"COME to get married!" Dorothea was just on the point of lifting up the tea-urn, but she only held up both hands with such a queer smile, and looked at the pair as she would have done at a brace of nice ducks to be picked for her master's dinner.

Dear soul! Matrimony was a terra incognita to her, about which she had the most vague and grotesque ideas, as one might be supposed to have of the Fegee Islands. She had a just and conscientious sense of what was due to "creature comforts," presenting them in the best and most appropriate shape, and in this way she was of immense value to the worthy rector and his benign sister.

Indeed, so alive was she to all temporal concernments, that the good man at one time took occasion, when she was spreading the table for dinner, to read her an extra homily upon the interests of her soul. Poor Dorothea began to cry first, which still more inspired the eloquence of the good man, and then she hung down her head and blushed, and then, to his utter amazement, went off into such a fit of laughter as really to endanger suffocation in the paroxysm. Upon recovering from this, she exclaimed,

"It's of no sort o' use. Soon 's ever a man talks to me alone, I always think of Jacob Flanders, and that sets me to laughing."

At this moment Aunt Jane looked grave, and directed some article to be carried to the kitchen, and then explained, with spinster-like propriety, how Jacob had even attempted the unseemly language of love to Dorothea, going so far as to kiss her hand, at the relation of which enormity, Aunt Jane slightly blushed, and the pastor's face departed very considerably from clerical gravity.

It is astonishing how much more complacently women regard the matrimonial intentions of others than do the other sex. Their sympathies are all alive upon the occasion, and they feel an interest and tenderness, perfect for the time being. Aunt Jane had not one particle of vanity or selfishness in the world. She had never thought of a man, except when she thought of her brother, and never seemed to imagine that she existed otherwise than as an appendage to him.

cage, and that used to look so lovingly upon the same perch all night side by side, each with its head behind its wing.

"So you have come to get married?" said the pastor, half rising from his chair, and speaking much more severely than the occasion would seem to justify.

Ralph assented, looking a little Bank at the sternness of the good man, and half began to think, as a man is pretty apt to do, that he was doing a very foolish thing. Sybil's pretty face grew crimson, and her eyes dropped, but then she looked as if she thought it all quite natural, and she was content.

Ralph had come to Pennsylvania four years before, and settled in the village of and, of course, became one of the parishioners of my friend. He had been betrothed to Sybil before leaving “fader land," and now that his enterprise and patient labor had met its reward of easy competence, he had sent for Sybil and her widowed mother to share it with him.

"Come to get married!" there was a long pause, and the minister compressed his lips, and cast his eyes onward almost with an expression of scorn. It was unnoted by the inmates of that little room, the simple-hearted women and that brave, loving pair whose hearts were unchanged by time, labor and separation, and soon the good man arose, and with even more than his wonted impressiveness, united two who should from henceforth be eternally one.

Those who have never known deep suffering are slow to detect its indications in others. Aunt Jane knew that her brother had in early life passed through a period of severe mental anguish, but he was now entirely calm, had been so for years, and she never imagined him to be otherwise than perfectly happy. Busied with the little genialities of every-day life, blessed with simple and ordinary desires, undisturbed by those ideal tendencies which so often embitter, at the same time that they ennoble the more imaginative, her life was placid as a heart full of content could make it. She saw fearful lines stamped upon the face of her brother, and supposed that study and the sanctities of religion were making their busy impress-she never dreamed that the sorrow of early life had been seared by the lapse of years into his very soul.

We have said he looked sternly upon the young people who stood before him. He did so, and yet Herman Vortenberg was a kind-hearted, genial man, who regarded the infirmities of others with the eye of true charity, while his own life was a per

the Great Master when he said, "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Marriage to him was a solemn and beautiful mystery, by which was typified that angelic existence in which the two were no longer twain, but one forever and forever in the Paradise of God.

A marriage, to his high and spiritual mind, must be a marriage of hearts; a union of soul with soul; a high and holy communion, by which the faculties of the soul were fully to be developed, its repose secured, and the whole nature with all its manifold attributes brought into harmonious action. He was no dreamer, but a deep spiritual thinker, basing his life upon his insight of the Ideal. The revealments of great truths, brought out by the fervency of prayer, by fidelity to the good, by meek obedience to the indications of all spiritual discernments, all these were combined into great principles of action, earnest and unwavering.

He was now the meek, self-sacrificing apostle of truth, moving in a sphere of limited usefulness, yet content therein, inasmuch as it left him free from the stormier passions of his early youth. To most persons he seemed a man of calm, agreeable temperament, constitutionally incapable of strong emotion of any kind; but a close observer of the human face, or studier of human character, might detect the smouldering ashes of fierce and latent fires, once burning with terrific violence, though now extinct it may be forever.

He was exact, almost stern in the discharge of his parochial duties, discoursing much upon the sanctity of all human affections, the care, the earnestness and devotion with which they should be fostered-the hazard of mistakes, the danger of abuse, and the fearful lethargy induced by worldliness and all ungenial influences. Upon subjects like these a strange eloquence grew upon him, a solemn majesty that went forth infusing itself amid his hearers, like the waving shadow of a great banner, moving to and fro, and giving boldness to the outlines of all things upon which the light falleth.

Herman Vortenberg was now a solitary man, waiting with patient faith for the good yet in store for him, and firmly and resolutely casting aside the shadows which the evils of early experience might rest upon his soul. He had once gathered the household gods about him; once, in the impetuosity of early passion, when the strong physical man is so apt to be misled by the seductions of beauty, it was then that beneath the green tree, like the idolaters of old, he set him up an altar and bowed in worship. Alas! for the highest divinity came not to the feast, and he quenched, even with his heart's blood and the soul's tears, the fires of his altar. Calmly, solemnly did he take it away, and alone in the sanctuary of his own soul bow down to the worship of the good and the true.

He had just left the University, high in honor, and full of that aimless enthusiasm that so often bewilders and disturbs the soul of early genius, as yet unrelieved by action or expression. The seclusion, too, of a student's life, while it afforded no opportunity for the exercise of early emotion, left ample room for the dreams of the imagination, and thus fostered

| the germ as yet dormant. Relieved from the routine of a collegiate life, he was conscious of a wild sense of freedom, an exulting power, a longing for action, a confused and aimless grandeur of existence, equal to all things, but undetermined as to what. He was like the steed of the desert, for awhile a captive, but now rejoicing in freedom, tossing its mane to the winds of heaven, with dilating nostril and spurning hoof "snuffing the battle afar off," and ready for the fierce encounter. Thus the study that had filled him with thought had left him unready for action. Knowledge had become his own, but wisdom was to be the growth of painful experience, of soul-sickening, soul-withering contact and grapple with the hardness of human destiny.

What wonder, then, that the fascinations of Bertha C should fire the brain of the youthful and romantic student? At the time of his departure for the University she was a gay, beautiful girl, abounding in intellect, and holding as by a spell all who approached her. A mere boy, he had regarded her then with a sort of wonder, a something in which he had no concernment, beautiful, but remote. A few years his senior, she scarcely bestowed a glance upon the studious boy, who had never directed a stray regard to her face. In the short vacations he had been equally indifferent. Absorbed in his studies, he heard of her seductions just as he read of those of Helen or Cleopatra, beings who hitherto raised no emotion of sympathy.

The day of his return from the University, a small party were invited to his father's house; Bertha was of the guests. Nothing but ordinary civilities passed between them, and yet, when the youth retired to his pillow, he found the low tones of her voice lingering upon his ear, like a stray chord of music.

For the first time in his life, he felt that the soul had other desires than that for knowledge, other pursuits than that of glory. He tried to arrest this unwonted current of thought, to compose himself to slumber, but in vain. At this moment, the faint notes of a song came to his ear. He listened with a tumultuous thrill. He hardly breathed. He felt as if his soul had suddenly been dissolved, and mingled and became a part of that sweet melody.

Trust it not, the idle story,
Love hath no abiding here-
Bubbles all are fame and glory,
Nothing real but the tear.

Smiles are false, and still deluding,
Hiding withered hearts and seer;
Fleet are they, for sighs intruding
Usher in the coming tear.

The words were sung to a listless air, and so low as to be almost undistinguished, but the melody thrilled the very soul of the young student, while the words were graven upon the memory unconsciously at the time, but to become the material for after years of bitter reflection. He listened till the words died away, and then, overcome by emotion, he stepped out upon the terrace.

The moon was calm and clear, and the night wind, fresh from the sweet south, gave another drop of in

The old vines that draped the building had been suffered to grow almost without pruning, and, in some parts, the terrace was nearly encumbered by their growth. Lifting up these, at an angle of the building, the songster was revealed to him, half reclining upon a low form, her eyes lifted to the moon, and bathed in tears. Obeying the first wild impulse of his heart, Herman rushed forward and knelt at her feet. She moved not, but her lustrous eyes fell slowly to the face of the youth, and their calm light entered his very soul.

"Bertha !"

She smiled faintly; there was more of sadness than of tenderness in that faint smile, and yet it was a blending of both. Who does not know of the fearful power that lurks in the self-possessed gentleness, the half-dreamy tenderness of a beautiful and mature woman, when acting upon the young and inexperienced!

He seized her hand-he covered it with kisses. She did not repel him, and yet the smile died from her lips-a deep sigh escaped her, and she burst into

tears.

The youth sprung to his feet. "Oh, God! I have offended you-you are unhappy, and I have added a new pang, I who would have died to serve you."

She took his hand in hers, and drew him to the seat beside her. Her tears dried away, and there, by that still light, her low, gentle tones of voice blended with the calm night, and "lapped him in Elysium." She spake of the fickleness of human hearts, of the mockery of life, of its weariness, soulsickening vapidoess. It was a new theme to the student, with his fresh and untried nature. It stirred the deep fountains of his sympathy. He looked into her tearful eyes, listened to her low voice, and drunk in a strange and wild bewilderment.

When, at length, she arose to leave him, and her long curls, shading her cheek, revealed yet her pure spiritual brow and deep eyes; the youth seemed to awake to a sense of life and bereavement.

"Go, Herman," she whispered, "forget this night, forget that you have seen me, and may God bless you."

The student slept none that night. A new life had been revealed to him. He wondered at his former existence, so cold and unreal, and hour after hour did he pace his lonely room, thinking of Bertha.

Herman was an only son, the heir to wealth. Bertha had more than a competence. Worldly calculations were unthought of. He lavished upon her the fullness and freshness of a heart whose fountains she only had stirred, and Bertha

As yet, Herman had no plan for life. To live that he might elucidate great truths, that he might be as a city set upon a hill in the highway of goodness, had hitherto been his ideal. Now, why should he not live to impart happiness to a human soul. Why would not the vast destiny of life be accomplished with him by devoting himself to one human being; to foster the true and ennobling, to develop the hidden mysteries of his and her heart; to go out into the beautiful in nature and art, and thus build up the temple of God in their own souls.

Bertha's clear intellect and imaginative character seemed to have acquired a new strength by association with the impassioned youth. Yet that strange calmness, that touching sadness was ever the same. New thought had been elicited, but the foundations of emotion were unmoved. Her lustrous eyes met his with the same look of dreamy tenderness, the faint smile yet played upon her lips, and that selfpossessed gentleness was all unchanged. Yet there, even these, that might have aroused the suspicions of one versed in the hidden language of the heart, wrought with stupendous power upon the unsophisticated student. The elements of her character were unlike his own, but it was the contrast that results in harmony. Her repose was refreshing to him. It supplied what was wanting in his own nature. It was like the dew imparting life and vigor to the plant scorched by the meridian sun.

They were wed. No change grew upon the youth. Bertha's affluence of thought was a never failing source of interest. Her gentle manners, her sweet playfulness of fancy, supplied an unfailing source of delight. Yet, in the midst of all this, a strange yearning grew upon the heart of the youth. A sense of chill even in the presence of his beautiful wife; a void unfilled even by her tenderness.

Prone to metaphysical subtleties, he began to question the nature of his emotions. He believed that perfect human love would result in entire content-in soul-fullness. More than once had Bertha hinted at a former attachment, which he, with mistaken magnanimity, had forborne to listen to, as a subject most painful to herself. He remembered, too, that he had more than once found her in tears, which she instantly suppressed, and met him with a smile such as could dwell on no other lips.

It was now his turn to smile sadly, to meet the gaze of Bertha with an aching tenderness; to feel how awful, even here, are the mysteries and revealments of the soul.

yet its velvet covering and silver clasps betokened the care with which it had been preserved. It had belonged to one of the early reformers, and was re

garded with great reverence by the family. She did not look up when Herman entered, and he thought her lost in pleasant reverie over the interesting relic. When, however, he approached her, he saw her face was bathed in tears, and she was engaged in reading the answer of Jesus to the materialists of those days. Placing her finger upon the text, she raised her eyes slowly to his face, and repeated, in a voice scarcely above a whisper,

"Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?" Herman turned ghastly pale; a cold sweat started upon his brow, he staggered to a seat, and covered his face with his hands.

Bertha shuddered; she knelt down, and laid her head upon his knee, looking upward with that mysterious, sad face, now pale and passionless as marble. At length, she heaved a deep sigh, and fell senseless to the floor.

Herman placed her upon a couch and bathed her cold face, till the sad eyes opened and met his ago. nized expression.

"Oh, Herman, Herman! I have committed a deadly sin, in that I swore, before God, to love and honor you, while my love, aye the deep love of a strong woman's strong nature, had been that of another. I have never dared to call you husband. I have entreated you to call me Bertha, for the name wife has been too holy for me to respond to."

A fierce light grew in the eyes of the wronged man, as he listened to these fearful words. He grasped her wrist convulsively, and looked sternly into her pale face.

"Woman, tell me solemnly, before God, if you felt all this at the time you consented to be mine."

"No, on my soul, dear Herman, I did not even then know the whole extent of my love for anotheranother, with all his worth and manhood, now in his grave;" and she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

"Bertha, you have mocked me; you have perjured your own soul, and plunged me into everlasting misery. You have bound us with cords that death only can sever, while we must from henceforth be as strangers to each other."

A shriek, wild and piercing, burst from the lips of the wretched woman, and she once more relapsed into insensibility. Herman again bathed her brow, unconsciously murmuring, "Oh, God, so beautiful, and yet so wretched-so noble, and yet so weak!"

"Weak, most weak!" responded Bertha, without unclosing her eyes. "But, Herman, even truth must be gradually unfolded to the mind. The blessed Savior recognized the weakness of human understanding when he said, 'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now," and he fulfilled his great mission, leaving these things unsaid. Is not the mystery of marriage one of these things? Is the human mind, even after the lapse of centuries, prepared to receive the true doctrine?"

Again, Herman found himself listening to the eloquence of those sweet lips, content to live upon the honey of words so purely framed, and again he forgot the mysterious sadness and the tranquilness of

manner that revealed a soul whose destiny had been sealed.

"Dear Herman, those truths have been growing upon me; slowly but surely unfolding themselves to my mind. At the time of our contract, I was a solitary being, yearning for sympathy. I would have been content as your friend, your sister, but your vehemence forbade that. I was fearful of losing you altogether. I thought love was a thing to be conquered, to be transferred even." "Bertha-"

"Herman, I must say all now, it is better for both." "Go on, go on."

Again she shuddered, and clasped her hands upon her breast, as if to keep back her emotion.

"I thought, Herman, that old things would pass away, forgetting that material things only perish in the using, while love is indestructible and eternal, growing brighter and brighter unto the perfect day."

"Bertha, you drive me mad. You, who love me not, can talk in this wise, while I, I who have expended my whole soul upon you-" And he paced the room with clenched hands.

Most gently did Bertha exercise her powerful ministry. "No, Herman, yours is not love. It is an intellectual admiration, a content in thought, a gratified imagination, but love is more than this. It is too intangible for definement, yet the soul knoweth its presence by its fullness of content in the beloved. Herman, let me say all. I had not been able to detect its tokens, till I found I would sooner lose you, Herman, than lose the memory even of my buried love."

"Oh, God! oh, God! is this life!" exclaimed the unhappy man.

"It is fearful, Herman, the weakness, not the vice, of our nature that has brought this upon us. I have endured this, dear Herman, and even more." Both were, for a long time, silent.

"Then, this doctrine of the true marriage has been a gradual revealment," said Herman; you did not, could not, understand these things in their present light, and yet consent to take such fearful vows upon yourself:"

"Never, never. Oh, God! Herman, to souls like ours, made to discern the truth, such vows, where the two are not one in spirit, truly and entirely one before God, are a fearful desecration. It is mockery of that holiest of all Divine appointments."

'True, most true." He grasped her arm with a strong grasp, and replied, huskily, "yet we are bound in the light of human institutions-bound till death, death, shall sever the bonds. Bound by human ties, though from henceforth strangers upon earth," and he fell headlong to the floor.

Long and fearful was the malady that followed this terrible explanation. Bertha watched over his couch with sister-like assiduity, preserving her calm gentleness of demeanor, even while others were blanched with fear. Often and often, in the silence of his slumber, did she kneel down and pray that the bitterness of his cup might be assuaged. Often, in the wildness of his delirium, did she respond with some

Was there no strife in the soul of that strong woman, think ye? Had she no need of human sympathy under her load of suffering? Alas! no; she suffered but as she had brought suffering upon others; suffered for the infirmity of her woman-nature, but hers were divine ministrations, comfort from the Beloved, help from God.

Most beautiful grew she in her spiritual loveliness. Worn and stricken as she was, the true soul draped even mortality with angelic garments.

Herman slowly recovered from that long fever, and again listened to the soothing and elevating language of Bertha.

"Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection? Not mine, not mine, Bertha. I can think calmly of it now. But oh, God! the agony I have suffered; surely, surely there is a fearful retribution here! no, not retribution, for mistakes are followed often by more severe and protracted misery than even vice. But then they do their office of discipline to the soul, while sin brandeth thereon a perpetual stain."

"Yes, dear Herman, we must be made perfect through suffering,' and the dismay of darkness causeth us to turn in search of the light." She took his hand, and the tears slowly gathered in her eyes, for she had that to say that was most painful to be

There was one wild gush of agony, and she buried her face in the pillow and sobbed aloud. Herman laid his hand gently upon her head, and thus, in silent and holy communion, each praying that comfort might come to the heart of the other, without the utterance of a single word, was the external bond reverently recognized between them, yet as rever ently spurned by the spirit as no bond of union. Herman pressed his lips to her cold hand, and she arose from her kneeling posture, and imprinted one last kiss upon his brow.

And thus they parted, she to cherish the image of the heavenly; he to wrestle in spirit, to strive as striveth the strong man for the mastery of self-to go out into high and holy pathways searching for evermore for the good promised to the faithful.

Here died out in his soul all the promptings of ambition. Here arose a noble desire to impress worthily some few minds in the great mass of humanity.

Herman traveled many years; he sought the society of the gifted and the learned. Alas! he found a sorrow lurking in every heart. He found that love alone is its own exceeding great reward; but that few, very few, are equal to the gift.

I.

Now tripping forth, the fairy-footed Spring
Awakens bud and bloom, and, liberal, fills
The air with balm, mantling the sunny hills
With living green. The purple martens wing
Their wheeling course, and, twittering sharply, sing
In treble notes a strange and keen delight,
And as they upward soar in airy flight,
Shrill through the sapphire arch their pæans ring.
Oh sweetheart mine! shall I unfold the theme ⚫
Bird, bud and blossom teach our swelling hearts?
Thy tell-tale blush replies! Nor idle deem

Nor slight the lesson Nature thus imparts,
While even Zephyr from his flight above,
Stooping to kiss thy cheek, sighs tenderly of LOVE!

II.

Nay, chide me not that I am jealous, love,
For in my doting fondness I am grown
A very miser of the beauties thrown
Profusely round thee from the gods above:
I'm even jealous of the pliant glove

Embracing oft thy slight and fairy hand,
And of sly Zephyr, with his whisper bland,
Who steals a-wooing from the budding grove
And dallies o'er thy cheek with soft caress,
And of the ray that trembles as it glows
Upon thy fresh lips' rosy loveliness-

For that dear hand I would with mine enclose, And lip and cheek I would were mine alone,

And mine the only heart that thou wouldst wish to own.

III.

Come, dear one, smile consent! Thy fair young brow

Was never arched for stern Denial's frownCould angels glance like April sunbeams down From their high thrones, where burning splendors glow, To this cold sphere, cloud-mantled, far below, As April's suns awake the budding flower And from its sweet cup quaff the dropping shower, Warmed by their breath would young Love's roses glow, From Feeling's flushing cheek they'd kiss the tear, And words of comfort to the worn heart tellAnd art not thou, my life, their sister dear! Then in thy soul let kindred kindness dwellUnfold the wings stretched o'er thy bosom fair And let my wearied spirit nestle there!

IV.

Come, dearest, to my heart. My soul and thine A strange, ethereal, soft attraction feel: Where'er I rove, my thoughts to thee incline, Whate'er my purpose, still to thee I steal; If in the temple to my God I kneel My prayers for pardon blend with prayers for thee; If on my senses slumber sets her seal My dreaming spirit seeks thee, wild and free; If in each other's presence blessed we stand, Nearer and nearer still with smiles we move, Soul melts with soul, as hand is joined in hand, And throb and thrill attest the loadstar LoveBright, burning mystery! unknown to art, But ever gently thus attracting heart to heart.