suffering, perhaps at a look of sympathy, burst all barriers ;-he hoped I would forget it.

The conversation then took a general turn. Colonel G, as well as ourselves, had visited Italy; and the discussion between him and

***, on various works of art, (her opinions are always her own, and not derived from any authority or reputation,) was animated. On many points they agreed; on some widely differed; but agreeing or not, every subject was converted to enjoyment by intelligence and sympathy. It is curious to see, how rapidly acquaintance ripens with people of congenial spirit who meet as travellers far from their home. All barriers are thrown down-all conventionalities forgotten; and we become almost as wise as little children in this

matter.

The evening was wearing away: it was nearly ten o'clock, when our landlady burst into the room, and addressing Colonel G―, said: "If you are a doctor, as they tell me, for the love of God, follow me!"

"I am no doctor," replied the colonel; "but what is the matter?"

"Oh! there is a mother and her only child; and the child dying; and the mother going out of

her senses!"

"Is there no doctor nor medicine in your village?"

"Not a dust of it. The doctor is at Interlaken, and the key turned on the medicine."

“I am no physician," said the colonel, turning to me; "but my profession has made it my duty

often to look after the sick; and I never travel without a small medicine-chest. If you will be kind enough to ascertain if I can be of any service, I shall be most happy."

I followed our hostess, who, without any ceremony, conducted me up stairs and into the distressed mother's room. Ceremony would, indeed,

have been out of place. There, writhing on a bed, lay a little girl of five or six; she was not in convulsions: they would have mercifully relieved her consciousness. Never did I witness more mortal agony. The mother was wringing her hands, kissing the child, rubbing her; and exclaiming, "My God! my God! can no help be found?"

I ordered a hot bath and fomentations; and begged our hostess to bring the doctor immediately in; hoping, by giving colonel G― this title, to give some comfort to the poor mother.

"Oh! Claire, my child, you will soon be better," she cried; and then burying her head on the pillow, she sobbed frantically, "my all!-my all!"

Colonel Gentered, and instantly became as white as marble. He stood for a moment as if transfixed; then beckoning to me, he left the room: I followed him.

"These are my wife and child," he said; "what is to be done ?-what can I do?"

I believe I was inspired by the exigency of the case, to give prudent counsel.

"Act," I said, "as if they were not your wife and child; the little girl must be relieved at once, if at all; her mother is evidently incapable of doing or suggesting anything. You must use all the resources you have; you must be calm and selfpossessed.

All this

"I will-God help me! I will," he said; and we both returned to the bed-side of the child. Fortunately, the mother was so completely absorbed, her eye so riveted to the child, that she never once looked at the supposed doctor. He administered a powerful opiate. The warm bath was brought; and after getting considerable relief from that, we applied the fomentations. time Colonel G- was perfectly calm; and except from his frightful paleness, and a slight tremulousness that pervaded his frame, one would not have suspected anything unusual. He spoke in a whisper, and only to me. I think it was not more than half an hour, though it seemed much longer, when the remedies began to take effect; and in a short time, the little girl's limbs became relaxed and quiet; and a sweet tranquillity was diffused over her beautiful features.

"Oh, dear mamma!" she said, "I am so much better! I am almost well! what a good doctor!"

The mother, now for the first time, lifted her

eyes to the good doctor. The blood rushed to her cheek, and then utterly forsook it. She attempt

ed to speak; but the words died on her lips, and she fainted.

In this exigency, Colonel G- did, indeed, use all his faculties admirably. The little girl screamed he first quieted her; telling her, her mother would be well again directly; that she had been frightened with her suffering, and she was very tired; and if she wished to have her well, she

must keep quite quiet herself. "This lady," he said, "will stay with you, while I lay your mother on a sofa in the next room; and give her some

thing that will make her well again very soon."

He took the mother in his arms, and carried her into the adjoining parlor. The little girl, with the ready confidence of childhood, took my hand; and turning her cheek to it, said: "He is a good doctor;" and adding twice or thrice drowsily" poor mamma!--dear mamma!" The opiate took effect; and she fell into a sweet sleep. I soon was informed by the stir in the next room, that the lady had revived. I heard voices softened by tears; then calmer, more assured tones; and after a while, Colonel G-came into the room. His face was radiant. He gently, and again and again, kissed his child; thanked me with a fervor beyond all measure; saying, that

he was the happiest man living; and that he would explain everything to me in the morning. He asked me if I would pass the night beside the little girl, as his wife was in such a condition of alternate nervous excitement and exhaustion, that he dared not leave her, or permit her to resume her part beside her child.

Of course I am most happy to do him this small service. So having bid the girls good night; and having abstained from exciting their curiosity, and abating their night's sleep, by any allusion to the extraordinary developments in this apartment, I have put on my dressing-gown, and have sat down to my journal to record circumstances that have murdered my sleep for this night. The morning came in its due course; but, alas! no sun, and "no hope of the Wengern Alp!" as I heard Héry say, in reply to the eager enquiries of the young ladies, when he tapped at their door. We have an appointment to keep-we must go down to Grindelwald to day.

"To Grindelwald, by the high-road!" exclaims *; I had rather pass the Wengern Alp blind-fold than not pass it."

"As well blind-fold, Mademoiselle," replies Héry, “as while the Mittag-horn, the Breit-horn and Gross-horn, are all themselves blind-folded with clouds."

"But what has become of the colonel," asked *; and thought I, “Is he so taken up with his patients that he has forgotten us.”

I confess, I was very unwilling to go off, without knowing more of his story; but I did not choose to press on the confidence which he might have reasons for withholding; or at any rate, choose to withhold. He had early sent a message to me, to say, that the mother was much refreshed, and would resume her place by the child. Our carriage was ordered-was at the door; and nothing from the colonel; and I was just writing him a civil farewell-note, when he rushed into the room, saying, "Is it possible you were going, without giving me an opportunity of thanking you-of speaking to you alone," he added, turning to my companions, “though whatever I have to say to Miss S, she can at her discretion communicate to you; if you have any interest in the subject."

The girls immediately withdrew; with interest quite enough to justify the communication which I had the pleasure of making to their astonished ears on the way to Grindelwald.

121

It seems that colonel G-, some seven years ago, then a very young, and a very impetuous young man, as he says,-was passing a few weeks in Zurich, when he fell distractedly in love with Miss V. She was the only child of the widow of a rich banker; beautiful and gifted with high qualities of mind and heart; but somewhat perverted and spoiled by the alternate doating and despotism of her mother, a fierce old woman' he called her; to whom I might remember his alluding, when he spoke of the dragon ejected by St. Beatus. He married Miss V. -; the mother being delighted with the idea of a noble English alliance; and professing to have no concern at his having but a few poor hundreds per annum. She accompanied the new-married pair to England. There she was received by his proud family without any disguise of their estimate of the infinite distance between them. Her coarse passions were provoked. She imparted a degree of her jealousy and resentment to her daughter; and after one year, and before the birth of his child, they separated; and the mother and daughter returned to Switzerland.

"We were both," he said, "the victims of our ignorance of life. We did not understand the true proportions of things-that the less must be sacrificed to the greater. We were both irritable and passionate; totally unfit to manage the most complicated and delicate relation of life-that in which unity and individuality are so marvellously blended, that not a fibre of one can be touched, without jarring and endangering the peaceful existence of the other. We parted, he said; and till yesterday, I never saw my lovely child. I had determined never to claim her;-thank God, I felt a mother's rights too deeply, ever to have thought of separating them. My wife had the expectation of immense wealth; I was poor, and too proud to sue for reconciliation. I have been five years in India, where my wife supposed me still to be. There I have earned some honor; and now, possessing an income suited to my military rank, came to Switzerland, in the hope of regaining the domestic happiness I so recklessly threw away. I dreaded the mother. I came here to nerve myself, in the scenes where I passed the first week of my then blissful married life. Madame V- died ten days since; and hither my wife,-led by a divine inspiration, I thinkcame also. You know the rest."

SOME women, at the head of nurseries of manly sons and lovely daughters, lay the world under deep obligations. Some write glorious books, that, beside their own intrinsic worth, are, to the sex unrepresented, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, a tower of defence. Without being seen, the good, great woman again and again arrests the meditated degradation, suspends the cruel blow. The increasing band of women who manifest what has been so profoundly hidden, the misunderstood powers of their sex, serve in need their obscure and helpless sisters, like a standing army, peacefully stationed between danger and weakness. One of the honored group, little known to fame, yet among the most munificent literary donors the country has produced, died not long since. No sweet domestic fountain sprung up by her bare hearth. She was no child of the muses. Born poor, first known as the mistress of a cook-shop, afterwards a milliner and shopkeeper, she accumulated by her skill and industry a considerable fortune. It was not employed in supplying the wants of common ambition; to procure ease, show, or luxury; she built no fine house, did not fare sumptuously every day, arrayed herself in no rich, gaudy, recherché attire. No bestower of common alms that perish in the

using-she founded a college! She opened a fountain by the way-side, whose water, (for this belongs to the living water that feeds the soul,) poured into other receivers, retains its old properties. It is like the miraculous wine in the goblet of the hospitable pair, in classic story, which

quoties haustum cratera repleri, Sponte sua per seque vident succrescere." Who that saw behind the counter this pale, delicate, gentle-mannered woman, could imagine she contemplated for her labors this high destiny; that the small per centage on every yard of ribbon and cup and bowl, had so ennobling an appropriation? Sure the square, lank, dingy yard-stick, in her gracious hand, became the rose-hued, blossoming rod of Aaron. What a balsam was such a purpose for the weary feet-the daily-tried encounter with the narrow, undecided, capricious customer! What a spell must it have cast over the unvarying aspect of the dull warehouse! Three quarters of the acquisitions of this noble woman were bestowed in this way, and she died in the possession of only a fourth of her life-long gains fifteen thousand dollars. This was bequeathed to the same object, making the amount of her donation sixty thousand dollars!

METHOUGHT I saw along the sounding shore

The Genius of America; she stood

Like Pallas with her Ægis, looking o'er,
Stern-eyed and vigilant, the briny flood

That broke and sprayed her sandals. "Ho!" she cried
With voice of mighty volume, deep and loud,
Like pent-up thunder speaking from a cloud:

"Ye abject nations on the other side,
Groaning beneath the fetters of my foe-
Old Tyranny, if in your hearts a glow
Of light, a lingering spark of Liberty,
Glimmer amid the ashes, faint and low,
Come o'er the deep; assert your rights and be,

In this my chosen seat, what God designed ye, Free!"