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we say that they are the very graves of domestic happiness. We are certain that poor Ella Singleton, as she sat lost in her reveries, felt the truth of it, with its most bitter experience. We will return to her fashionable home; for soon after we left her she received a letter from her fair and happy cousin Fannie. We will read it for her. Her eyes are filled with tears, and it lies unread before her.

HAZEL GLEN, Georgia, 18

Imagine, if you can, my dearest Eila, the most beautiful little nest you ever found in the old groves at Woodside, and you have a perfect miniature of my new home at Hazel Glen. My parent bird, good old Aunt Becky, watches over her silly doves, as she chooses to call Arthur and myself, with far more solicitude than ever your pet pigeon did over hers. Taking advantage of her protecting wings and kind care, we wander off every bright morning to explore the beauties of Hazel Glen. Oh Ella, how very blue the sky is, and the turf is so soft and yielding to our feet, I am sure you and Alfred would like to join our party, were it only to breathe the sweet air, or gather the beautiful flowers of which I know you were ever fond. I need not tell you how dear the warm and welcome greeting was to my heart when I first came with Arthur to my new home. You remember well how you used to smile, and I thought questioned the depth of my love for Arthur, when I talked of stranger tones, and thought with a chill of the kind friends I would leave forever. I often wished then for your calm smile and trusting confidence; and though I loved Arthur as few can love, I knew it would be a new thing for Fannie Linwood to study her words and actions, for she had ever been a wild bird, though a cherished one, in her own home. I trusted in my heavenly father, Ella, and nightly, as I sought my pillow, I asked his blessing on my earthly love. My dark thoughts are all over now, and I have taken the most important step in the life of woman; and although with all the happiness a mortal can wish for, I do not forget this world is one of change, or neglect to ask God to permit me to enjoy it rightly. Arthur de Lacy's friends are now, all mine. I have not forgotten old ones, Ella, though I have made room in my heart for the new. Every one gave me a kindly smile when I came to Hazel Glen; even the old willows at the gate seemed to gracefully nod a welcome;

thousands of bright flowers emptied their cups of perfume at my feet, and roses scattered their delicate leaves as I passed up the gravel walk. Hosts of glad children and old domestics waved their hats to their young master and new Missus as we entered our future home. You know, Ella, that I have always felt that "activity is life," and here, though comparatively retired in our cottage home, I am in the very midst of bustle, and find employment enough to keep me as busy as a bee from morning till night. I have a family of one or two hundred negroes under my especial control;-but while I am writing I hear Arthur's voice reminding me the old man at the lodge is asking for his young Missus to come and tell him of heaven and God, a God who has filled my cup to overflowing. In such offices as these,-in ministering to the happiness of those around me, I shall forget the long absence of Arthur when Congress again sits. I know our first parting will be sad, but I have a thousand little plans which will occupy the time till the summer brings him again to my side. I am very proud of my husband, but I will dare confess it when the whole nation are helping me to sing his praises. I will make a full pause here, or I might write on perhaps forever; for of one subject I can never weary. Do not think me foolishly in love, Ella, but remember our honey-moon has only just begun, and we intend to do all we can to insure its continuance forever. That you may be as happy as your Cousin Fannie, is my best and kindest wish. Remember me to your husband; and on no account forget to give my best respects to his friend Frank Walton, with many assurances of my health and happiness; and lest he may imagine I am dying of unrequited affection, you may present him Mrs. Arthur de Lacy's card.

CHAP. IV.

So silently the lily pale had mingled with the rose,

We did not know it was the hue that death around it throws,
But now we marked the pallor that o'er the cheek had crept;
We saw her rest was troubled as painfully she slept;
But her eye is never lifted, no higher thought is there,
Above the one she loves on earth, no other half so fair.

M. Leslie.

THREE years have passed on the wings of time, and brought much of joy and more of sorrow to the heart of Ella Singleton. When Alfred had introduced a beautiful and wealthy bride to an aristocratic circle of friends, how they had admired and flattered; when the novelty wore off, and the world grew weary of caressing, Alfred became tired of his home, and his careless tones were throwing shadows over a heart Ella began to feel had been the throne of a false idol. The first fading away of the drapery in which fancy has hung the world, first sorrows, as well as first disappointments, make deep furrows in the young heart, and wear upon life itself. Poor Ella had never been trained for the purposes for which woman is destined; there had been no preparations for the storms of the troubled sea of life, and no schooling of her spirit to battle with its waves. She had cultivated her fancy, and her morbid taste for romances had permitted her for a time to live in a happy but imaginary state. When stern reality showed her for the first time how delusive were human hopes; when with the neglect of her husband, the dark wing of death. hovered over that fashionable home, and bore her infant away from her bosom to cradle it in a cold grave; when in her depth of sorrow she heard a note of sadness from her Southern home that told her of the wrecks of time; how loved ones were all scattered, and the nearest and dearest had found a silent and last resting place when Ella saw link by link of the fragile chain that new friends had woven in her heart (as sorrow entered her home) unclasp and fall broken around her, she had not that one unfading hope that looks away from this vale of tears. She heard not the still clear tone of angels rising above the death moan and

telling lone mourners of a peace and rest the world knows not of: making sorrow for the dead, as Irving so beautifully expresses it,

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a sorrow we would not wish to root from the heart, though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the hour of gayety, or a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom.”

The customary fashionable call was made; the frozen and forced tear of fashionable sympathy shed; but in that circle of worldly friends where she had once shone the brightest flower, there was not one to lift it when it drooped and withered, to the still clear air of heaven. She heard none speaking of a better land, a happier home than is ever found in this "shadowy valley," but the gay laughed on, and the dancer's foot was as light as was Ella Langdon's in the gay hall where she first met Alfred Singleton. And was he insensible to the inroads his neglect had made on his once beautiful and romantic wife? Did he feel it was his heartlessness that was wasting her life and beauty. Ah yes; he saw she had changed, but he saw it with the eye of a man of the world, and felt it with the heart of a man of fashion.

CHAP. V.

With scant moustache and slender mein,

Frank Walton you before have seen,

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And though the very height of ton,"

He lowly bends before a Don.

For justice cries from all the world;

And from the fancied height he's hurled.

He finds that he who sets a trap

Is sure to meet with some mishap.-M. Leslie.

IN the large and ample drawing room at St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans, a tall and fierce looking foreigner was engaged in an animated discussion with a slightly built exquisite, our chance acquaintance, Mr. Walton. Although not particularly interested in his character, we consider it our duty to follow his fate, so far as to show how the intrigues of the vain and heartless are often

overturned, and meet with their reward in life. Our hero had been sated with pleasure and taken his fill of gayety in the city of New York; and as all the members of his club, to use his own vain words, were literally lassoed and noosed for life, he had come to have a little more fun out of his already begun flirtation with the Don's daughter. It was the first time Don Cortez had so honored Mr. Walton by calling on him at his rooms at the St. Charles's, where he was located for the winter, with a somewhat lightened purse. Adhering to his motto, "Free and unincumbered," he intended to avail himself frequently of the hospitality of his friends in New Orleans, and have a rich time out of his flirtation with the Senora. Now we often hear it remarked that "youth is always beautiful;" but we are bound to confess that the Spanish girl was a rare exception to this general rule, and that she was very far from being either the most attractive or agreeable young lady in New Orleans; and was at the age of fifteen, as Mr. Walton has already hinted, "very fat and very lazy." As her bodily development had gained the start of her mental, some five or six years, it was no marvel if she were very uninteresting. To be sure her drooping eyelids rose and fell most languidly, and, to the blinded gaze of a true lover, might have contained some Donna Julia's melting orb, but Mr. Walton was not at all struck with its effect, nor was he in the least in love with the Senora. Why was it then one so fastidiously refined should be found early and late in her boudoir, where were the latest novels, the most fashionable periodicals, extremely luxurious couches and inviting lounges. Why was he always in at the hour, of dinner, the first to seat himself at the side of the fat Senora? Have we not heard him whisper in the ear of his friend, Alfred Singleton, that the Spanish girl was "very fresh." It was no fancy of Mr. Walton's that she had dreamt of him as her devoted lover since the wedding night of Ella Langdon's. But think you the young "exquisite," the "distingué" Mr. Walton had any idea of appropriating such a mass of Spanish fat as his wife: oh no! it was no intention of his to attach a new" trunk” to the family tree of the Waltons, and he was not to be caught in any such trap. If the world did happen to say he was engaged, he would admit, with a laugh, he was engaged; but only to partake of the Spaniard's dinners, which were very fine; of his wines, so