement of his ability to clothe in fine fabrics and expensive jewels. Perhaps the mildew that stained the ghastly gaunt angels who kept guard over the dust of the dead wife, extended yet further than the silent territory over which sexton and mattock reigned, for one dreary December night, instead of nestling for a post-prandial nap among the velvet cushions of his luxurious parlor, Daniel Grey, capitalist, slept his last sleep in a high-backed, comfortless chair before his desk, where the confidential clerk found him next morning, with his rigid icy fingers thrust between the leaves of his check-book. According to the old Arab proverb,-- "The black camel named Death kneeleth once at each door, And a mortal must mount to return nevermore."