cumulate wealth, may be crowned with success: even the longings of love may be gratified; but the visions of the pure in heart can never be realized in this world. Disappointment is the common lot of all who hope to find in this life the realization of those dreams of loveliness and perfection which first enchanted them in the morning of their existence.

In the office of Drusilla's father was a student, the native of a neighboring town, whose name was Grenill: he was just of age, of an active mind, industrious in his habits, and of an understanding perhaps a little superior to the common mass. But a certain fondness for criticism, and an unscrupulous barshness of expression, gained him a reputation for talents, which his real merits did not entitle him to. He was dwarfish and deformed in his person, and in his heart he hated every well-formed man of his acquaintance, although he knew the world too well to let his real feelings be known; but he never allowed an opportunity to pass him for inflicting pain on any one to whom heaven had granted a healthy frame and straight limbs. As not unfrequently happens with men of moderate abilities and feeble bodies, he thought himself endowed with unusual talents as a recompense for his being curtailed of his physical proportions; and the forbearance that was shown to his imbecility, he construed into homage for his genius. He had frequent opportunities of conversing with Drusilla, and her gentle nature pitied his infirmities, and caused her to yield him an attentive ear, even while she inwardly shuddered at his presence. He loved her; and it was not strange that he should, for she was exceedingly beautiful in her person, and a certain plaintive sweetness in her voice would alone have awakened tender feelings, even if she had been wanting in outward loveliness. But the first time she discovered the nature of his feelings toward her, she gave him to understand, in as gentle a manner as she could, that the very sight of him was disagreeable to her. It was enough. He hated her with the hatred of hell; and he swore that her happy days should thenceforth be few.

Time passed on: in a few months Grenill left Mr. Darracott's office, and having been admitted to the bar, he opened one on his own account. He frequently met Drusilla, and always behaved toward her with great respect, but not coldly. The circle of her acquaintances had not increased, and she felt more and more the want of a sympathetic friend, and began to think that the dwarf was not so hideous as he had once appeared to her: his conversation was at times interesting, and his remarks were often amusing from their unlooked for severity; for people can be amused at severe remarks, when they do not happen to be the object of them themselves. But her thoughts were soon directed toward another object, and he appeared to her as disagreeable as ever. During her father's absence on his circuit, she received a letter by mail from one of the neighboring towns. The superscription was in a strange hand, and at first she hesitated to open it. She examined the writing, she held it up to the light, and then tried to find out the nature of its contents without breaking the seal. It was evidently a man's writing, but she could not call to mind a single acquaintance, or relation of the most distant degree, in the town where it was mailed. She locked it up in the

drawer of her work-table, and put the key very resolutely in her reticule, and sat down to think where it could possibly have come from, and from whom. And then she unlocked her drawer again and again, took out the letter and examined it over and over, but she could discover nothing about it to afford her the least clue as to the nature of its contents. Perhaps it was an innate feminine delicacy that forbade her receiving a letter from a stranger, in the absence of her father, that caused her to act thus; or it might have been a feeling akin to a cat's, when she suffers a mouse to almost escape from her clutches, while she knows it is entirely in her power; or of a hungry gormandizer, when he deliberately tucks a napkin under his chin, and performs the idle ceremony of trifling with a few spoonfuls of greasy water, which his host calls soup, before commencing operations upon the fish and turkeys before him. But let the feeling have been what it might, she at last yielded to the great law of nature, and broke open the letter, and read as follows:

'MISS DARRACOTT: Although you will be surprised at the nature of the few lines which this letter contains, yet you alone would be, for you alone can be ignorant of the singular worth which has caused them to be written. I will not offend your delicacy by naming the feeling that has given me boldness to address you in this manner, nor particularize with fond minuteness the time and the manner in which you first became known to me. Let it satisfy you for the present, that I am not ignorant of your exceeding worth; and to know you and not to But I must write no farther. The distance that we live apart, and my occupations, preclude the possibility of my meeting you; and the object of my writing you now, is to solicit the privilege of writing you again. If you grant this favor, I shall be the proudest, the happiest, the most supremely blessed, of living men. If you refuse, why I shall only be sadder, perhaps, than I now am, and you will be still lovely, still charming, and I sincerely hope, happy; and some one else will rejoice in the sunshine of your smiles. If I thought that these lines would give you one uneasy thought, my right hand should lose its cunning, and my heart should break, before I would pen a word. But I trust in your generous nature: if you wish that it should be so, you have but to signify it by any method you choose to adopt, and this will be the last time that you will ever hear from one who would consider himself the most fortunate of men to be allowed the privilege of subscribing himself

'Your Slave,

'JAMES INGLISTON.'

The first impulse with Drusilla, after her astonishment had subsided, was to show the letter to her father, as she was undoubtedly in duty bound to do; and had he been near her at the time she would no doubt have done so; but it was some weeks before he returned, and as she did not show it to him immediately, she began to persuade herself that it would be best to say nothing at all about it, and forget it herself. The probability of her forgetting it was not very great, as she read it five or six times every day; but every time she determined should be the last, and once or twice she had even made an attempt to throw it into the fire. As for the writer of it, although she had never seen him, her contempt for him was unbounded, and she only wanted an opportunity, to let him know, by her cold reserve, how much she disapproved of his unwarrantable boldness. Perhaps if the entire truth was made known, it would appear that Drusilla had indulged herself in drawing fancy portraits of Mr. Ingliston, and that she had once or twice dreamed of him; but as she made no confessions to that effect, it might be an unfair inference. But one thing can be confidently asserted, as it was related by her father to a near friend; on every mail day, which came twice a week, she was

very thoughtful, and manifested a strange mixture of seriousness and levity in her behaviour.

In the course of a few months, it so happened that her father was again called away upon business, and the very first mail that arrived after his departure, another letter was brought to her, directed by the same hand that had written the first. She was fully sensible of the impropriety of receiving it, without her father's knowledge, and she made up her mind without hesitation not to open it until his return, and then not without his permission. But it occurred to her that she would very justly deserve his censures for not showing him the first one; and fear of his displeasure, which she had never yet incurred, led her to determine that it would be best to destroy the letter, and say nothing to him about it; and as she was fully determined to do so, there could be no possible harm in first reading it, merely to see what excuse the man's ingenuity could suggest for his conduct. And so with a bright blush upon her cheek, and a strange beating of her heart, she opened the second letter, and read as follows:

'MY DEAR MISS DARRACOTT-for you are very dear to me, and why should I not so express myself? - I knew that the rules of society, your sense of propriety, and even my own passionless judgment, alike forbid this freedom in a stranger, yet I cannot do otherwise than address you in this manner. You have not forbid my writing you again, and I know not whether you would have me do so or not, but if my letter shall prove disagreeable to you, you have but to burn it and forget me. Would you know the reason of my writing to you? It is easily told: I have seen you and am separated from you; would you know why I love you? I have heard the gentle tones of your voice, and I have heard no music since. I must love you, even though you hate me. Do we love the sun less when its light is obscured by a cloud? No, but we long the more for its cheering beams. I cannot hope for your love, and yet not to hope is to perish. Perhaps your kind nature will allow what your heart may deny, and I may be blessed with one kind word from your own dear hand, granting me only the privilege of addressing you a few lines, to ease my overburdened heart.

'I will not offend you by writing more: I already tremble lest what I have written may give you pain; and yet so joy-giving is the employment, that I can scarcely summon courage to subscribe myself 'Entirely Yours,

'JAMES INGLISTON.'

It would be doing great injustice to Drusilla, if we did not assure the reader, that while she perused this passionate letter, her cheeks, and indeed her neck, and all that was visible of her bosom, were as red as flesh could be. Her eyes sparkled, and her whole frame was in a tremor. Perhaps it will be expected that she destroyed the letter, and dismissed the writer of it from her thoughts; and indeed, we should be glad if we could assure the discreet reader that such was the fact; but truth compels us to make record, that instead of so doing, she folded the letter very carefully, and deposited it in her bosom, from whence she drew it twice before she retired at night, and read it each time as carefully as though she had never read it before.

Do not censure her, gentle lady: remember that she had no companion but her father, and he was absent at the time; remember that her mother died when she was but an infant; that this was the first time that the poison of flattery had ever been poured into her ear; remember that she was but eighteen, but above and beyond all, try to bear in mind how you would have acted yourself, under similar cir

cumstances.

It is by no means certain that Drusilla would ever have enter

tained the thought of making a reply to her unknown admirer; but she chanced one day to hear a visiter of her father's speak in very disrespectful terms of his character, and instead of its awakening suspicion and disgust in her mind, it had the contrary effect of arousing her sympathies in his behalf, and she felt herself bound in honor to espouse the cause of one who had shown himself so warm an admirer of herself. She did not speak out her feelings, but she retired to her chamber and read over again the letters of her slandered admirer; and she was not long in drawing the conclusion that he had been wronged and abused. A few days after, another letter, more passionate and more explicit than either of the others, was brought to her, and after that another. And then she ventured to reply, in as cold, cautious, and discouraging a tone as she could assume. She barely expressed her surprise at the writer's assurance in addressing her, and begged him to desist from persecuting her with his letters, and threatened to expose him to her father, if he should continue to do so. But to this forbidding letter Mr. James Ingliston returned an answer filled with the most extravagant thanks for the great favor conferred upon him, and begging to be repulsed again, even in more decided and haughty terms; he wished himself a worm, that she might tread upon him; and vowed that to be the object of her displeasure, was a greater happiness to him than to be beloved by all the world beside.

It might be entertaining to the gossipping reader to be made acquainted with the contents of all the letters that passed between Drusilla and her admirer, and to trace from its beginning the warm passion which sprung up in her breast, and finally overwhelmed and destroyed her: but the purpose we had in view in writing this little history, will be accomplished by arriving at its catastrophe in a more summary manner.

But

At first the replies that Drusilla made to the letters of her correspondent were timid, short, and but little encouraging; but by degrees they grew warmer, longer, and more unreserved, till at last they equalled her admirer's in their passionate expressions. all this time she kept her secret locked up in her own breast; and although her father noticed a change in her behaviour, he never even suspected the cause. Drusilla had never once seen her lover, and her imagination had invested him with all the graces and excellencies that her heart longed for; and she never once doubted that he possessed them all, beside a thousand which her thoughts could not define; and yet she dreaded, as much as she wished for, the interview which was to dissipate or confirm her fond imaginings.

At last the hour came. Her father was away from home; she received a letter from her lover, urging their marriage, and appointing the next evening for its accomplishment. She was terrified at the preposal, and begged that her father might be advised with first. But her lover would take no denial, and he made it a test of the sincerity of her affection, whether she would yield to his request, or prefer to wait for her father's approval of her choice. The time had passed when she could deliberate or hesitate; there was not even time for a reply to the last letter of her lover. What could she do? She could only sit and weep, and wish that the last year was to be lived over; and

while she reproached herself for not making a confidant of her father in the beginning of her correspondence with her lover, she was every moment yielding to his last request, which would place her for ever beyond the reach of repentance.

While she sat in her chamber, half distracted by her contending inclinations, she heard a carriage stop near the house, and then a smart rap at the door. The maid-servant announced to the trembling Drusilla that a gentleman wished to see her in the parlour. It was nearly dark, and as Drusilla entered with a faltering step, a man rose from the sofa, and taking her hand, pressed it to his lips, and then leading her to a chair, fell upon his knees, and avowed himself her lover. He begged her to accompany him out of the boundary of the state, where they could be married without observing the tedious and formal delays which their own laws required. She hesitated, refused, fainted, and at last consented. And yet she was still a stranger to his person, for the evening was dark, and she could scarcely discern the outline of his figure by the din light in the parlour when she first entered; but she was all confiding, and she knew from his letters what the graces of his mind were, and she believed that those of his person corresponded with them, or perhaps she thought but little of them. She was soon equipped for her journey, for it was to be a short one; and half yielding, half resisting, she suffered herself to be forced into the carriage, and then giving way to her feelings, she fell into the arms of her lover, and fainted.

The next day her dream was at an end. Why could she not have been permitted to slumber a little longer? But it was the blackness of night, and not the bright rays of morning, that broke in upon her sweet visions.

Her husband proposed, immediately after they were married, that they should return to her father's house: but Drusilla refused, until he should be informed by letter of their marriage, and his consent gained to their return and she asked her husband to write to him. He hesitated, but being pressed, he called for pen and ink, aud with evident labor produced the following elegant letter, which he handed to his wife to read:

'ESQUIRE DARRIKOTE, Sir: This is to inform you, that I have been getting married to your dorter Drusilly, which we hope will meat with your aprobation. We love each other, and hope you will aprove the match. I have a good trade, and can suport her hansomly; but for the present it is our wishes to stay in your house until something illidgible turns up in the way of bisness. I am yours to command,

'Is. INGLSTON.'

O, my love!' said Drusilla, half complainingly, how can you trifle with my feelings?' And as she spoke, her eyes filled with tears. Why, I did the best I could,' replied Mr. Ingliston ; ' but I said at first how 't you'd better undertake the job yourself.'

Ah, but my love!' said Drusilla, and she turned very pale as she

spoke, this writing does not resemble your letters to me.'

'Oh, them was written by 'nough sight smarter fellow than I ever was,' replied her husband: 'Squire Grenill, the hump-backed lawyer, he writ all them for me!'