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MOROSE old bachelor is an unprofitable creature. Creeping along the by-lanes of society, loveless and homeless, insphered in and bounded on all sides by self, bowing down in adoration before mammon alone, and finally sneaking out of a long and lonely life-forgotten, as he was forgetful, of man,—such a being presents, perhaps, the most wretched sight in the whole range of human experiences. He is a mere human vegetable; and, like many hateful weeds which obtrude upon most sacred places, and under the most unfavorable surroundings take root, live and grow-nobody knows how or whyhe becomes a pest in the way of better men. Providence sends him no children, and the devil deigns not to send him any nephews-contrary to the old proverb in such case made and cited.

But a kindly old gentleman, who in heroism has faced the world singly, honoring the memory of a departed dear one by remaining unmarried; who thus sanctifies and hallows an honorable passion of his youth, at the same time making a home, and in it gathering around him the happy faces of kinsfolk, creating joys for them which are not for himself; who toils for man, promoting the growth and spread of goodness and truth, and patiently bides the time which shall restore his cherished treasure in the bright diadem of a brighter realm, among the just made perfect that time which shall join him in eternal bliss to his loved one, in sweet communion with the goodly company that look forever upon the King in his beauty-such a man stands out in the panorama of

human life in shining contrast with the abject mortal sketched in my opening paragraph. He attains to a loveliness, a glory of character, however humble its manifestations, compared with which the dignities of rank, the distinctions of society, sink into vanities indeed.

An eminent example of the latter class was the late Judge M., of Vermont. He was at once the ablest and best man I ever had the good fortune to know or the honor to claim kin to.

"Uncle Rodney," as he loved to be called, was a thorough classical scholar, a shrewd and successful lawyer, a learned, just and fearless judge-in which office he served for nearly thirty years of his toilsome life, finally resigning, to the regret of the whole community. To the bar he was acceptable for his acquirements and wonderful ability, and to the people at large for his integrity. He was often urged to take a seat in the national Senate; but his modesty and aversion to political servility-more or less of which attaches to the purest candidates or to their partisans always led him to decline promptly and decidedly the honor, and to stay on the bench, where he felt that he could be of more use, as he often said. Honors, for their own sake, had no charm for him; this world was the same with or without them-a lonely journey over a dark and rugged pathway. Believing in a charity which fills an empty stomach before it feeds the soul, which clothes a shivering body before it looks after spiritual needs—a charity which relieves the wants of the degraded poor before trying to work spiritual reforms—he was a gener

ous alms-giver, practicing his theories, and often touching the hearts of the vicious and reforming their habits by substantial kindnesses, and not by an empty show of solicitude for their spiritual hunger! Among his friends he was charming in his conversation. He had a rare fund of quaint stories, anecdotes, traditions and legends, from the funny to the most pathetic, which he told as no one else could. He had at times a fine relish for wit and humor, and a keen perception of the ridiculous; and at other times would thrill you through and through with a love tragedy or a ghost story. In person he was tall and handsome, with a pair of glorious eyes, which lit up his face with a beautiful gleam in moments of enthusiasm. In repose his countenance always bore a very sad expression, with the air of sober thought. His entire manner impressed a stranger with an idea of his mental strength and rare gifts. Such, in a few words, was Uncle Rodney; and I shall attempt no further portraiture, for I am well aware how far short I come of describing its noble prototype. Judge M., for many years. -indeed always after his father's death, made his residence at the homestead farm, in a large old-fashioned house on the banks of a lovely river. It stood in one of those cosy and picturesque nooks which Vermont affords, reminding the lover of poesy and nature of the elysian fields of the older poets. It was a fitting home for such a man; and here he gladly retired to rest whenever his official duties permitted. My first and sweetest remembrances are of that spot. My holidays were best enjoyed roaming about that dear old farm, freed from the juvenile toils of the school-room. There I hunted and fished, or rode a lively ambling pony. There I used to bathe, frolicking in the clear waters of the murmuring stream, which spoke in my romantic boyish ears a vari

ous language, and sang in voiceless music a strain which I fear is foreign to me now-silent, or at least unheard, amid the din of busy life. On its banks, under the great elms that edged the intervening meadow, I have lain on the grassy mound through long sunny days, reading the romance of the "Northern Wizard," or drinking in great draughts of enthusiasm from the poetry of Shakespeare, or Milton, or "Rare Ben Jonson," and many another. There I learned to love the classics, and fitted myself for college under the kind and careful tuition of the Judge. And there too-yet but little later-I strayed many an hour "in the gloamin," along the margin of those singing waters, with a blooming, bright-eyed girl-who now, a sedate matron, sits over against my table engaged in the prosaic task of darning stockings! But the loving eyes and answering smile are there still!

But it is not of my own happy and smooth love-making that I propose to speak. It is to tell the story of Uncle Rodney's sorrow, to reveal the sad mystery which ever seemed to becloud him and hang a dark veil over the history of his early life. I am about to tell it for the first time to the children of this generation. Those who knew it at the time were few, and out of respect to the Judge suppressed it, as he was keenly sensitive to any gossip touching himself.

Various were the speculations and conjectures among marriageable ladies, old and young, why Uncle Rodney never married. Many a dashing and ambitious belle, in times long gone, has plotted in vain to interest him; many a demure maiden lady, of unquestionably choice qualifications to become a wife to him, has hinted as much by that language without words or tongue known only to the court of Cupid-but he had no ears to hear nor eyes to see such disinterested intimation; many a blooming young widow,

with just enough sadness clinging to her weeds, and enough womanly tact to sink the levity of the belle without taking on the primness of the spinster, has striven in very desperation to bring about the desired offer of marriage. Many of these were most undoubted prizes in the matrimonial lotterypossessing wit, wealth and beautywho sincerely loved him, and exerted their utmost powers of fascination, only to lose their time, and, I shrewdly suspect, his good opinion with it. By no artifice could he be lured, and none of them ever got a word from him on the subject. He would even leave the room if gossip about the courtings and love-makings in the neighborhood happened to come up for discussion. Indeed, such topics came to be forbidden in his presence. Although he was a most courteous gentleman of the old school, and gallant in every other respect, he never was seen or known to take a young lady's hand, unless, indeed, she was nearly related to him by blood. As I said before, very few ever knew the reason for his strange conduct.

One calm and lovely Sabbath evening in May, some twenty years ago, this good old man was quietly taken on high to the bride for whose sake he had toiled and waited so patiently for more than fifty years. A fit of apoplexy snapped the thread of life, and he sank into his wakeless slumber as a child falls asleep on a mother's bosom. He had but just closed the family evening prayers when he was summoned into the presence of that Maker he had served so well, and whom he had but that moment glorified in an eloquent invocation. My father was his executor, and with his papers he found a manuscript addressed to myself, instructing me to do with it as I saw fit. It was but a meagre memorandum of the incidents I am about to give. He explained to me in a note that he had not the for

"In the latter days of an unusually warm and sunny May, in the year 178–, my senior year was drawing to a close in a New England college. I was to graduate the following August, when I should be a few days more than twentyone years of age, and was then to be married to a beautiful girl, at the house of whose parents I had been residing. An intimacy had sprung up between us which soon became a holy attachment—a deep, abiding affection, ending in a solemn betrothal.

"The many delicious hours of our courtship, the exchange of affection's dearest vows, lie entreasured in my bosom as matters too sacred, too pure, too much like glimpses of higher and holier realms, to allow of any revelation or comment. I pass them over, merely remarking that their memory is so deeply graven on the tablets of my heart, that I could not erase them, even were I disposed so to desecrate all that is best in my nature. On this account, the idea of marriage with any other person has always been repulsive to me- - has always seemed as misplaced and revolting as festivities in a house of mourning; and I have ever turned the thought out of my mind in abhorrence as a treason against that pure spirit who from on high has ruled my earthly destiny, and, I hope, fitted me for better things. God's will be done; but may the hour delay not which will join me to my dear one, by bonds which shall never again' be broken, in that blissful life beyond, whose glory is Love!

"I was engaged to marry Anna Arlington on the twelfth day of Au

gust, 178-, it being the evening of 'Commencement Day.' At the time my story opens, she was at a popular and excellent boarding-school in Connecticut, completing her studies, preparatory to entering upon the grave duties of a wife, according to the accepted routine of those days. I will not attempt to describe her qualities, for I know the value which the world places upon the panegyrics of lovers. To me she was perfection. She was but little more than two years my junior. As her parents and my own were wealthy, and disposed to be generous in providing for us, it was thought best that we should marry as soon as consistent that is, as soon as I was graduated; and to this sensible view we gave a hearty and a grateful assent. Every thing seemed to conspire to render our start in the new relationship propitious, and even brilliant. With what happy impatience we looked forward to that day which was to give us to each other! It fills my heart with conflicting emotions, as I recount again and again the smiting disappointment which crushed the love-light out of my soul, and well-nigh shattered my reason!

"Anna was the belle of a large community; and as she added wealth of beauty to her wealth of purse, and I was her choice out of many suitors (one of whom, poor fellow, took his life in a frenzy of grief), and the more especially as the match gratified the 'old people,' we were naturally the envy of many less favored lovers, whose course of true love was tortuous and rough a perfect whirlpool of vexation and disappointment when compared with ours. Ah! how shortsighted is man! Alas! the veil that is over our vision!

"My father was a patron of letters, and cherished an ambition that his only son should pass a life in study and literary culture. But Man proposes, God disposes,' and poor father's in

dulgent ambition was never to be realized, although I do not believe he ever blamed me for it. One bright Thursday afternoon about five o'clock-to go back again to the beginning-I went to my chamber, after a fatiguing day in the examination room. The ordeal of college examinations was much more rigid and critical in those days than at present. For many years little indulgences, one after another, have added cushions to the vehicles of the college curriculum, so that the brains of pupils take fewer jolts and a much easier ride over the toilsome and rough roads of learning, and the fatigues are less. At any rate, so it strikes my mind as I compare my jour ney with what seems to me to be a mere pleasure excursion through the academic groves, embellished with the taste of our more modern scholars, till it has become, as it were, a landscape garden. In those days, the examination would occupy from five to six weeks of continuous work, for about ten hours daily. The Senior class passed this ordeal in May, to give a better chance to prépare for Commencement, which closes the college year. The mind during that period was kept at the greatest pitch of tension and attention, and we became very much exhausted ere the close of the last week. Thoroughly fatigued in mind and body at the time I have spoken of, I went to my chamber to make ready for the tea-table by a thorough washing, cleansing my hands of chalk and black-wash, and ridding my brain as much as I could of conic sections and the calculus.

"I am thus particular in detail, because it has occurred to me that perhaps this strain of the mental functions may have had something to do with the phenomena I am about to recount, and which I have hundreds of times, without success, endeavored to explain or account for to myself on natural or philosophic principles. The

human mind, in its various modes and conditions, perfect in one sense, and imperfect in another, many times diseased in health and healthy in disease - to use a seeming paradoxis a mysterious agency, operating according to laws which rank among the greatest mysteries of our being. It may be, that somewhat in analogy to the functions of the body, which are wonderfully developed by a course of physical training, the faculties of the mind may be trained and developed in any given direction until they exhibit startling results-and this, too, in the direction of what is sometimes called 'clairvoyance.' Be this as it may, and avoiding a psychological debate, I will resume my narration.

"In order to put the reader in possession of all the facts relating to what I have never doubted was a supernatural occurrence, lying, at all events, beyond the precincts of philosophic exposition, it may be remarked that at the time I speak of I had been for two or three days oppressed in mind by an abiding melancholy such as I had never felt before, and never have suffered since. I carried about in my mind constantly what perhaps every person may have felt at times a wearying presentiment that something dreadful, some crushing, blighting blow was impending over me, and that I was soon to be enshrouded by the dark mantle of affliction. What was to befall me I could not imagine; but, do what I might, I could not rid myself of the persistent conviction. My melancholy took no definite form, and the premonition pointed in no particular direction, I only remember that it did not embrace any anxiety on account of my darling Anna, my bride elect. This might have been owing to the fact that on the previous Saturday I had received a cheerful and affectionate letter from her, the usual weekly communication. She

spoke of herself as perfectly well, and wrote in her own sprightly style; she alluded to her return about the eleventh of July to prepare for our wedding and tour in Europe. For this reason, perhaps, she was not prominent in my dark picture of approaching evil.

"Well, as I have said, on this Thursday evening I went to my chamber to wash my hands and arrange the various matters that go to make up a young gentleman's toilet. My chamber was a large airy one in an old-fashioned farm house, chosen by me in preference to the more finished upper parlors, because of the fine view it afforded. The entrance door was directly opposite a door opening upon a flight of stairs leading to the garret, as we call the attic, in which the family stored the various indispensables to the gen uine New England symposium. At the right hand side of the entrance door was a large fire-place, common in those wood-abounding days—and opposite the fire-place hung my lookingglass. The weather being warm the fire-place had been cleared and cleaned out, and was garnished on either side with a small evergreen tree, and at one side stood my large study chair. I had washed, and was making ready to shave, when, standing up before the glass, I all at once became conscious of a dim, shadowy reflection in it of something behind me in my arm-chair. turned about, and there, sitting in this chair I have described, was an outline, indistinct at first-a kind of visible unseen. I regarded it for a moment intently, when the apparition took the clear, distinct form of my beloved Anna! She sat there, regarding me with such a look of anguish, of despairing entreaty, as is indelible in my memory, though long years have passed away! Her face was very pale; her left hand was clasped about her throat, and I could even discern my engage. ment ring on her finger, while her right

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