bring myself to a right conclusion, so had I still more to make her consent to our immediate union; for with the usual consistency of a human being, I, who the day before did not believe I would marry her at all, now declared that my prosperity depended on this last proposition. My determination being taken, I had resolved at once that they could not too soon, for my pride, quit their present mode of life, and I well knew it could not be done in any other way.

you

All my plans of life were now changed; or rather it became necessary for me to have a plan, and not to dream any more. And first I wrote to my mother a full account of what I had done, and received for reply: My son, be always honorable, just and generous, and will be always right.' Also came a letter from my brother, saying: Dear Fred., I understand you are about to be married to a very worthy girl, a bricklayer's daughter. (I had, in my account to the family, substituted the father's occupation for the mother's.) I hope you will prove yourself worthy of her. Moreover, I intend that this, my reply to your letter, shall gain me a considerable number of votes, and beg you will speak of it accordingly; it will not interfere with your own capital. I believe you are a cunning fellow, and I have a great mind to envy you your luck. Had my father been a woodsawyer, or my mother a washerwoman, or myself a blacksmith, I believe I could have won my last election. Yours, Frank.' Thus was the first great bug-bear of my imagination, what would my family say, answered. As for the world in general, they did not send in their opinions in writing.

My next business was to hire an office in P—, and look me out a respectable house, both of which I furnished as well as the means at my disposal would permit, feeling all the while as if I had renounced the world, which means that I believed the world would certainly re

nounce me.

And Louisa and I were married. After which I had insisted that my mother-in-law should no longer work for the public. No, Lou.,' said I, 'if I cannot make out to maintain you all, you must be content to starve with me.' 'Nobody will know it,' urged the old woman. But I insisted strenuously that no such idea should be for an instant entertained; and making it a matter of personal favor to myself, my wishes were acceded to. I hired a carriage to take us all, after the wedding, to our new home; whereupon Mrs. G. and Tom. were of opinion that Louisa's castle of fancy had come down to her, so great was their sense of elevation. It was now their turn to talk, while Louisa and I were silent. For us, although no pomp of circumstance attended our simple wedding, there was deep and heartfelt happiness. I had acted rightly and honorably, in my own estimation, (oh, the blessing of a clear conscience!) and I was married to a woman whom I felt that I loved as I never could have loved again any other upon earth. No, not although I had found another as beautiful and as talented, which was scarcely to be looked for, with wealth and friends, and all to boast, another would not have been the same; another would not have been my first love. And with these reflections there came a sense of manliness and independence, which actually seemed to expand my

frame, and made me feel more like a man than ever I had felt before in my life. If there rested a shadow of anxiety upon my feelings, it was a fear that I might not have success in my business, and that what I had said in my haste would even prove a prophecy, and they would have to starve with me. How little I knew the world indeed!

I was earnestly attentive to my business. I associated with men of business, and to business alone I applied myself. My home was the abode of neatness and cheerfulness. What bright smiles ever greeted me there! What devoted hearts sought my comfort! I was a happy man. My business increased; and when at the end of a year I settled up my accounts, I found that so far from being in debt my income had exceeded my expenses. As for my clothes, one of the blessings of the Israelites seemed suddenly to befall some of them; my shirts did not wax old, nor my stockings wear out, for the garments, which were always mended, seemed never to wear out. How white was the linen washed by such careful hands! How sweet, how healthful the viands, where affection plead for economy, and economy was influenced by affection! In every part of my domestic establishment did devoted love show its superiority to careless wealth. How could I do otherwise than grow rich, with my interests so carefully attended to? My acquaintances thought it worth their while to notice my wife. My constituents boasted of my independence; and not without reason, for my eyes were opened to the real independence of an American citizen; to the nobility of birth, indeed the born of noble hearts; not of wealthy manors, not of lordly titles! My mother-in-law has become reconciled to her black silk and cap; and the kind-hearted, clever old soul, has nursed me through so many bad colds, and helped me through so many trifling dilemmas, that I have come to think her cheerful face and sound sense quite as valuable as a fashionable air. Tom has gone to college, and Louisa rides in her carriage, holding as distinguished a position as wealth and real merit can bestow. As adversity did not sour their tempers, so neither has prosperity hardened their hearts. That religion which was the support of the former caused the latter to overflow with good deeds, which are all the more judiciously planned and executed from the experience of privation and the practical knowledge of the ways and means of the poor. They have not thought it necessary to forget the friends and acquaintances of their obscurity; and their universal affability, and particular good opinion of myself, has added its quantum to my present popularity, so that, for my especial benefit, I do not know where I could have found a more influential family. And I myself have the comfortable reflection, that I neither courted the rich nor ill-treated the poor to win my present prosperity.

EPIGRAM.

EUPEPTIC ALCOTT, furious against meat,
Says men assimilate to what they eat;

Mutton makes sheepish, pork turns souls to swine,

And so should we on vegetables dine:

Granted: Ye gods! on what's this ALCOTT fed?'

On greens, potatoes small, and coarse bran-bread!

A FEW Sundays ago, while strolling in one of the suburbs of the city, I entered an old Catholic burying-ground, in the neighborhood of which I used to live, and within the precincts of which I had spent many an hour. Inside of the enclosure is a small church, which then was occupied by a regular congregation, but now is used only as a chapel for the burial-service for the dead. From a distance the spot has a neat and romantic appearance, being situated on a green slope, with its little chapel of brick nearly hidden from view by a cluster of fine old trees, whose dark foliage throws a sombre hue over the scene, in unison with the purpose to which the place is consecrated. A closer inspection, however, will disappoint one, for signs of slovenliness and the grossest neglect are every where seen, and the visitor cannot help contrasting it unfavorably with the Protestant cemeteries in the neighborhood, where wealth and taste have been lavished until they have become literally gardens and pleasure-grounds for the living, as well as burial-places for the dead. Indeed, the condition of too many of our Catholic burying-grounds reflects no little discredit on those who are responsible for it. This, however, I am fully persuaded, is not chargeable to the people. They, the children of Exile and Poverty, have done what they could, as the numerous monuments, some of them tasteful and highly ornamental, sufficiently testify. The fault lies rather in the authorities of the church, who from the sale of burial privileges draw a lucrative revenue, no part of which is expended, as it should be, to keep the grounds in repair. Consequently, in quite too many instances, the 'consecrated ground' in our country is but a naked,

dreary enclosure, without tree or shrub to hide its ghastliness; with grave-stones broken and prostrate, dilapidated walls, and a sickening stench; in fact, a place altogether repulsive in its appearance, and too often a downright nuisance to the neighborhood.

And yet no people perhaps excel the Irish in their affectionate remembrance of the dead. This sentiment is a national trait in their character; and there are few families among them in our community, however poor they may be, that cannot point to the monument, either of granite or marble, or the humbler one of slate or wood, beneath which sleeps the dust of some of their kindred. The enclosure of which I have spoken is wholly blocked up with these memorials; and there is hardly one of them which has not connected with its history some tale of touching self-denial in the survivors who erected it; of privations and toil undergone for weeks and months, and sometimes years, while scraping together the means to pay for it.

At the bottom of this little field, in one corner, is a tall granite obelisk, the loftiest and costliest in the yard. Since I last saw it, however, it has been somewhat disfigured by a trellis which has been raised against it—the suggestion of affectionate remembrance rather than of taste-over which an evergreen has climbed to the very top. This stone marks the spot where sleeps a mother and her son. The former, who was a widow with only this one child, died first; and the boy, then but eighteen, and an apprentice to a stone-cutter, immediately on the burial of his mother formed the resolution of erecting a monument to her memory that should mark out her grave above all others. He was but an apprentice, as already stated, with scarcely the means to keep himself in food and decently clad; but, under the impulse of that beautiful sentiment to which I have already alluded as a national trait, he set himself to the pious task with a resolute will, and pursued it with indomitable perseverance. His evenings and holidays were all devoted to this one object, and the hours of sleep often entrenched upon; and yet nearly two years were consumed before he approached the termination of his task. He reached it at last. The tall obelisk stood in his master's yard, and the marble block inserted in it was already inscribed with the name and virtues of the deceased, and his own filial remembrance of them, when Death laid his hand also upon the sculptor. In less than a fortnight from the time when he put the last chisel-touch to his labor of love, he was himself borne to the grave, and his cold form laid side by side with that of his mother; and another name was added, and other hands than his lifted the monument of his toil and affection over the remains of both parent and child.

She

A short distance from this obelisk, a little to the right, is a spot to me of peculiar interest. It is the grave of a young woman who, as the simple stone cross at the head tells us, was from the county of Wexford, Ireland, and who was buried in the twentieth year of her age. had been in this country but a few months when she died; and, as I learned from one who knew her, if she had lived but four weeks longer she would have been married to a young man to whom she was betrothed long before in their native land. With what singleness of heart he had loved her was told in the affectionate care he bestowed