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POPULAR TALES.

THE BRIDE FROM THE GRAVE.

A LADY sat and read:

(WITH AN ENGRAVING.]

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"If you were with me to-night, Marien, you would not wonder that I set about this sad work with a calmness that might prove to another than you an entire ignorance, on my part, of the issues that will attend it or result from it. The unutterable beauty of the heaven and earth, as they are glorified now in the clearest and most solemn moonlight, have brought a thought to me; and a spirit is near, and I do not tremble when I know that she sees that thought.

"Fifteen years ago, I loved as the young love, passionately, yet not ignorantly. Cal lore was but a child when she was sent to my father to be educated by him. I have never since seen a creature so beautiful as she was then young as she was, there was an angelic grace in all she said or did, that won sincerest admiration and affection from

those with whom she lived. Knowing, as I did, that this grace was the human utterance of her spirit-beauty; seeing in her, as I did, the gentlest and loveliest of all God's creation, is it a wonder that I learned in our intercourse, boy though I was, to almost adore her? And it was no childish passion; it was a genuine love, strong and enduring, the richest offering of my heart for her. I told Callore of this before she went away from us. I was just entering on the study of my profession then, and a consciousness, prophetic, of ultimate independence, gave strength and force to my words, but such weight they did not need. When I left my happiness to the decision of that young girl, I knew I was not deferring to the fancy of a child; her answer would be that of a true Callore's heart had awakened; it was all as I hoped; it was her first love; she had no wish to conceal it: it was my first; but for you, Marien, my only love, I am proud to declare it!

woman.

"During the twelvemonth that followed, I visited my betrothed but once. Her home was a long distance from the village where I lived; it was not a dangerous or tedious journey, but one that with my small means could not often be afforded. I found Calfore's parents in miserable circumstances; in the past months her father had met with repeated losses, his business was closed, he was beggared. They welcomed me with hearty joy to their fire-side, they promised that she should be mine so soon as I was prepared to provide for our support. The blessed impressions of that visit lasted me long; in after days its very remem

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brance caused me anguish almost insupport- understand how natural this all was, Marien, able.

"When I set out on my homeward journey, the grief of parting was annulled by the ambitious fancies that filled my brain, by the brave and new determinations I took with me from her presence. Some verses of mine which had been recently printed had met with attention, and elicited the approbation of critics. The unhoped-for success had encouraged me to continue these efforts quite frequently, and a stray thought of fame and fortune now and then dazzled my brain. When I parted with Callore, I resolved to make more decided efforts in this way; if they proved successful, I would then use my pen as a means of support, would abandon the design of living by my distasteful profession. My friend herself had encouraged the plan. Unaware of my author ship, she had read my verses, had spoken to me of them, and repeated sentences of them with an enthusiastic admiration that transported me with joy. It was owing chiefly to her instant and proud appreciation that I began first to think really seriously of authorship.

you, who know how divine a thing is love; you, who know how much more precious is the praise springing from the warm, loving, and beloved heart, than that awarded even by the clearest intellect.

"I had my reward; my impatient spirit was put at rest full soon. A letter came, but she did not write it; her approbation was expressed, but in the words of another. They had wronged and deceived me; they had married Callore! Yes, to a man who could afford to reestablish her father's fallen fortunes, to maintain her in splendor! The blow stunned me; by reason of its very heaviness, I could not at first understand, or conceive, or realize it all. I lived as one in a terrific dream, when some undefined horror takes possession of the soul, from which he awakens with an involuntary 'Thank God!' I was in a state of frenzy which, while it admitted the performance of all my usual duties, left me bewildered only to myself. I had no need to question, to disbelieve; positive knowledge left me nothing to hope for: all was before me, from the nothingness that remained after bereavement, to the fame, the glittering but worthless fame that was within my grasping. That was a bereavement indeed, one of which I could not in those days, nor ever, until now, speak to another. I could not bring myself to so profane Callore; I could not endure that others should associate her name even with unworthy thoughts. I knew that she was tried beyond me, that the wrong inflicted on her was greater than

"In a few months to me they went winged with light and promise-I had published a volume of my poems. I was never in my life so happy as when I sent a copy of that work, in manuscript, to her. I thought how she would read the pages; how she would linger fondly over those songs which were addressed to her, by words which had a latent meaning, that would meet her eye alone; how her tears would fall as she closed my work, and thought of what a true dedication it was to her; how she would live, one day at least, in the pages, and in that day have no thought but of me!

"While I listened to the congratulations of others, I impatiently waited for her acknowledgment: the reward for which I most longed was her praise; one sweet word of approval from her lips was worth all else, more grateful than the encouraging words of critics, than my mother's kiss, than my father's honestly expressed satisfaction. You

on me.

"Was not this a thought insupportable, that she had been sacrificed, that she had been sold? It was too much.

"The only prayer I offered in those days was that she might find consolation, that she at least might be at peace: it was the only desire of my heart. As time passed on, and the pressure of the blow was removed, I began to slowly recover from its stunning power; then my sole wish was to look on Callore once more, and so learn from her own lips what I felt she alone could tell. I

had now abandoned my profession; the pride of intellect took full possession of me; for poverty or for riches I cared not at all; I

he had made preparations in his beautiful home for the great ball of the season. I pleaded every imaginable reason for de

was only determined on becoming a master-clining, but he would not admit one, and mind of the age. Even before aware of so I was compelled to comply. my irreparable loss, ambition had begun to greatly strengthen within me; that, as well as love, became a motive and an incentive. The one was a vanity, the other a delusion; what a madman did the two impulses make of me when I knew that Callore was lost to me!

"Three years passed away, then I went to the capital. The determination I had once made of immediately seeking Callore had never been acted on: I had not even once heard of her since that announcement of her marriage was received. But my other resolve was in the meantime carried out. I had established myself among the men of letters.

"I was there, and it almost seemed as though that night had been ordained as a triumph-night to me. I say it without vanity, without a wish to impress you, but merely as a simple fact: the compulsory neglect of my public engagement, my severe sickness and narrow escape from death, with prior reasons, made me an object of the peculiar and most kind attention of lovely women and noble men. It was after midnight, and I was about retiring at a time when the great proportion of the guests were engaged in the dance; just then my host approached me, accompanied by a lady and gentleman, who had requested an introduction. . . . . Shall I go on? That lady was Callore, my Callore! and the old man-was it not enough to make one weep?—that old man, older far than her own father, was Rufus Calcraft, her husband! I could not control my amazement when I gazed upon her face, as the name was announced; my eyes were riveted on hers when I clasped her hands; my voice

"It was with much pride that I accepted an invitation which was made me to lecture in the city where the mighty men of the nation were gathered; and I resolved, before I went to, that, from the position I should there occupy, I would speak to those helmsmen truths which were not often uttered in their hearing. My plan was thwarted: the-it was in her heart when I spoke. We very day after my arrival in the city, I was confined to my room, to my bed, sick and delirious. From that long and dangerous illness I recovered at last, feeble in strength, and doubly wretched; my sickness had been one continued and distressful vision; the sorrows of all the past had fallen upon me anew; I lived them over, I bore them afresh; they were more grievous than at the first; they had lost the novelty, had settled into a dreary consciousness of reality.

"I intended to go quietly from the city as soon as my strength was sufficiently recovered, having entirely given up the idea of lecturing. The day previous to that which I had fixed upon for my departure, a friend, who had devoted himself to me during the weeks of my sickness, was with me, persuading me to appear that evening as his guest; the close of the session was drawing near, and

met, but for this recognition, as strangers; not a word that betrayed our communion of the past was spoken as we conversed together; but there was a language that had meaning which none but us could know. Alas! that it was not a dead language to us! Callore looked much older than she really was, but, beside him, how youthful! and how marvellously beautiful she was! Her sorrow had chosen for itself an expression which none in the wide world save myself could understand. If she had wept much, her eyes had not dimmed with the tears; they were full of an expression I had never seen in them before; but we had never met as now, before: it told me, and that paleness of her cheek told me, as her eyes fixed on me, on him, and on the gems that adorned her person, on the magnificent robe she wore, the story of her bondage, of her slavery; and

in the bitterness of my spirit I could have cursed them who had so wronged her and me!

"Callore had gone much into the world since her marriage-day; I could read that in her manner, in the mingling of exquisite grace and womanly dignity, in her entire self-possession during that oäsis-moment of our interview. The man, her husband, her owner, once expressed a few words relating to the poet before him, meant for compliment: she never strove to echo their senti- | ment; but, as while he spoke my eyes sought hers, I saw her ineffectual efforts to appear calm and indifferent; she mastered her emotion in a moment, and then was passing away with a gentle inclination of the head at parting. It was all.

"I stood spell-bound, watching her as she went; and I felt well assured that as much of anguish had pierced her heart in that interview as was dwelling then in mine. The miserable past was our present again, and the future, shorn of all glory-hues, was as dark, as hopeless, as our blighted youth had been. I did not after this venture to write to Callore; I sent no message: that undefined thought which was not really hope, but merely expectation; that thought which had kept me free from any engagement of a similar nature with other women; that thought which I knew had soothed her while she wore her heavy gilded chain, was dead to each of us. I say us, for I felt and knew it even then, that, as it had been with me, so was it with her. We had been in our early youth as twins with one heart; we could read each other through, even in a moment of casual meeting; though we might be enigmas to the world, it was not possible that we should be such to each other. Though not a word of our past had been spoken in that interview, it was all intelligible for both of us: our years of separation were unsealed with the first look interchanged.

"We did not, after this, meet again. I went immediately from the city to my own home; I could not risk the trial of seeing

VOL. III.

her even once more. I felt that would be a trial more than I could bear. With somewhat of courage, after this, I resumed my labors: my ambition had received a new spur; my work should prove a consolation to her as well as to me; I would immortalize our hopeless love. In this labor I was interrupted; I received a letter, the first and the last, from Rufus Calcraft's wife. I inclose it. Marien, if you would have yet other proofs that you are now all in all to me, how shall I present it? Could I offer proof more conclusive than in laying before you the secret which a broken heart whispered to me?

"Were it not that sentence of speedy death is passed upon me, I would not dare to write to you; I would not do so even in this extremity, could I otherwise depart in peace-in peace, Walter! What a sound have those words for me-do I err in saying. for us? They are like the gush of living: waters, and the shade of palm trees in a desert. That the best happiness of our life. has been wrecked; that we have lived for years as once we had not believed we could live for a day-is it not idle in me, a dying woman, to declare it? That night when we met at last, when he spoke the flattery which must have been hateful to you, I closed my lips; I would have flung myself abjectly before you, but that I had suffered as you had, but that I had been wronged as you. I could not bring myself to say what all the world had said, and so I was silent when. my heart was fullest; by right I should have stood beside you, your own; and while the world uttered its praises, it would then have been mine to whisper of love. Re-. member-(I should not bid you remember,. you, who I know have never forgotten)— think of the days when we were one; think. what it must have cost me to have fettered my lips that night; think how I must have schooled myself to have been able to go, and that calmly, from you, knowing that it was for ever, Walter!

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that priceless volume which has bidden me 'Be patient, for the coming of the Lord. draweth nigh;' that book of your inditing, which reached me on my marriage-day! I laid it in my bosom; I wore it there while my voice was joining in the marriage-service; it was there till it had found, every word, a place in my memory: it has been my only treasure, Walter.

from this letter, which I read with the wildest grief: I must see Callore before she dies; I must hear from her lips such words as she would have spoken to me in her last hours, had she been mine. I must hear her voice once more. And so I went to the town where Calcraft lived. Four days after the 16th, the date of her letter, I stood in the hotel of, at nightfall, asking my host of Rufus Calcraft's lady. He told me that she was dead; that she died on the 17th, and had been buried that very morning of my arrival!

"Again that sudden, strange calmness, which had once before left my brain clear in a moment of bitterest trial, came over me; it was chilling, like the breeze of autumn. I was free to act or think, and bold to do. I rested from my journey, and in an hour-the moon was just rising then-I strolled away to the burial-ground. I had been there before once, long ago, when I made my first and only visit at her home. Callore went with me to the grave-yard then, and both of us stood long-how well I remember that!before the monument which Calcraft had just then placed at the grave of his wife; and while we stood there, she told me the story of the departed woman's life. I was going to Callore's home now; and how can I tell you of my thoughts as I went? I bebelieve, if you had looked into my mind, you

"I have been ill since that night when we met; they have told me to-day that I shall not recover, that I have not long to live; and therefore I write; for, before I go, I would leave with you a memorial, a word that shall prove to you it was not the love of riches, it was not the fear of poverty, it was not the pride of wealth, it was not want of the fondest devotion for you that bound ine to another. I scarcely know how all was brought about; I only know that I listened to the desperate prayer of my father, and married. I am thankful in this hour that I never reproached him' for the advantage that was taken of paternal authority, that I never have reproached him for it; oh! my beloved, I needed not to reproach one who, after that tie was consummated, until he died, never forgave himself. I work no injustice, I do no wrong to my husband in writing thus to you. He and I have lived in entire peace together, have been faithful and forbearing towards each other. I dieve he will sincerely mourn my loss. But I am not his is this hour, Walter; my duties with him are ended; it is in justice to my self, as well as to you, that I write a farewell to you. Death may call me away this night; I do not shrink from the thought that he may find me speaking thus to you. I am conscious that the spirits of the just are round about me; that the eye of Him who has upheld me in the past weary years in His great mercy is upon him; and I know it is no sin to write thus to you, and to say, Heaven bless you, when they are the last words I can say to you-I, who should have been your Callore.'

would have seen in it settled madness, sober despair; but this lasted only while I walked slowly to the burial-place; when I stood in the grave-yard and looked upon her freshlysodded grave, that was close beside the tomb of Rufus Calcraft's first wife-is it needful to tell you how love and grief quickly mastered that calmness? But my tears at last were checked, my sorrow silenced; my grief was awed before a resolute purpose, and I turned away, determined to fulfil it. Late in the night I passed slowly through the town again. There was the brightest moonlight, like this night's, which called back the fresh memory of it. I went by the majestic house where the widower lived, where Cal

“But one wish, one determination resulted lore had lived, where he was sleeping in his

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