FOUR LETTERS FROM HELEN HAMILTON.

IT

LETTER THE FIRST.

Hillside, June 17th, 1857.

T is a rainy summer day, good Cousin Jane, and that is why I find time to commence my promised series of letters to you. I have been here three weeks already, and have scarcely put pen to paper, save to announce my safe arrival to father and mother; but to-day I have drawn the cosiest of easy-chairs to the pleasantest of windows, and, with my port-folio on my knee, I feel just in the mood for writing to you. A fancy strikes me to make you, who have not seen me during the five years since your marriage, a pen-picture of myself. For once, some power shall give me the wondrous gift

"To see ourselves as others see us,"

and I will make use of this mental illumination for your benefit. Eight years ago, when I was seventeen, you and I graduated at Madame D'Arblay's together. You know what I was then, young, hopeful, enthusiastic, and-you see I am going to be honest— beautiful. What an enchanted life seemed opening before me a path wherein should be perpetually springing up roses of love and hope, whose buds I was to gather for my bosom, whose fragrance was to surround me eternally. You know, too, what I was

three years after, when you were married to Charley Fosdick, and I stood your bridesmaid.

You know that at twenty I had changed a little from what I was at seventeen. Only a little, it is true. My beauty was fresh and riant as ever; still I wore the roses of love and hope in my bosom, but I had found out there were now and then thorns among them. The world did not look quite so much like Eden, and I had learned one lesson-I do think it is the most sorrowful one a young heart can learn—the fashionable measure of social importance, reckoning a man's worth by his dollars and cents.

Since then you have not seen me. We have only corresponded at rare intervals; but I know your old love for me is warm in your heart, and I know you were thoroughly in earnest when you begged me to sit down in this quiet country place and give you an account of myself. I will be faithful, Cousin Jane, no matter how often my cheek may crimson with shame at the unveiling of my heart.

The five years since you went off with Charley Fosdick-by the way, you say you've never regretted it, though he is only a country doctor in that out-of-theway town-those five years have all been passed by me in one desperate struggle to get married-suitably married-married to please papa and mamma, who have lived, for my sake, beyond their means, and are so ambitious to see me what they call well established.

I said the years have all been passed thus, and yet not quite all. I stopped once by the wayside, in my long climbing up this weary mountain of social position, to dream a dream. I believe I was almost in love.

In society I met one who was in the world,

yet not of it. How shall I describe Philip Wyndham to you? You know whom I mean, for I remember your writing me, when his first book came out, that you had read it, and how charmed you were with its grace, its simple pathos; how thrilled by the utterances of a deep, strong heart, making itself heard now and then amid the flowers and the sunshine. You can not think how strange it was to see him in the gay circles of our set, with his bright, earnest eyes, his sweet smile, and his calm forehead. Withal, he wore such shocking clothes-a threadbare black suit, always the same. It was at Mrs. Emerson's I met him first; you know what a woman she is to surround herself with lions; and then, for a while, every one took him up, and he was quite the fashion, only mammas took especial care that their daughters should have no opportunity to fall in love with him. They need not have done this, for Mr. Wyndham would have been harder to win than any lady of them all.

I think he accepted the patronizing invitations extended, at first, solely for the sake of studying human life in a new phase. He was miles above their patronage, and he would have been as little cast down by their ceasing to invite him altogether as he was elevated by their extending to him their condescending courtesy in the first place. He was a noble man, Cousin Jane.

I was twenty-three that winter. My nature had become pretty well incrusted with worldliness. I was tired, though, of the dull routine in which I moved. My naturally restless spirit longed for change and excitement. For a time, in his acquaintance, it found both. I don't know how I managed to attract him to

my side. That I did so attract him is the proudest thought in all this review of my past life-that I had power to charm that lofty heart, that keen intellect, that sensitive, æsthetic nature. I think he understood all my capabilities. He saw what I might have been, brought up in another sphere, where wealth and style were less omnipotent. And I, oh! Cousin Jane, an angel's wing seemed to brush the dust from my heart, and make it fit for the pure anthems of heaven to echo through it.

For a time I forgot "the world, the flesh, and the devil." I gave up my shopping expeditions; I ceased to frequent Broadway; I went to half a dozen successive parties without a new dress; I returned to my old passion for poetry and music; I went backward over "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." In short, I was well-nigh in love. But what was I, that Philip Wyndham should gild me with the refined alchemy of his fancy-should pour out at my feet the sweet incense of his praise? Those were enchanted months in which I met him so frequently. A new glory lay on land and sea; the skies were bluer and the stars brighter. I never thought, however, of marriage. The idea that he would seek me as his wife never entered my head. Candidly, I should have thought myself as unworthy of the honor as I was unfit to be a poor man's wife.

It was a strange place to listen to the secret of a poet's love, but never did sweeter words flood a woman's heart with joy than his soul uttered to mine one destiny-marked night, in an alcove of a fashionable parlor, with the music of Strauss's aerial waltzes flooding the air, and the silken billows rolling past us in the

dance, like a glittering sea of bright and mazy hues, whereon diamonds flashed and flowers were flung with lavish hands, to die, breathing out their fragrance. With this mirth, and song, and dance about us, our souls talked to each other-our two souls, in all that crowd, utterly alone. I say our souls, for the words we said were no lip utterance merely; our hearts forced the naked truth to our lips.

I shall not tell you with what phrases he told me that he loved me. That must be my own cherished secret. I answered him frankly. I was impelled to speak all the truth. I told him what a new joy I had found in his presence. I told him if he had met me when I was less worldly, I might have loved him; but now, style, and fashion, and luxury had grown a necessity to me, and I could not give them up. I should marry, sometime, a man who would give me these, and I should try to forget all that I had ever felt for him. What do you think he answered me?

"I pity you, Helen Hamilton; I pity you far more than I do myself. I have loved you indeed with all the strength, all the passion of my heart; still for me, time and nature will bring solace; but for you—you, who are smothering all your holiest hopes, all your best instincts, under the silken panoply of fashion, there will come, when it is too late, an awakening. I know you better than you know yourself. I know how your heart will cry out, one day, in its despair, for a love cast away and trodden under foot; for you do love me, Helen. I know how you will recoil in very bitterness from the rich and fashionable husband you will choose, and in that hour may God shield you from sorrow and from sin."