alway. He knew, now, that death was the king of terrors only to those who had rejected the ransom which heavenly love had provided, while it furnished a happy release from the want, and care, and sorrow, of the world; that it was only a dark portal through which entrance was to be had to a brighter and more beautiful world, where sorrow entereth not, neither care nor want, where sin and death are unknown, and happiness endureth for ever. A light hand was laid on Adam's shoulder, and he started from his uneasy slumber. Nature's sun was high in heaven, and the morning mists had disappeared from the sky. Even so the doubts and fears which had clouded his morning meditations, had been dispersed by the light which beamed in the visions of his sleep, and he bowed his head in grateful submission to the behests of Him who had ordered all things in the spirit of infinite wisdom. Eve, her animated face radiant with smiles, was bending lovingly over him. He pressed her fondly to his heart. "When our race is run, dearest," he said, "we shall lie down in the earth, and be separate for a season; but death can not part us; for, shall we not meet, hereafter, in that better land, where parting is unknown, and TIME endeth its span in ETERNITY!” BROOKLYN, N. Y.. June. 1846. THE BEREAVED. BY P. G. B. B. HALLOCK. "Oh, there's a grief, so with the threads of being WHO that has felt the soft tendrils of affection binding his heart to some loved object, has not also felt the pain of bereavement? The bustling cares of life, the engrossing pursuits of the world, its din and its varied scenes, may for a time render us somewhat insensible to the keen sorrows of others. A long train of prosperity may shut out the unwelcome despoiler that rends the heart-strings and eats into the soul; a long course of uninterrupted health, in the midst of our little family group, where for years the motto may have been, "Give physic to the dogs," may make us in a great measure forget that lacerated hearts are bleeding all around us; that the wife is weeping in anguish, alone, and silent, over the ashes of the husband; the father, the mother, the child, is sinking in unutterable grief over the wreck of joys departed and friends gone for ever. But when the "mighty leveller," Death, is sent on his mysterious errand into our own quiet family—when the roseate bloom of health is departing, and in its place comes the lowering, sallow cloud of disease-when the mother is bending over the wasting frame of the beloved child, or the father is fondly clasping to his bosom his dying boy-oh! then the cup of bitterness is drunk to the dregs; "'t is then the survivor dies!" What we are about to relate, it is true, may be classed with the sad and the melancholy; and some may object to our story on this account, or rather to the place which it occupies among the flowers of wit, sparkling genius, and animating themes of the annual "Offering." But as the dark hues in a finished painting help to give effect to the whole, and the humble flowerets aid in giving variety, if not sublimity, to the paradise of the horticulturist, so may our little story perform a similar mission, and reach some chord in the great beating heart of humanity. It has been my lot to see death and its ravages in many, if not in all, of its hideous and multiform aspects. I have seen the tender infant, as it breathed its young life away, like the dissipating, dying odors of the fading rose plucked from its stem. I have seen the youth, in whose bosom hope's fires glowed, cut down as in a moment; and the strong, stalwart man dying in the strength of his years. 1 have seen the mother struggling against the sweeping, desolating tide of grief, and falling a prey to the consuming canker of disconsolate grief. But to see one young, and guileless, and beautiful, going down to the regions of the dead, by a slow but sure and gradual decay, stung to the vitals by the ruthless fangs of sorrow which no medicine can cure, no antidote alleviate, is a sight which comes over the soul "like spectres from the grave to haunt our midnight musings." I became acquainted, sometime since, with a gentleman who had removed from Paris to this country, with two lovely children, a son and daughter. The daughter was the elder, a beautiful girl, not quite sixteen; and if ever a mortal could call for the adoration of idolatry, it would seem that she had all the charms to excite such worship. The bright and glossy locks that adorned her brow seemed like the fairest bouquet gathered from the first spring flowers; her form, and deportment, and appearance, seemed almost a paragon for one who would describe the perfection of human loveliness. Nor was this the only or the best of her accomplishments. Her mind had been well cultivated, and stored with knowledge fully equal to maidens of her age. The brother was a lovely boy, and with all his artless and undisguised demeanor, one might spontaneously cry out, on beholding him, without any pretensions to prophecy, that he would one day make a great man. That which endeared them both to me more than anything else, was the love they bore each other. They seemed only to be the happiest when they were together, and they lived in the sunny smile of each other's own pure affection. It was a happy family, and hours of pleasure have I spent amid that little group, in which was "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." But the angel of desolation was brooding over this lovely circle; "the grim tyrant," whom neither tears nor love can soften, came the mother died! It would be a vain attempt for me to describe the agony of the heart-stricken ones that mourned this irreparable loss. The husband and father, however, in addition to that balm which the poet ascribes to Time, when he says, "the strong hours conquer the anguish of the heart," had a hope "full of immortality," and he submitted with Christian resignation, that mingled its holy incense in the cup of bitterness and wo. He looked upward through tears hallowed by the consoling thought that the friend whom he had loved had exchanged this poor earth for the company of angels, and that they should meet again and be reunited with chords of love never to be severed or broken by death. The beautiful girl and lovely boy were grieved, sad, and deeply affected; but who does not know that in childhood and youth the deepest sorrow may soon be succeeded by returning joy? With the young, alternate clouds and sunshine, the tempest and the calm, are common. Their griefs are but as the vapors that lie on the peaceful lake till the sun dispels them, or as the dews that loiter on the "king of birds" till he cuts his upward |