Captain Reeves is in no placid frame of mind as he goes on his way to
the Admiral's. He passes through the grim strong gates at the entrance,
near which a sentry is solemnly pacing to and fro. He walks down the
long pathway, on each side of which huge tubs of aloes hold out their
dark sharp-pointed leaves, and then he goes up the broad brightly
lighted stairs. The rooms are already full of people; a confused
well-bred murmur of conversation rises from the throng of guests in
mingled subdued tones. Sir Herbert is standing inside the larger
drawing-room, talking with a group of officers; but he leaves them the
moment he catches a glimpse of Walter at the door. He even goes to meet
him with a smile of welcome on his lip, looking all the while over his
shoulder, as though he expected to see other guests coming with him.
'You are late, Captain Reeves. But where is the rest of your party? Did
you not say you were coming with the Greys?'
'The Greys won't be here, Sir Herbert. I called there, but find none of
them are going out this evening.'
'Is any one ill?'
'O no; Miss Grey tells me illness is not the cause of their
non-appearance. She did not give any reason for their sudden fit of
seclusion.'
'Very strange!' murmurs the Admiral; and he saunters away to another
part of the room, where other guests speedily claim his attention. A
curious observer though, might observe a shadow of disappointment has
come over his face, also that he is unusually grave and thoughtful
during the rest of the evening.
Sir Herbert is by no means an old man, as some reckon age. He has a
grave refined face, keen penetrating eyes, dark hair beginning to grow
a little thin on the temples. He wears uniform, and a star that gleams
forth upon his breast tells that he has done good service for his
country. His composed dignified bearing might well bear comparison with
many far younger men in that brilliant assembly. His smile is sweet,
and lights up his rather serious face like sunlight; but the Admiral is
generally grave; his thoughts are earnest, his life is earnest, and he
is not by any means easily moved to mirth.
Walter Reeves, as in duty bound, makes his way towards the lady who
at the present holds sway in her father's house. But it is no easy
matter to reach her, for the crowd is considerable. Men are lounging
about, dressed apparently in every kind of uniform under the sun. The
dark-blue of the navy of course predominates, but the marines and
several line-regiments are amply represented. Swords, epaulets, and
stars glitter and sparkle from every part of the spacious well-lighted
rooms.
Elegantly dressed ladies add to the goodly show; and their many-hued
robes mingling among the varied uniforms, add brilliant colouring to
the scene. Here and there, a few black coats are visible, but civilians
are rare on this evening. Walter Reeves, who is fond of pleasant
effects, notes all this in his half-careless half-indolent way, as he
slowly makes his passage through the throng and advances to the inner
room. Mrs Best is seated on a low sofa, looking like a queen in her
court, for many and admiring are her courtiers. Red coats and blue
coats jostle each other, in the anxiety of the wearers to get speech
with the lady of the house. Very pretty and graceful she looks as she
sits there, dividing her favours with impartial hand. She has a fair
blooming face, bright eyes, and a girlish lively manner. Her dress is
of snowy crape, that falls round her like a fleecy cumulous cloud;
the pale lavender trimmings that peep forth here and there in fringe
and ribbon, are the last faint remains of mourning dedicated to her
late husband. To catch the sparkle in her laughing blue eyes, to note
her almost flaxen hair and eyebrows, to mark the rounded grace of her
youthful figure, one would hardly imagine her to be a mother and a
widow. Yet such is the case: she has two visible responsibilities at
home in the shape of two little sons, who are at that moment, it is to
be hoped, soundly slumbering in their faraway nursery down at Hayes
Hill. Laura Best looks like some sunny-hearted merry girl just out of
her teens, so innocent and guileless is her countenance, so silvery are
her peals of musical laughter. Her sofa is placed in a kind of alcove
slightly away from the full glare of the light; on each side fall the
soft folds of white lace curtains, for the sofa is placed between
two bow-windows. Behind it is a high stand of beautiful plants; many
coloured hoyas display their clusters of waxy flowers; delicate white
azaleas and rose-tinted and crimson camellias mingle their blooms, and
hold their proud heads above their glossy foliage.
Mrs Best smiles to herself as she sees Walter Reeves advancing. A
suspicion had been haunting her that as the Greys were not coming, for
reasons she knows well, he would frame some apology and decline to put
in an appearance. So she holds out her hand to him, playfully chides
him for being late, and speedily draws him into conversation--that
flows naturally and brilliantly wherever Laura Best chooses to make
herself a centre. By-and-by Walter finds himself by that lady's side
in the music-room; a small place, draped with rose-coloured curtains
and lit with soft wax-candles, and just holding a piano, a harp, and a
limited number of performers and listeners. As he takes part in a trio
with Mrs Best and Major Dillon, and watches Laura's white dimpled hands
running over the ivory notes of the piano, bringing out sweet sounds in
her own light rippling manner, he remembers Katie's words about 'hidden
claws,' and smiles as he recollects how severe and satirical Miss Grey
can sometimes be.
He remains in the music-room all the rest of the evening, and does not
seek to join the various groups of men, who are either talking politics
or discoursing naval matters. And when at last the evening comes to an
end and he goes out of the gates again, he confesses to himself that
the time has passed pleasantly and rapidly enough, even though Katie
Grey was absent.
TRICKS IN THE WINE TRADE.
Amongst articles of daily consumption in this and other countries,
perhaps none is more adulterated than wine; and although the attention
of the public has been from time to time directed to the evil, the evil
seems to continue unabated.
Hamburg has long enjoyed a notoriety for the manufacture of sherry--a
merely fictitious article, in which no real sherry has any existence,
but which, imported to England, passes muster as genuine wine.
Latterly, to the discredit of France, false wines have been largely
fabricated and vended in that country; for it is as easy, if not
easier, to imitate French wines as the wines of Spain or Portugal. It
is well known to persons in France, that Nancy, the ancient capital
of Lorraine, bears a bad name as having been the first to set the
evil example of a systematic adulteration of French wines, white and
red. Lorraine, Alsace, and Luxembourg are notoriously the seat of
a very extensive manufacture of spurious wines, some of which owe
nothing whatever to the vine. Imitations of the most renowned brands
of champagne, such as Rœderer or Clicquot, are here concocted from
rhubarb-juice and carbonic acid, made cheap and sold dear. Light
clarets, strong St Georges, Macon, and the rough red Roussillon, can
be turned out to suit all tastes, merely by re-fermenting squeezed
grape-husks that have already done duty, in company with the coarse
sugar extracted from potatoes. Various colouring matters are added,
such as caramel, cochineal, and the more formidable fuchsine, and the
highly tinted compound is ready for the market.
Narbonne, nestling amidst her vineyards, is not much behind northern
Nancy in audacious falsification of the strong natural wines that
form the staple of her trade. It has long been the custom with these
south of France wine-growers to press the grapes a second time with
the addition of some water, and to brew a light, thin, vinous liquor,
which was doled out in rations to the farm-servants, or sold at
an exceedingly low rate. It has lately occurred to them that this
second-hand commodity, dosed with tartaric acid, thickened with
treacle, and artificially coloured, would pass muster with heedless
consumers as good ordinaire; and as good ordinaire, or Wine of the
Plains, it is accordingly vended. First class and even second-class
wines, it is well to bear in mind, are invariably the vintage of some
hill-side or mountain slope, but even the low-lying vineyards of a
wine-growing country yield a growth which has deservedly a good name
with buyers of moderate means. This good name, unfortunately, the
landowners and métayers of Southern France seem resolved to throw away,
in their hurry to be rich.
What most perturbs, not merely the doctors and scientific men of
France, but the French government as well, is the deleterious character
of the colouring matters employed in palming off mock or inferior
wines on the unwary public. The syndicate of Narbonne have formally
complained to the Minister of Agriculture that Portuguese, Italian, and
Spanish wines, all coloured by elderberries, enter freely into France.
But the growers of the Narbonne district have themselves learned to
make liberal use of the elderberry and of other ingredients less
innocuous. Fuchsine, which is extracted from coal-tar, and of which
immense quantities are employed, is the agent in the worst repute; but
it imparts a fine ruby-red, and is therefore in high favour. Fuchsine,
which is prepared by adding arsenical acid to aniline, is admitted
on all hands to be poisonous, although the authorities have as yet
hesitated to take vigorous action with regard to its abuse.
There are other colouring principles less dangerous than fuchsine,
but still injurious to health, which are in daily requisition for the
manipulation of wines. There is caramel, an extract of mallow; pink
althæa; Mexican cochineal; rosaline, derived from tar; colorine, and
many a fantastically named essence, sometimes of vegetable, sometimes
of mineral, or even animal origin. The ammoniacal cochineal which gives
so brilliant a dye to the scarlet cloth of an officer's uniform, is
decidedly inappropriate as an adjunct to wine. Each ounce of cochineal,
it should be known, represents several thousands of cochineal insects
boiled down to a pulp, and was once excessively dear. It is cheaper
now; and in the July of last year a single grocer of Narbonne sold ten
thousand francs' worth of this scarlet colour to wine-growers of the
village of Odeillan alone, for the artificial tinting of poor and pale
wines.
M. Paul Massot, who in the French Assembly represents the department of
the Eastern Pyrenees, has taken the leading part in a sort of crusade
for the repression of the new frauds in the wine-manufacture, and has
been able to lay before the government a mass of authentic evidence
on the subject. It was proved, for instance, by careful analysis that
a quart of one especial kind of wine, reddened by elderberry juice,
contained no less than half an ounce of alum. It was proved also that
the red extract of coal-tar, known as grenate, and formerly flung
away as refuse, now commands a high price as an ingredient in the
composition of that fuchsine which is now tossed by the hundred-weight
into wine-vats.
The best and readiest means of detecting the presence of artificial
colouring in wines we owe to the ingenuity of M. Didelot, a chemist in
Nancy. A tiny ball of gun-cotton supplies us with the necessary test.
Dip it in a glass of the suspected wine, then wash it, and it will
resume its whiteness if the wine be pure; if not, it will retain the
ruddy colour due to the treacherous fuchsine. The addition of a few
drops of ammonia gives us a violet or a greenish hue when vegetable
matters have been made use of to impart the desired colour.
Other and more elaborate tests on a larger scale have been devised; and
with the aid of acids and ethers of peroxide of manganese, and notably
of chloroform, the tricks of the wine-forger have been completely
exposed. Even benzine forms, with fuchsine and its fellows, a red
jelly that swims on the surface of the discoloured liquor, and by
skilfully conducted processes, a precipitate, varying in colour, can in
every instance be obtained. Government and the public have now taken
alarm, and it may be hoped that before long the adulteration, by means
of fuchsine at all events, will be effectually checked. It must be
remembered that growers and dealers were probably in the first instance
quite unaware of the dangerous nature of the convenient drug which gave
so tempting an appearance to their stock in trade; but publicity, and
the recent seizures of falsified wines which have taken place at Paris,
Nancy, and Perpignan, may probably serve to enlighten them upon the
subject.
TIT FOR TAT.
So long as men are what they are, those who can hit will give blow for
blow, literally or metaphorically as the case may be, and standers-by
will delight in the passage-at-arms.
Certainly it is pleasant to hear a sayer of ill-natured things put down
by an intended victim of his cynical tongue. 'The great assembly,' as
Manningham terms it, must have greatly enjoyed the discomfiture of a
certain Lord Paget, who, oblivious of his own mean origin, thought to
extol his superiority by asking Sir Thomas White what he thought of the
quality of the cloak he wore. 'Truly,' replied the worthy alderman,
'it seems to be a very good cloth; but I remember when I was a young
beginner, selling your lordship's father a far better, to make him a
gown when he was sergeant to the Lord Mayor; and he was a very honest
sergeant.'
Nor did those behind the scenes at a certain theatre fail to appreciate
the situation when a prosperous equestrian's daughter observed to a
retired actress: 'After all, you were only a circus artist; my father
recollects you well;' and the elder lady retorted: 'I daresay he does,
my dear; he used to chalk my shoes.'
When Lincoln and Douglas stumped Illinois as rival candidates, the
latter in one of his speeches declared he remembered his opponent when
he served liquor behind a bar. 'That's so,' said Lincoln; 'but the
judge has forgotten to mention that while I was serving the liquor
on one side of the bar, he was drinking it on the other.' A mild bit
of retaliation compared with that inflicted by Brougham upon his
fellow-actor Burton. In reply to the first-named asking if he had read
the last number of the _Lantern_, a comic paper in which Brougham was
personally interested, Burton said he never read the thing unless he
was tipsy; a compliment his questioner acknowledged with a bow and,
'Then, Mr Burton, I am sure of one constant reader!'
It is well not to shew contempt for a book to its author's face, as
newly made Sergeant Murphy learned when dining in company with the
author of _Ten Thousand a Year_. He called out across the table:
'Warren, I never had patience to finish that book of yours; tell me
what was the end of Gammon?' 'Oh,' said Warren to the lawyer, 'they
made him a sergeant, and he was never heard of after.'
Charles Dickens turning over the leaves of a literary lady's album,
came upon a page bearing the autographs of Daniel O'Connell and Joseph
Bonaparte, and over against them read, in Southey's handwriting:
Birds of a feather flock together;
But _vide_ the opposite page;
And thence you may gather,
I'm not of a feather
With some of the birds in this cage.
Underneath the Laureate's lines the novelist wrote:
Now if I don't make
The completest mistake
That ever put man in a rage,
This bird of two weathers
Has moulted his feathers,
And left them in some other cage--
a reflection upon the poet's political inconstancy, that called forth a
_quid pro quo_ from one of Southey's admirers, who thought a man had as
much right to change his opinions as to alter his style:
Put _his_ first work and last work together,
And learn from the groans of all men,
That if _he_ has not altered his feather,
He's certainly altered his pen.
Seeing that men of all sorts delight in girding at the professors of
law and physic, it is strange that instead of making common cause
together, lawyers and doctors rather cherish a mutual antipathy, which
finds vent in an amusing interchange of asperities. Cross-examining Dr
Warren, a New York counsel declared that a doctor ought to be able to
give an opinion of a disease without making mistakes.
'They make fewer mistakes than the lawyers,' responded the physician.
'That's not so,' said the counsellor; 'but doctors' mistakes are buried
six feet under ground; a lawyer's are not.'
'No,' replied Warren; 'but they are sometimes hung as many feet above
ground.' The advantage was with the doctor.
It was on the other side when, disputing as to the comparative
merits of their professions, Sir Henry Holland said to Bobus Smith,
ex-advocate-general: 'You must admit that your profession does not make
angels of men?' and the lawyer replied: 'There you have the best of it;
yours certainly gives them the best chance.'
Said a pompous man of money to Professor Agassiz: 'I once took some
interest in natural science; but I became a banker, and I am what I
am!' 'Ah!' replied Agassiz, 'my father procured a place for me in a
bank; but I begged for one more year of study, then for a second, then
for a third. That fixed my fate, sir. If it had not been for that
little firmness of mine, I should now have been myself nothing but a
banker.'
The money-dealer must have felt as small as the American judge who,
finding his enforced bed-fellow by no means overwhelmed by the company
of a person of his dignity, observed: 'Pat, you would have remained a
long time in the old country before you could say you had slept with
a judge.' 'True for you,' said Pat; 'and yer Honour would have been a
long time in the ould counthry, I'm thinking, before ye'd been a judge!'
Joseph Hume, the economical reformer, having occasion to visit Brussels
when Sir Robert Adair was our representative there, mindful of the
minister's repute as a host, lost no time in leaving his name at the
legation. Remembering Hume's constant attempts to cut down official
salaries, Sir Robert was inclined to ignore the hint; but taking
second thought, invited the troublesome economist to dine with him.
Hume put his legs under the ambassador's mahogany in the expectation
of tasting the choicest viands and the most exquisite wines, but had
to content himself with poor soup and poorer sherry, roast mutton
and light Bordeaux, a chicken and a salad; supplemented with Adair's
apologetical observation when the banquet was over: 'You see, sir, what
these confounded Radicals have brought us to with their reductions.
By-and-by, I daresay we shall come to prison diet, with pudding perhaps
on Sundays.'
Scribe the dramatist met his match in a nobleman ambitious of gaining
a literary reputation by proxy; from whom he received the following
curious epistle: 'SIR--I have the honour to propose to you to associate
yourself with me in the composition of a drama. Your name will figure
by the side of mine; you alone composing the play, and I alone
defraying all the expenses of the first representation. You shall have
all the profits, for I work only for glory.'
Scribe replied: 'SIR--I have never been accustomed to harness together
in my carriage a horse and an ass; I am therefore unable to accept your
very kind offer.'
The nobleman closed the correspondence with: 'MONSIEUR SCRIBE--I
received your note of refusal to unite our literary labours. You are at
liberty not to understand your own interest, but not to allow yourself
to call me a horse.'
Would-be wits are apt to have the tables turned upon them. At a dinner
in honour of Nick Denton, one of the staff of the Illinois Central
Railway, his friend Jack Wallace, intrusted with the toast of the
evening, proposed it in this wise: 'The two Nicks--Old Nick and Nick
Denton!' Denton rose to respond, saying he appreciated the honour
conferred upon him by connecting him with Mr Wallace's most intimate
friend, and scarcely knew how to requite the compliment; but as one
good turn deserves another, he would give 'The two Jacks--Jack Wallace
and Jackass!'
Cham the caricaturist turning into a restaurant, chanced to take
possession of the favourite seat of a stock-broker. Upon coming in and
seeing how things were, the latter called the proprietor aside and
inquired if he were aware that the tall thin stranger occupying his
usual place was the executioner. The horrified man hurried to Cham and
entreated him to go away, saying M. Heldenrich need not pay for what
he had eaten if he would only leave at once. 'Who told you I was the
headsman?' asked Cham, without displaying any surprise at what he had
heard. The landlord pointed out his informant. 'Ah,' said Cham, as he
rose to depart, 'he ought to know me; I flogged and branded him at
Toulon not two years ago.'
Hood once took a proper revenge upon some practical jokers who upset
a boat before he could get out of it, giving him a thorough ducking.
Directly he was safe on land he began to complain of cramps and
stitches, and at last went indoors. His friends, rather ashamed of
their rough fun, persuaded him to go to bed, which he immediately
did. His groans and complaints increased so alarmingly that they were
at their wits' end what to do. Mrs Hood had received a quiet hint
from the sufferer, and was therefore only amused at the terrified
efforts and prescriptions of the repentant jokers. There was no doctor
come-at-able; and all sorts of queer remedies were suggested and tried;
the poet shaking with laughter, while they thought he was shaking with
ague or fever. One rushed up-stairs with a kettle of boiling water,
another tottered in under a tin bath, and a third brought a quantity
of mustard. Hood then gave out in a sepulchral voice his belief that
he was dying; and proceeded to give the most absurd instructions
for his will, which his hearers could not see the fun of, for their
fright. They begged him to forgive them for their unfortunate joke,
and beseeched him to believe in their remorse; till unable to keep up
the farce any longer, Hood burst into a perfect shout of laughter,
which they thought at first was delirious frenzy, but which ultimately
betrayed that the biters were bit.
General Charretie, known some thirty years ago as a capital talker,
clever versifier, skilful musician, bold bettor, daring horseman, and
dead-shot, was as cool as the proverbial cucumber. He once hired a
Hertfordshire manor for the shooting-season, and in following his game
was not particular about trespassing on the adjoining estate, belonging
to a lord of high degree. The latter's keeper out with his master one
morning, heard the General blazing away in an adjoining cover, and
calling attention to the intruder's proceedings, was instructed to go
and shoot one of the General's dogs and turn him off the ground. 'You
had better take my pony; you will get back quicker,' said his lordship;
and the keeper cantered away on a perfect treasure of a pony, that its
owner would not have parted with for any amount. Upon reaching the spot
where Charretie was blazing away at the pheasants, the keeper told him
to get off the ground or, by his master's orders, he should shoot one
of his dogs.
'Very well,' said the General; 'shoot the old one; but if you do, I
shoot your pony; and as I am not sure where my manor ends, I shan't
stir.'
The old dog dropped at a shot from the keeper; and before the man could
turn round, the pony he bestrode was as dead as the dog.
'Now, my man,' said Charretie in the mildest of tones, 'if you shoot
again, the next barrel is for yourself!'
The keeper took to his heels, told the doleful story to his master,
who had not made up his mind how to act ere he received a challenge
from the General for insulting him by ordering his servant to shoot his
setter. Seeing the sort of customer he had to deal with, the nobleman
thought it best to come to an amicable arrangement and accept the
defeat.
The editor of the _Terre Haute Journal_ had the impudence to write:
'The reason why Lafayette doesn't build a rink is this. The ladies of
that city have such big feet that no more than four or five could skate
in a rink at one time; therefore the concern wouldn't pay.' Whereupon
the _Lafayette Journal_ retorted: 'It is a number eleven lie. The
Lafayette ladies are celebrated for their pretty feet. All's well, you
know, that ends well, and the _Terre Haute_ editor, afflicted with the
daily exhibition of agricultural hoofs, is dying of envy. Goodwin of
our city once made a pair of twenty-eights for a Terre Haute belle. He
built them in the back-yard on a sort of marine railway, and launched
them. If ever an old woman lived in a shoe, it was down at Terre Haute.'
Ladies know how to give tit for tat, as a politician learned when,
piqued by a fair listener noticing a pet dog while he was holding
forth to her on the Eastern Question, he asked how a woman of her
intelligence could be so fond of a dog. 'Because he never talks
politics,' was the significant reply.
An Englishman attached to the Washington Commission incautiously
remarked to his pretty American partner at a ball, that although he had
seen many beautiful women, he had not come across a handsome man in the
States. 'I suppose there are plenty of handsome men in England?' she
observed. 'O yes, lots,' said he; provoking the poser: 'Then why didn't
Queen Victoria send some over here?'
STORY OF A PARTRIDGE AND HER CHICKS.
One morning in the beginning of July an agricultural labourer, in the
employment of an East Lothian farmer, was driving a reaping-machine
in a field of long grass preparatory to haymaking. In a part of the
field that the machine had not yet shorn, a hen partridge was sitting
on a number of eggs which were within a few short hours of being
hatched. It may naturally be conceived that the bird would hear with
no little concern the sharp clipping noise made by the machine as,
in its progress up and down the ridges, it approached nearer and
nearer to the nest; but like a true mother, she would rather die than
leave her nearly hatched young. As the knife of the machine, in quick
shuttle-like motion, laid swath after swath of goodly rye-grass level
with the ground, the iron fingers of the cutter struck the bird, killed
her, and drove her some distance from the nest. To the moment of her
death she kept the eggs warm; and the young life within them that she
had cherished soon afterwards found protection.
The driver of the machine, who was a kind-hearted man, stopped his
horses and gazed compassionately on the poor bird. Soon, however, his
attention was withdrawn from the dead bird by hearing numerous minute,
plaintive, peeping sounds--as if made by very tiny, fine-throated,
tender chicks. Hastily concluding that a brood of young partridges
lay buried and struggling for life in the nearest swath of grass, he
turned it carefully over and over, in expectation of seeing a number of
chicks; but after a diligent search, he could not discover any birds
whatever. Still the peeping noises continued. The workman stood silent
and listened attentively, in order that his ear might catch the true
direction of the sounds. By the unceasing 'Peep, peep, peep,' he was
attracted to a little hollow in the ground. There, almost hid from
observation, lay sixteen sounding eggs, for it was from the eggs that
the peeping chorus proceeded! The farmer, who was in the field, came to
the spot where the driver was standing; and he being also of a humane
disposition, placed the eggs carefully in his handkerchief, and carried
them home to the farmstead, where they were soon placed under a common
sitting hen. In a few hours afterwards the partridge chicks had broken
open their shells, and were running about their foster-mother crying
'Peep, peep, peep.'
The writer may be permitted to add, that when partridge chicks are
hatched by a common hen, they should be intrusted to a gamekeeper or
other person who understands the kind of food the birds need, otherwise
it will be almost impossible to rear them.
THE FALL OF THE YEAR.
Coldly and bright draws in the day;
Gloomy and drear it steals away;
For slowly now comes up the sun,
His Summer's ardent labours done;
And low his golden wheel declines
Where Winter shews his starry signs.
No more to earth the fervid beams
Give beauty such as poet dreams;
No more descends the glorious ray,
The rapture of the summer day.
The sky's deep blue is waxing pale,
The sun's inspiring fervours fail;
The slanting beam he gives is chill
Within the vale and on the hill;
And now, with many a jealous fold,
The clouds would all his cheer withhold,
Nor would on plain or height bestow
The soothing of his waning glow.
The flowers are gone, save those that still,
Like friends who cleave to us through ill,
Outbrave the bitter wind that blows,
And deck their season to its close.
The leaves that late were only stirred
By gentlest breath, that only heard
The song-bird's note, round these the blast
Blows keen and fierce, and rude and fast
The rising gale flings far and wide
Their withered bloom and idle pride.
The birds have fled; the wind alone
Makes song in many a sullen tone.
But sudden through the bursting sky
The sun again comes out on high;
The clouds fall back to yield him way,
And fly before his eager ray;
And gladness fills the breast amain--
The glimpse of Summer come again!
Ah! sweet the beam, but like the smile
With which the dying would beguile
The mourning heart--the last sad ray
Love gives to cheer our tears away.
The light is gone, the moment's bloom
Is sunk again in cold and gloom.
So pass away all things of earth,
Whate'er we prize of love and worth--
The form once dear; the voice that cheered;
The friends by many a tie endeared;
The dreams the aching heart forgets;
The hopes that fade to cold regrets.
Sweet scenes, dear haunts, that once I knew,
My heart yet fondly turns to you.
Let seasons change, and be ye bright
With all the Summer-tide's delight,
Or let the Winter's gloom be yours,
Your beauty still for me endures;
For Memory keeps unfaded yet
What Love would have me not forget.
D. F.
* * * * *
Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.
* * * * *
_All Rights Reserved._