a long time, and left a lamp burning on the toilet when she stole forth to ponder in the garden--it shone like a star through the masses of foliage that crept around the gable, and lighted up the lonesome but luxuriant

scene.

A man stood beneath the ash trees, with folded arms, gazing upon the light. He would have fled when Isabel glided beneath the boughs, but she had seen him, and, with a faint cry, turned to retrace her steps--for she knew that it was Oram, though his person was in darkness-but surprise, terror and joy chained her limbs, and she had no power to move, though he had taken her hand and was speaking to her in that old familiar voice

"There is no reason why you should be terrified," he said. "I have just come up from the city, and, knowing that you have been ill, it was natural that I should be here. You have renounced my love, but there are times when memory of the past is strong within me and will not be resisted."

"Are you also unhappy?" said Isabel, in a low voice. "I thought that to love and be loved was the great joy-the one thing without which the heart pines to death."

Oram shook his head-"Oh Isabel!" he exclaimed, with sudden passion; "Why did you cast me from you? Why fling me out upon the world to crush my sorrows as I might in the whirl of society? Why teach me how precious the love of a noble heart may be, and then in one moment deprive me of that which had become my life? What had I done that you could thus proudly fling such love as mine to the wind?"

"What had you done?" repeated Isabel. "Did you not love another-did you not wish to break the bonds that had grown irksome?"

66

"God forgive me this joy," exclaimed Isabel, and covering her face with both hands she burst into a passion of tears.

'Isabel-Isabel, what does this mean?"

"Do not tempt me-oh do not urge me now, I am not myself-I am very, very weak-no, no, I can say nothing, she is your wife. God help me, God help us both!" And with these wild words the poor girl rushed forward toward the house, as if fleeing from an enemy; and so she was, poor thing, for the temptations of our own erring natures are the worst of enemies.

Two years went by, and Isabel George stood once more beneath the roof of her former lover. Oh! it was a gloomy contrast to the wedding visit. Gloomy, but not so painful to the poor girl who trod those sumptuous rooms like a troubled spirit. No graceful compliments or careless greeting met her ear then. A mournful twilight slept everywhere amid the magnificent furniture. The tall windows were muffled, and the servants glided noiselessly over the thick carpets, speaking to each other in suppressed whispersas even the coarsest natures will speak when death is

very near.

Slowly, and with a troubled step, Isabel mounted the stairs. Her heart beat heavily and her limbs shook; but her face, though white, was very calm. He was dying and had sent for her. Every step brought her nearer to his death-chamber-still her face was calm, as I have said, for years of stern self-control had given to that feeble being a strength which nerves the spirit for Heaven.

"Is she not come?" murmured the sick man, turning his head feebly on the pillow. "Is she not come?"

He turned his eyes languidly to the place where his wife had been standing, and there in her stead was No, Isabel, I did not love another. The bonds Isabel George, pale and breathless, gazing upon him; that had become irksome! Girl-girl! they were a smile-one of those beautiful, mournful smiles that woven round my heart like threads of gold. Thank sometimes light the faces of the dying-broke over God, I can never suffer as I suffered that night when his lips; he made an effort to reach forth his hand, you told me that you were changed. Oh, Isabel, how but it only moved on the snowy counterpane, and I did love you!" though hers shook like an aspen, she grasped the cold "And you did not love Elsie Ware, then?" said fingers and raised them to her lips-and now a change Isabel, almost wildly. came over her she was but a woman, and her heart

"No, not then!" replied Oram, in a suppressed broke loose in tears. voice.

"Isabel, my poor Isabel, we have both suffered,"

"And you never told her-" she checked herself murmured the dying man. you never told any one so?"

"I was alone-cast forth to seek happiness where I might. You were unjust, cruel to me--I wished to avenge myself on your pride. I wished-in short, I was wretched, excited and resolute to fling off the unhappiness which was torturing me-Elsie was thrown much in my society; to me she was always gentle, kind, and full of sympathy for my sufferings-I saw that she was attached to me, and married her."

"But do you love her?" How wild, how full of anxious and thrilling doubt was the face of Isabel George as she asked this question.

She answered him only with her tears.

"And now," he added, with more strength than seemed possible in one so completely exhausted with disease, "now when I am dying you will not refuse to tell me that which I have pleaded to learn so often in vain. Why was it, and who was the person that induced you to cast me from you?"

A quick, gasping sob broke from one of the muffled windows where Elsie had withdrawn at the approach of her friend; she sprung forward with an impetuosity that sent the damask curtains floating into the room and flooded her figure with sudden light. There she stood between the window and the bed, in her loose and neglected morning dress, with her trembling

"Do not ask me," said Oram, with sad dignity, hands clasped before her, looking pleadingly at Isabel, "am I not here?"

abject and supplicating like a criminal before its

RUTH.

BY MRS. LYDIA J. PIERSON.

MODERN ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

OR NATURE AGAINST EDUCATION.

BY F. E. F., AUTHOR OF "A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE," "PRIZE STORIES," ETC.

Had she been but a daughter of mine

I'd have taught her to hem and to sew;

But her mother, a charming woman,

Could not attend to such trifles, you know. Song-Charming Woman.

as I bid you."

"WHY on earth, Cornelia, do you persist in having | imperiously, seeing the child about to speak, that child taught music?" said Mr. Langtree to his sister; "she has not a particle of talent for it, and hates it to boot."

"I never saw a child yet that was fond of practicing," replied Mrs. Robinson, coldly. "Upon the same principle, that she does not like it,' I suppose, I am to give up arithmetic and grammar with music." "Not at all. They are necessary, and, beside, require no peculiar talent to acquire," answered Mr. Langtree. "If Fanny had any ear, I would not say a word in opposition to your present system. But here she has been practicing an hour, and has certainly struck two false notes to one true. It is enough to put one's teeth on edge to hear her," continued Mr. Langtree, whose nice musical sense had undergone torture during the aforesaid hour.

“What are false notes, uncle?” said the little girl, quitting the piano as she heard the last words of the above dialogue. "My teacher scolds me so about them, and I sing as well as I can-I am sure I do not know what he meant."

"Come to the piano, and let me see if I can show you," said Mr. Langtree, good-humoredly, and, running his fingers over the keys, hummed a few bars first correctly and then incorrectly, pointing out the difference to the child, who shook her little head as she answered to his

"Don't you see it now?"

"I see it, but I don't hear it."

"but do

Tears started from the little girl's eyes as she obeyed in silence.

"Poor Fan!" said her uncle, as the door closed upon her. "I am sorry my interference has procured her this punishment, which she certainly does not merit, and, moreover, the nature of which I do not like. You are making her already attach most undue importance to her meals, which will end in her being a perfect little epicure."

Mrs. Robinson colored as she answered,

"She is punished for willfulness and inattention. I do not see what your interference has to do with the matter."

"I do, if you do not," replied her brother, coolly. "You are angry with me because I said Fanny had no talent, and that your system of education is wrong; but, as you cannot make me go without my dessert for saying so, therefore poor Fan must pay the penalty. It is just what I have always said, that nine times out of ten, when a child is punished, it is the parent, and not the child, who deserves it."

Mrs. Robinson felt herself too angry to reply immediately to this, and after a few minutes' silence she only said,

"I know you have very peculiar notions, as most old bachelors have. According to your views, I should let Fanny grow up without any education at all."

"No," he replied; "but you should consult nature

"I don't know what you mean by seeing and not in the undertaking, and not darken the brightest and hearing, Fanny," said Mr. Langtree.

"Ah, well," said her uncle, quitting the instrument, ' you are tired and stupid now, may be you will comprehend better another time."

"No," said Mrs. Robinson, approaching them and fixing a severe look upon her daughter; "Fanny is not stupid, but she is naughty; it is nothing but will fulness and laziness, and I'll cure her of both," she added with emphasis. "You have practiced very ill, miss, and, as I told you, you shall not go out to-day, nor have any dessert after dinner, and now go and prepare your French lesson-not a word," she added

freshest period of her existence by forcing her to learn what it is not in her nature to acquire."

"Consult nature!" repeated his sister, contemptuously. "What's a child's nature?-to play with a doll and eat sugar-plums; and am I, forsooth, to let her play with dolls and eat sugar-plums for the rest of her days?"

"No," he replied, "but you are not to make her shed unnecessary tears, for which the future may have no compensation. God only knows what bitter drops she may be called upon to weep hereafter, and, were she a daughter of mine, I would secure sunshine and happiness for her childhood, the only portion of life that is within a parent's control, and for the happiness of which he is responsible."

"A very pretty simile, which suits those who are careless about causing them," pursued Mr. Langtree; "the thorn upon the rose would be more accurate― tiny but sharp. That childhood's sorrows are evanescent is one of God's providences, for if they were as lasting as they are keen, the earliest years of our lives would be wretched indeed. Let any one look back to their own youth, and, if they have any memory at all, they will remember some of the bitterest griefs they have ever known. If I had children I would certainly study their young hearts and consult their natures more than I think is generally done."

"Pshaw," said Mrs. Robinson, impatiently, "you | yet found on earth. Wo to the child whose future is do attach so much importance to a child's tears. Fan's expected to do so much! The different hours were are dried ere now, I'll answer for it; the dew-drop on only marked by different studies, and play and relaxathe rose is not more evanescent." tion would have been left altogether out of the scheme, had not Mr. Langtree kindly hinted at the bright eyes and glowing tints to be acquired through them alone. Mr. Langtree saw that all these expectations were probably doomed to disappointment, for his little niece was as like what her father had been, as he recollected him a boy at school, as it was possible to imagine, and certainly never were husband and wife more unlike than Mr. and Mrs. Robinson proved to be. He had been a plain, kind-hearted, honest man, as obtuse and good-humored as his wife was restless and ambitious. They had jogged on together a few years at opposite ends of the chain, which galled her but never troubled him, as he might rather be compared to the anchor of which she was the buoy, the cable of which being suddenly snapped asunder she would have sailed down the stream of time, uncontrolled and unhampered, had she not been arrested by the strong hand of poverty. Small means are great soberers. Mrs. Robinson found herself compelled to cut her pattern to her cloth, that is, live quietly and in comparative obscurity. She had formerly fumed at her husband, but there was no use in chafing now against circumstances. She had only to submit. Her brother resided with her, and for the sake of his income she was compelled to put up with his advice, which, luckily for Fanny, always came to the side of good sense and humanity.

"I wish to Heaven you had, and half a dozen of them," thought Mrs. Robinson, "and then you would soon be cured of these fine notions;" but she only said aloud, "Then I am to dismiss Fanny's masters, and let her run wild by way of securing her this 'sunshine' you talk of."

"You are not to cram her with what she never can digest; force accomplishments upon her for which she has no talent, nor, above all, punish her for having no ear."

"She has ear enough," said Mrs. Robinson, haughtily, "if she only chooses to open them. Perseverance and application are all that are needed to make children learn any thing you choose to teach them."

"Then you recognize no original difference in capacities nor peculiar gifts of nature?" remarked Mr. Langtree.

'Certainly I do," replied his sister; "but they are rare-genius of the highest grade, for instance, like beauty. Fanny is no beauty, and I do not expect to make her one; that is a direct gift from Heaven, but," added she, with an expression of the utmost determination, "I can make her accomplished and I will." "In spite of nature and thanks to no one," said Mr. Langtree, laughing. "Well, we will see who will conquer."

Mrs. Robinson was a widow with an only child, the little Fanny, whose education has already been discussed so much at large, and whose career she was resolved should realize the visions that had been disappointed in her own. Like most persons, she determined that all the defects of her own education should be remedied in that of her child. She was not accomplished, therefore Fanny should be, and she had married poor, but so should not Fanny. With a craving vanity and restless ambition, that nothing had yet satisfied, she attributed all the mortifications she had met with to want of early culture, and believed that she could have sung like a Malibran and talked like a Corinna if her mother had only pursued the system she intended for Fanny, and that had not her parents yielded to her foolish fancy for the first young man that had addressed her, she might now have been at the head of some brilliant establishment where she would have had that distinction her heart panted for. In short, Fanny's belleship and Fanny's marriage were to be that "balm of Gilead" which she had not

66

Why, you monkey," said Mr. Langtree, laughing, to call such music noise.' No matter, if you don't want to go, you shant. If there is any thing else you would like to have you had better speak quick, for I am in good humor now."

"Oh," said the child, throwing her arms round his neck, "yes, there is the prettiest pattern for working in worsteds at Peses'. It is a little dog with long ears and something in his mouth, I don't know what exactly," (it would have puzzled older people to determine) and on Fanny went in her description, getting quite excited with the recollection, when suddenly she stopped, and her countenance changed as she said sorrowfully, "but I suppose mamma would not let me work it if you were to give it to me." "Why not?" inquired her uncle.

Because," she said, turning her earnest young face toward him, "she never lets me sew. She says it makes me stoop, and besides is a loss of time. Oh," continued she, with animation, "how I mean to sew when I have got through with learning every thing." Mr. Langtree only laughed and said,

"Well, I am glad you have decided against the opera, for it is beginning to rain."

"Is it?" said Fanny in an accent of disappointment,

oh, I am so sorry! Now I shall not be able to go | he made his bow, some one happened to be speaking to Sunday-school to-morrow."

Then," said Mrs. Robinson playfully, but really "Mother always wants me to look better than I vexed that Fanny would, as usual, persist in telling can, and there is no use in that, is there?"