TURN NOT AWAY.

Painted by GainsboroughEngraved by F. HumphreysTHE COTTAGE DOOR.Engraved Expressly for Graham’s Magazine

TURN NOT AWAY.

———

BY HENRY MORFORD.

———

If a voice from the far and happy landEver echoed over thy cradle bed;If a mother’s voice and a mother’s handEver laid a blessing upon thy head;If a golden truth from the sacred page,Ever was thine in an earlier day,And still lives on in thy riper age—Turn not away.If hope beat high when thy youth began—Bright hope and love for thy human kind—And cares have pressed on the heart of manTill love is weary and hope is blind;If still one star of all the host,Burns with an old remembered ray,Believe not all of thy life is lost—Turn not away.If sickness calls thee with feeble cry,Or suffering moans from its bed of pain;If a pleading comes from the sunken eye,Or madness shrieks from the fevered brain;Oh! watch, as the angels watch above,Oh! pray for them as the angels pray;Bring heart and hand to the labor of love—Turn not away.If poverty stands at thy cottage door—Squalid poverty, faint and weak—Begging a crust from thy little store.Or the poor, cheap rest that the weary seek;Remember thou, that the mighty wheelOf fortune changes, day by day;Never be deaf to the poors’ appeal—Turn not away.If thy brother fall in the slippery path,And his hands are stained with human sin,If the sword of the world is raised in wrath,And no city of refuge invites him in;If his pitiful cry come up to thee,Remember that all men go astray,Still let thy heart his refuge be—Turn not away.If life grows dark as thy years roll by,And Heaven is veiled in cloud and storm,Oh! still look up with a trusting eye,For a beckoning smile from an angel form;So shall thy heart keep its holy laws,Fulfilling its mission day by day,And God, when thou pleadest thy final cause—Turn not away.

If a voice from the far and happy land

Ever echoed over thy cradle bed;

If a mother’s voice and a mother’s hand

Ever laid a blessing upon thy head;

If a golden truth from the sacred page,

Ever was thine in an earlier day,

And still lives on in thy riper age—

Turn not away.

If hope beat high when thy youth began—

Bright hope and love for thy human kind—

And cares have pressed on the heart of man

Till love is weary and hope is blind;

If still one star of all the host,

Burns with an old remembered ray,

Believe not all of thy life is lost—

Turn not away.

If sickness calls thee with feeble cry,

Or suffering moans from its bed of pain;

If a pleading comes from the sunken eye,

Or madness shrieks from the fevered brain;

Oh! watch, as the angels watch above,

Oh! pray for them as the angels pray;

Bring heart and hand to the labor of love—

Turn not away.

If poverty stands at thy cottage door—

Squalid poverty, faint and weak—

Begging a crust from thy little store.

Or the poor, cheap rest that the weary seek;

Remember thou, that the mighty wheel

Of fortune changes, day by day;

Never be deaf to the poors’ appeal—

Turn not away.

If thy brother fall in the slippery path,

And his hands are stained with human sin,

If the sword of the world is raised in wrath,

And no city of refuge invites him in;

If his pitiful cry come up to thee,

Remember that all men go astray,

Still let thy heart his refuge be—

Turn not away.

If life grows dark as thy years roll by,

And Heaven is veiled in cloud and storm,

Oh! still look up with a trusting eye,

For a beckoning smile from an angel form;

So shall thy heart keep its holy laws,

Fulfilling its mission day by day,

And God, when thou pleadest thy final cause—

Turn not away.

COUSIN FANNY.

———

BY M. S. G. NICHOLS, AUTHOR OF “UNCLE JOHN,” “THE WORLD AS IT IS,” ETC.

———

A pale, wan woman, with a young girl by her side, walked quickly along Chatham street, just as the twilight was deepening into darkness. She was very thinly clad, her light shawl was only a covering—it was no protection from the keen autumn air. It had once been an elegant and fashionable silk, but its fashion had long since passed away. It had been colored and colored again, until its substance had well-nigh disappeared. Her straw bonnet had been renovated many times, but not for a long time, and its faded ribbon was passed plainly over the crown, for it would have been mockery to make such ribbon into bows. Every thing that covered this young creature was passing away, and as she entered a pawn-broker’s shop, you might have seen by the light of the lamp that fell on her face, that she, too, was passing from a world that had given her small welcome, at least for many years. It would have been a comfort to any benevolent person, who had looked into that pale face, to have seen the red spot on one of her cheeks, and to have heard her cough.

What had she to do in a world so cold, with that miserable shawl to wrap around her ulcerated lungs, that smarted like fire with every breath of cold air they inhaled. She might as well have wrapped herself in cobwebs, as in clothes such as hers.

She went into the shop, her poor, little, shadowy child clung close to her mother. She had little knowledge of the place or the people, though she had many times been there, but she knew that after many tears, her mother went there, and then that for a brief space they had food.

The poor lady took from her pocket two miniature pictures—the golden setting had been removed sometime before. They were by a master’s hand, worth at least one hundred dollars each, and infinitely precious to her, being the likenesses of her father and mother.

“What will you give me for these?” said she, trembling in every nerve as she spoke.

The hard money-getting son of Israel, whose trade was pawn-broking, and whose business made him look on misery three hundred and thirteen days in the year, answered, “They are worth nothing to me, madam.”

The lady shrunk into herself as if she had been shriveled. Her face and lips became deadly pale. She supported herself against the side of the box in which she stood, to conceal herself from view; and her little girl held her hand and clung to her garments in great fear. Very soon she began to cough, and in a moment her thin, tattered, white handkerchief was saturated with the blood she raised.

The Jew looked at her with a mingling of kindness and fear. She must not bleed to death there. The pictures he knew were of much value, though there was a good deal of risk in taking them. He pitied the bleeding woman. Yet, pawn-broker and Jew as he was, he pitied her.

“I will give you four dollars on them,” said he, and he hastily ticketed them, and handed her the money, to her infinite relief. She felt that she and her child had now a reprieve from death. The Jew selected some bills that bore a discount of ten per cent., and yet he pitied the woman, and she was so grateful to him that she could have pressed his hand, and wept hot tears upon it. She hurried away to her attic in Frankfort street. It was dark, and she feared insult. New York was worse lighted and worse cared for then than now. We had no gas and no star police then, but we had plenty of Jews and pawn-broker’s shops.

As she passed along she raised the blood that pressed into her throat as fast as possible, but still it almost strangled her. Well-dressed people, men of business, returning home, and men and women hurrying to the theatre, the concert-room, or the prayer-meeting, or to the varied business or amusement of life, passed her without notice. She was their sister, but how were they to know that she was dying—that her scanty life-current was staining the pavement on which they stepped.

She reached the last landing-place, and thought that she could go no further, but it was not seemly to die there, and she made a last effort and entered her room. She was startled by a bright light in the room—light at night she had not had since she made the last dozen of shirts at ten cents a piece. Stranger still, there was a good, bright fire in the grate. Her husband stood before it, with his face toward the door, and his hands behind him, showily dressed as usual. She had not seen him for many days.

“O, Edward!” said she, “I am so glad you are come”—and she fainted, and would have fallen to the floor if he had not caught her in his arms. He laid her upon the meagre bed that had long since been robbed of every valuable article for the pawn-broker.

“Fanny,” said he, with a choking voice, “my poor Fanny!” He sprinkled water on her face, and she opened her eyes.

“I am going, Edward,” said she.

“No, no!—you will not die now. O, don’t die till you have forgiven me for being your mur—”

“Don’t say that—I forgive as I would be forgiven. Our child—”

A hard fit of coughing and copious bleeding hindered her from speaking for some time.

“Our poor Marie—give her to your Cousin Charles; he has wealth and none to care for. Promise me that you will do this.”

The husband, trembling with fear, gave her the required promise, when she strangled from an excessiverush of blood into the trachea, and died with her daughter clinging madly around her neck.

Edward Evans, the gambler and man about town, was alone with his dead wife, who, fourteen years before, he had persuaded to elope from her parents, and to marry him. She had gone through every gradation of suffering and poverty, and but for a strange run of luck that he had had for two or three evenings, she would have died in that dark, cold room, alone with her child, and have been buried in Potter’s Field. As it was, Evans had a basket of coal, a pound of candles, some food, and money to buy his wife a grave. And wretched as he was, we must do him the justice to say that he was glad to be able to bury his wife decently. And he did it.

And now he bethought him of her last request. He must make the effort to give away the child, who had clung to the corpse of her mother to the last moment, and who had not seemed to see or hear at all, since that mother was buried out of her sight.

——

A patient, plodding man was Charles Evans—a man who had made his own fortune, and was perfectly sure that every man might do the same who chose to mind his own business and keep at work, and not spend money or time. He went to election and voted, and went home without drinking a “brandy-smasher,” or a “whiskey-toddy.” He was a democrat when he had no property to protect, and when he had acquired wealth, he had got in the habit of being a democrat—and his democracy was his religion, his Faith in Human Brotherhood. He immured himself in a living tomb in Wall street all day, and worked half the night at his home in William street, beside. It was here that Edward Evans found him, the evening after his wife’s funeral.

“How are you, Ned?” said Charles, glancing at him to see if he were sober, and then continued to fold and direct letters, seeming a little nervous under the infliction of a visit from his worthless cousin.

“I have been very unfortunate,” said Ned, a good deal troubled how to penetrate his thick-skinned cousin.

“I never knew you otherwise,” said Charles, and he wrote on.

“I mean, I have had the bad fortune to bury my wife.”

“Very good fortune for her,” said his cousin, but he dropped his pen and regarded the weed on Ned’s hat. “I did not notice that you were in mourning. So Fanny is dead. It is a long time since I have seen her. She died of a broken-heart, I suppose, you will allow.”

“She bled to death from her lungs.”

“All the same. Pity it had not been you.”

“I came to see you about the child. She wished me to give her to you.”

“To ME,” said his cousin, starting with real astonishment. “What could I do with a child, and a child who could never see her father again if she were to live with me? How old is she?”

“I don’t justly remember,” said Ned.

“Is there a race-horse in the city whose age you don’t remember? How long did it take you to kill your wife—do you know that? How long have you been a drunkard and a devil? How long have you eaten when your wife and child starved? How long have you hid them where even I could not find them—can you tell me that, you decently dressed vagabond? I’ll warrant your wife is clad as warmly in her grave as she was out of it.”

Ned could answer nothing. He was a wretch—and he had the good sense to know it. He had not the slightest respect for himself, but he wanted his child taken care of; then, if he had a pint of brandy, and six feet of rope, hethoughthe would comfort himself with the brandy, and hang himself with the rope; but then he had a great liking for cards and a decent rig, and it is probable that while luck, or loaded dice, gave him broadcloth and brandy, he would have laid up the rope against a lack of either, which he would have considered a decided reverse of fortune.

“I promised my wife that I would give the girl to you. If you will take her, I will go to the South, and never show my face here again.”

“What on earth am I to do with a child? My old blind aunt can’t see to herself and me—how is she to take care of another? But it is a temptation to be rid of you. How does the girl look?”

The father was again at a loss.

“Oh, you don’t know—what color is Kenny’s horse, Eclipse? How many hands high is he, and how old? How far can he run in ten minutes and thirteen seconds?”

“Once for all—will you take the girl?” said the man whose life was exhausted by dissipation and excitement into an apathy that resembled patience. “She will have to go to the Almshouse if you don’t, and your blood is in her veins. She is your grandmother’s grandchild.”

“Iwouldlike you to be the only one of our blood who should die in the Almshouse; but I say again—what am I to do with the child? I can only take her as a servant.”

“Make a slave of your own blood if you like,” replied the father, whose stupid apathy was pierced at last. “She had better serve you than serve the devil. She is a good, serviceable child.”

“O, you know that, do you? No doubt you know all about that. Look you, Ned Evans, I owe you no service. I have earned every dollar I have, whilst you have squandered a fortune twice as large as mine, of your own, and another for your wife, whilst you have been a sponge to soak brandy, a gambler and a stool-pigeon for gamblers, and have made acquaintance with every horse-dealer and all the horse-flesh in the Union, and have murdered your wife by inches, till at the age of 29 years, an age when she should be as fresh as a new-blown rose, and with her fortune living as well as any lady in the land, you have done her the last and only kindness you ever did her—you have bought her a pine coffin, and have seen her buried. But though I know you ought to be hung, I will make a bargain with you. I will see you onboard a vessel bound for New Orleans, with your passage paid, and take your child. You agree to go to New Orleans. When once you are there, I have no fear of you or your ghost ever appearing to me again. On these conditions I will take the child.”

“When must I sail for New Orleans? I’ll go after Monday. The race with Eclipse and Black Bess comes off then. I have agreed to ride for Kenny. I know the horse better than anybody else. Besides, a fellow must keep his word.”

“Very good,” said Charles, after a moment’s thought. “Youmaybreak your neck, and save me the passage-money. I agree to that—any thing more?”

“When may I bring the girl?”

“To-morrow morning at 6 o’clock.”

“That’s too early to wake her,” mumbled Ned.

“Then, or not at all. You can keep sober one night, and get up in decent season one morning in your life, for the sake of getting your child a situation.”

If a particle of Ned Evans’ old spirit had been left, this taunt of getting his daughter a situation would have roused it. But his life was crushed. He was hopelessly besotted and exhausted, though now he had decent clothes, for which he had sacrificed the last remnant of decent feeling he possessed. These clothes belonged to the keeper of the vilest Hell in New York; and Ned was his “decoy-duck,” and did any job the fellow set him about.

He was as craven before his cousin as possible. He had one instinct of his nature left—he wanted to provide for his child.

“I will be here at the time, so help me God,” said he—and he kept his word. It was the last right act of his life. As if to make his cousin out a prophet, he rode Eclipse, and broke his neck in earnest, though not in “soberearnest.”

When Charles Evans heard of it, he only said, “One poor devil less in the world;” but he murmured to himself, as he turned away, “Poor Cousin Ned!”

——

“Send the little girl to my room to-night, aunty, when you have made her decent. I must see what she is fit for, and what she looks like. Remember, she is to have good warm clothes, but no gewgawry.”

At 8 o’clock precisely, Marie came into Mr. Evans’s room with a waiter, on which was spread the most frugal sort of a supper. Rye bread and butter and black tea, it was his sovereign pleasure to be served with at night.

Mrs. Evans had had time only to extemporise an amelioration in the girl’s dress. She was at that very awkward age when a girl is not a child or a woman. She had a heavy burden of deep-red hair, and all her bones showed through their scant covering of flesh—and they seemed hung on wires, and very loosely hung, too. Her eyes were a very deep blue, but she had been somewhat “cross-eyed” from infancy, and now the defect was much aggravated by her constant weeping. She was very timid, shrinking from every one. What had she ever found in her lot to assure her or give her confidence?

Poor, forlorn, ill-dressed, cross-eyed, red-haired, little one—all your defects are so many commendations to Charles Evans. In the deep selfishness of his benevolence he could love just such a child—one whom others would only pity and never think of loving. And he felt a sort of secure property in her when he saw that no one else would be likely to care for her; but he would be very certain not to let her know that he had any kind feelings for her. He was a scraggy limb of the law, and one would think that all the sap of his life had been written out in deeds and documents that brought him dollars, and that all the warmth of his heart had been expended on the Loco Foco candidates from his ward, district, city, county, etc., etc., during the time he had been a legal voter, which had now reached the term of fourteen years. He had amassed a large property, and had neither “chick nor child” to leave it to, as his friends said, all and singular of said friends having made up their minds that he would never marry, though he had only reached the mature and well-judging age of thirty-five.

He liked to be thought well of, as who does not; and there was a delicate flattery to him in the thought that Fanny Evans trusted her child tohimbefore any of her own or her husband’s relatives. To any one of these relatives he would have spoken of the burden of bringing up other folks’ brats, but in his heart he thought “it was very wise, and well-judged, and kind of Fanny, to leave the girl to me; and when Ned is out of the way, I shall have nothing to interfere with my plans for the child’s welfare.”

When Marie had set his waiter upon the table, she stopped and timidly raised her cross-eyes to Mr. Evans, to see if he wanted any thing more.

“Sit down, Marie,” said he. “I wish your name was Fanny, I don’t like fancy names and flummery.”

“I was named for my mother, Frances Maria,” said she, in the sweetest and softest voice that Evans remembered ever to have heard. Her voice penetrated his heart—and then her name was Fanny. He had always cherished a cordial friendship and a true respect for her mother—and he wished the girl to bear her mother’s name.

“I would like very much to be called Fanny,” said the child.

“Well, then, Fanny, how do you like your new home?”

“I am very glad of it,” said Fanny, and the tears filled her eyes.

“Don’t cry—there’s a good girl. Do you wish to go to school?”

“I don’t know how I would like school. My dear mother always taught me.”

“Well, you must go and see how you will get on. You will be a good girl, I dare say. You will obey Mrs. Evans in all she asks of you. If you want any thing, come to me. You will call me Cousin Charles when you speak to me, and Mr. Evans when youspeak of me. When you speak to Mrs. E. call her aunty, and Mrs. Evans when you speak of her.”

And thus little Fanny began her life at her cousin’s comfortable home. When she was told of her father’s death, she shuddered and felt relieved. Fanny loved her mother as we always love when we have few objects for our affections to rest on. But with the blessed faith of a child and a Christian, she believed she was now in heaven, where she would be perfectly happy forever, and she became strangely happy in her new home. All her studies and occupations were so many changing joys. From morning till night she was like some bright bird that knew not where to bestow the fullness of its brilliant and merry carolings. Everybody saw as the months passed away, how she wound herself around the heart of Charles Evans; and the friends began to prophesy that he would adopt her as his child, and make her his heir.

Mrs. Evans was a woman of great goodness, very old, and very pious. She had now but one wish ungratified, and that was that Charles Evans and his ward should be converted. This seemed a hard matter to accomplish as far as Evans was concerned. He was rather a hopeless subject, for he boasted that he was a temperance man, that he never drank any thing stronger than black tea, that he never chewed tobacco, took laughing gas, or went to a protracted meeting.

“Go to church with aunty enough to keep the peace,” said he to Fanny. “You and I will not quarrel about it as long as it tends to aunty’s comfort.”

“I would not like you to quarrel with me if I went for my own comfort,” said Fanny.

This touch of his own independence pleased him, and he said, “Go along, you gipsy—thistles and lilies never quarrel.”

“Red-haired girls are never lilies, though cross cousins are very sharp thistles,” said Fanny, who, a year ago, would as soon have indulged in repartee with her cousin as the lily he likened her to.

“You have grown very bold, if not very handsome,” he replied—and Fanny went to church with her aunt. She was never disturbed there, however much good Mrs. Evans prayed for such result. Some of her prayers had been answered. She had prayed for many years that all the theatres might be converted into chapels, and at lastoneof them was, and she had the pleasure of hearing the divine Mr. Kirchard preach in it, from Sunday to Sunday, and various week days and evenings beside. He was an earnest preacher, and it was surprising the quantities of green tea, cayenne and cavendish that he converted into gospel. The ladies of his church presented the pulpit with an elegant cushion and spittoon, and never mortal minister had more use for both than the Rev. Mr. Kirchard. The way he beat the cushion and filled the other article, when he alarmed the sinners,wasplentiful.

But Fanny was never disturbed with the powerful preaching of the reverend gentleman. Like a man who tends a saw-mill half the time, and sleeps soundly when relieved by his companion who tends it the other half, so Fanny was always very peaceful in church, if she was not sleepy. I believe she had a conscience against sleeping, though what she kept awake for, perhaps she was not herself aware. But it was very exemplary of her, and very gratifying to good Mrs. Evans.

——

There are some good people who deny the doctrine of total depravity, who don’t see how it is possible for a man deliberately to be a hypocrite. They say that a man can’t live unless he has some good in him. I shall not dispute with these worthy people, because, in a free country, every man has a right to his own opinion, provided he does not happen to think that he may buy tickets in lotteries out of Wall street, and appropriate his neighbor’s goods without the formalities made and provided in the righteous common law of our social code; but I must say that if goodness is necessary to keep people alive, some folks have the gift of living on “small means;” and it becomes my duty to introduce a young gentleman eminently gifted in this particular.

Sylvester Wilson was a young man who had a laudable wish for his own advancement, but, unfortunately for his piety, he was entirely indifferent to the means that contributed to his getting ahead, provided the world made no complaint of him. The opinion of those about him, with two-thirds the facts concealed from them, was a moral law for him, and he had no other. His father was a bad, ambitious and unscrupulous man, and the hereditary transmission of qualities would have charmed Fowler, though the qualities proved that he was “bad, born bad, and had no business here” but to make mischief. He was, however, an excellent dissembler, and passed for a pious and exemplary young man, punctual at church, and designed for the ministry. His family were friends of the Evans family.

“Well, mother, have you wormed any thing out of old Aunty Evans about that red-haired horror’s adoption?” said Sylvester Wilson, to his mother one day, when she had been taking an old-fashioned cup of tea with Mrs. Evans.

“Howcanyou, Sylvester!” said his mother, a good deal disturbed. “The child is very well, I am sure.”

“Frights generally have good health.”

“I meant that she was very well-looking. She has changed much in the two years she has lived with her cousin. Her hair is deepening its color, her eyes do not squint any more, and she is very plump and fresh.”

“All the better for me—fourteen, is she? She will get better still, perhaps, in two or three years. But about the cash, mother—will that old hunks of a cousin portion her? If so, I am his man.”

“Mrs. Evans thinks he considers her as good as his own child now,” said Mrs. Wilson. “You are to be three years in the University, my child, and you can’t think of a wife till that time is past.”

“I don’t know what harmthinkingis to do afellow. I am not in the University yet, and I don’t exactly see how I am to be there, unless I find a gold mine. If I could get employed to give lessons to that fox-pate, I might earn some money, and borrow more, and get an education and independence at last. One can’t expect beauty and tin together.”

Success was all Mrs. Wilson asked for her son, and his life-plans did not seem to her at all profane. And he succeeded in obtaining the place he sought. He gave Fanny lessons in music and mathematics. It was a great triumph when Fanny got leave of Cousin Charles to learn music. She had thought of a piano, and dreamed of one, and thumped on one that belonged to a young friend for a long time—but she had no idea of ever being the happy possessor of a mine of music.

At Christmas, just about two years from the time when she came to live with her cousin, she made a little “Christmas box” for her best friend. It contained a pair of slippers, a watch-holder, and a lamp-mat, all worked by herself. They had grown very pretty under her skillful fingers, but the coarse canvas had not changed more under her hands than she had changed since she had lived in this happy home. And she was daily improving. When Charles Evans found this Christmas gift on his table, he resolved to give Fanny just what she should ask for, and so he said, “I have only got you a book for Christmas, Fanny, but if you think of any thing else that you want, you must tell me.”

“And will you really give it me?” said Fanny, and her deep-blue eyes seemed melting in their own lustre.

“To be sure I will, because I have said so.”

“Well, then, dear, good Cousin Charles, buy me a piano.”

“Buy you a winter full of thunder storms—why you will bang me deaf.”

“But not dumb, I’ll bet any thing—you will always be able to scold your poor Cousin Fanny. But I shall play when you are away.”

“I rather think you will when you get a piano. Why do you know what a deal of money one of those thunderers costs?”

Fanny began to be frightened. She did not know, but she was really like the child who cried for the moon. The tears came into her eyes as she thought of herself two years ago. She looked up at her cousin, with her grateful soul beaming from her beautiful eyes, and smiling through her tears, she said, “Cousin, I was very wrong to ask such an impossible thing—will you buy me a canary-bird?”

“Do you give up all claim to the piano if I do?”

“O, yes, to be sure. Please to forget it. Indeed, I did not mean to be a silly girl.”

Thus ended the talk of the piano; but the next afternoon an elegant piano and a beautiful canary-bird, were domesticated in Mr. Evans’s quiet parlor—and Fanny was perfectly wild with delight. That was a wonderful era in her life—a time to date from forever after—though Cousin Charles brushed her off as if she had been a whole swarm of black flies, when she ran to his room, on his return in the evening, to overwhelm him with thanks, and tears, and crazy rejoicings.

“Bless me, Fanny,” said he, “you had better make up your mind whether you are going to melt, or fly away, or go to a lunatic asylum; and when you have concluded, just come and let me know, will you? I can do without you till then.”

The next thing to the piano must be a music-teacher. Young Wilson had played his cards skillfully. He had interested Charles Evans in his fortunes, and he engaged him from motives of benevolence, to teach Fanny. To do him justice, he was a good teacher. But Evans was cheated. He did not think it possible that the fellow could have thought but to teach Fanny, that he might mend his small means—a most praiseworthy object in the young man, and one that Evans felt anxious to assist him in attaining. Though Fanny had grown very pretty, and was daily improving, yet her cousin was hardly conscious of it. He thought of her as a mere child as she was, and a very ugly child as she had been; and it never once entered his mind that any young man could have designs upon the heart of the little one. Young Wilson interested him, not because he knew him, but because he did not know him. He saw him struggling to get an education, and pay for it himself, and he was glad to have an excuse to offer him assistance.

Evans had small love for music, but mathematics was a pet of the first magnitude with him, and for the sake of this branch of study, he compromised and gave the girl her music. So he said; but the truth was, he wished Fanny to be happy. And he had his wish. The bird and the piano were all the time new, and she could never for a moment, asleep or awake, cease to rejoice in either. She kept her word not to play when Mr. Evans was at home. But then this was no great privation, for the bird sang like mad all the morning, and he went away early, and she managed to tire herself so thoroughly during the day, that she was very willing to go patiently and quietly into figures for the evening. Mr. Evans was quite satisfied, for as he said he saw Fanny always at her “sums,” and never was disturbed by drums or thunder.

Wilson found himself of just as much social importance to Fanny as a piano or an algebra. She would have been just as much interested in a calculating machine; and if her piano could have taught her to play on it, she would have been neither better or worse pleased than now. To be sure she was glad when her Aunt Evans told her of the struggles of young Wilson to educate himself that she had him for a teacher, but she never thought enough of him to mention him to Mr. Evans; first, because she seldom needed his help in her mathematical studies, and of music she never spoke to her cousin.

Wilson was prudent and careful. He had good hope of getting into the University—in time of a pulpit, and a rich wife. No word, or look, or overt act ever revealed to Fanny or her friends, that he had designs on the fortune of Mr. Evans, through a marriage with his ward. For months he laboredassiduously, when an accident occurred that changed the face of his fortune, though, perhaps, it did not materially affect Fanny. A merchant uncle of Wilson, who lived at New Orleans, found himself in need of an assistant, in consequence of failing health. He was a man of wealth, and Wilson considered his fortune assured by this chance—and so the church lost the chance of adding to her ornaments another of those paste gems that bring the real jewels into disrepute.

——

Seventeen! sweet, gay, laughing seventeen had come to Fanny—and she had never once thought of getting married. Not she. She would have been obliged to contemplate marriage as something that must separate her from the only home she had ever known; and she would as soon have stepped out of her skin some cold night, as have gone away from her dear friends. She liked everybody and loved nobody, and wanted to hug the whole world, as she forcibly said, because she was so happy.

“Christmas Eve, to-morrow, Cousin Charles; I hope all my presents are purchased and directed.”

“And what are you going to giveme, little Miss Fairy?”

“Myself, to be sure,” laughed Fanny. “What else have I to give away?”

“No, that you wont. You will keep yourself for some worthless fellow, I’ll warrant.”

“No, I thank you. I had rather be excused. I intend to make your black tea as long as you live, if you don’t conclude to leave the tea out, and take water with me.”

“I tell you, you will marry a scamp the day after you are eighteen—that is the way with all the women.”

“There must be a prodigious number of scamps, then, cousin; and if you had only been one of them, you might have beenhappily married, instead of being the nicest bear of a bachelor at large.”

“I think I might get married even now, if I were only fool enough.”

“But as you are very wise, you shall be my Cousin Charles, and nothing else—and I would not exchange you for a pet porcupine. Don’t you see how I prize you? So don’t think of getting married—I should quarrel with your wife, to see which should love you best; and that would be very inconvenient for us all.”

Christmas was a merry time at Charles Evans’s. The man of deeds and documents always relaxed and came out of the world of business, or, as he said, “allowed the world to mind its own business” at Christmas and New Year. But something very serious happened to Mr. Evans from this year’s Christmas merry-making. A pretty girl needed some one to see her home, and glowing and perspiring from the last game at “Blind Man’s Buff,” Mr. Evans attended her on a bitter night, which made him run home as rapidly as possible, with chattering teeth, and a chill that seemed to go quite to his heart. Next morning he awoke with a quaking headache and pains through all his bones, and great heat and cold chills, and all the concomitants of a bad fever about him. Thanks to the exhaustion of unremitting and most unreasonable labor, such as a great many men perform who do the head-work for the headless multitude, and thanks also to the lancet of a certain doctor, who held to letting the bad blood out of a man, and poisoning what remained to purify it, Mr. Evans became dangerously sick. What an invaluable treasure was Fanny now. Her foot was the lightest—her hand was the softest and coolest—her eyes never closed in slumber, unless she left the best of watchers in her place—and she threw quantities of physic to the dogs, or some equally prudent place, and she nourished the patient carefully when he began to get well; and at last, in spite of all the evils in the patient, and out of him, doctors and drugs included, she saw Mr. Evans convalescent.

At length he came down stairs, and when he thought how long Fanny had left her piano locked, and not even listened to her canary, he asked her for a song. It was in very kindness to her, and in accordance with his benevolent character—for he thought that he disliked music, and it is probable that he had the good taste to dislike the heathen discord that had been christened music, where he had happened to be the victim.

The Battle of Prague, thumped with indenting emphasis on a piano sadly out of tune, had given Mr. Evans his ideas of melody; and it is small wonder that he had as great dislike for music as prudent regard for his ears.

It was a great surprise to Mr. Evans when Fanny’s melodious voice fell on his ear, appropriately accompanied by the instrument, which was one of the softest and sweetest in the world. He had expected the Battle of Prague, and it seemed to him, so great was the contrast, like humming-birds amid the flowers.

Fanny sung a song of her own composing, descriptive of her own life, first in its great sadness and trials and deep grief with her sainted mother, and then her bereavement, and then her adoption by her cousin, and the calm flow of her life since then. At the close of her song she alluded to her best friend’s illness, and spoke of her joy that he was now safely recovering. The song and the music were her own, and they came from the depth of her heart. The sad, sweet murmur of her soul’s sorrow in the first verses, was succeeded by the calm happiness and bird-like joy of the years passed in her cousin’s home, and again the sorrowful notes spoke of his illness, and the winged joy burst forth in the happy conclusion.

It was a triumph to Fanny when she saw at the close of the piece tears rolling over Mr. Evans’s face, and he said, with a voice rendered indistinct by emotion, “Sing it again, Fanny”—and she was only too happy to comply with his request.

When the song was ended, he conquered his emotion, and laughing through his tears, he said,

“You shall be my nightingale, Fanny.”

“Thank you, I accept the appointment—what salary do you intend to give?” said Fanny, as shesat down on the sofa by the invalid, and passed her hand over his high, white forehead, to see if any fever were warning her to send her patient away to rest.

“I will give you myself and all that I have,” said he, again bursting into tears.

A flood of new thoughts rushed through the mind of Fanny. She paused to think what to say. “You are weak, cousin, and must not sit up too long. Will you go to your room, or will you rest and sleep on the sofa here?”

Mr. Evans was frightened at what he had said. He was sure Fanny could never love him only as a father or elder brother; and now he thought he had broken the freedom of that relation, and he blamed himself, and troubled himself, and well-nigh fretted himself into a relapse of his fever. But his naturally strong constitution triumphed, and in a few weeks he was perfectly restored.

Meanwhile Fanny had become grave and thoughtful; and, truth to tell, she shunned her cousin more than she ought. She had not known how dear he was to her till his illness—during the time that he was considered dangerous she had neither eaten nor slept. She had watched over him as a mother watches her first born. She felt that if he should die, life, which had always seemed so full of joy and blessing, would be a blank to her. She had not asked herself if this were love. She had supposed it was only the interest she ought to feel in her cousin. Now she was put upon examining her own heart. She fully believed that her cousin was by no means in love with her, but that his tender confession was owing to the weakness induced by his severe illness and his gratitude to his fortunately successful nurse.

——

“And now, mother, tell me all about the Evanses. Is my flame as foxy as ever? She must be quite a young lady. Heaven forgive me for not being thankful enough for all mercies in general, and for the particular one that I am not obliged to marry red hair.” Thus spoke the fortunate Wilson, the morning after his arrival from New Orleans, bringing the welcome news that his relative was dead, and that he was his heir.

“Don’t be too hasty, Sylvester,” said his mother. “Miss Evans has changed more than any one you ever saw. She is a perfect beauty, bating her freckles. Her hair is no more red than a chestnut. She is plump and round as an apple; she is white as snow, and her eyes are as pretty as possible.”

“Amen, mother! One would think you were her lover instead of your hopeful son. But I will see for myself. I shall not take your word or your bond for that girl’s beauty.”

And so Mr. Wilson, armed for conquest, presented himself before Miss Evans. She had never cared enough for him to be very glad to see him, but she received him politely and kindly, as was her nature. He was a very good-looking, stylish young man, and he talked well on common topics, and soon succeeded in interesting Fanny. He was quite unprepared, notwithstanding all his mother had said, for the beauty that had grown upon Fanny. He loved beauty just as he loved roast pig and canvas-backs—and he was smashed at once—Fanny had made an impression. He asked her to play and sing for hercidevantteacher, and the impression was fixed.

Wilson was sure at the end of an hour that he should marry Fanny Evans; and Fanny thought him a very good-looking, interesting young man, and she rejoiced in his good fortune; their musical tastes formed a bond between them, and it soon seemed very natural and proper to Fanny that she saw young Wilson daily. She was sad, and singing diverted her. His voice was good, and they sung duets. He played finely, and this was very pleasant. She had become estranged from her cousin, and she wanted some company. Fanny had never been so unhappy since she first came to live with her cousin. Finally, Wilson offered himself to her. This was an event to Fanny entirely unexpected.

“Don’t speak of such a thing,” said she, earnestly. “Pray excuse me, Mr. Wilson,” and she went straight out of the room. When she reached her chamber, she felt very sorrowful, and, truth to tell, very sick. She had been worn down by labor and watching during Mr. Evans’s illness, and her sadness in being estranged from him. She had got nervous, and began, for the first time in her life, to have theblues. She almost persuaded herself that she was become a burden to her cousin, and that she ought to marry Wilson. She wept till she had a dreadful headache, and when the servant came to call her to make Mr. Evans’s tea, she was really too ill to go down—and with swollen eyes, red face, and dabbled and disarranged curls, she looked into the glass, and dared not present herself before her cousin.

“Tell Mr. Evans that I have a bad headache, and if he will excuse me, I will go early to bed. Make every thing very nice for him, Norah. Were his slippers warm when he came in?”

“I don’t know, Miss, but I will get his supper good”—and she went to carry Fanny’s excuse to Mr. Evans.

“Go back, Norah, quickly, and ask Miss Evans if I may come up.”

Fanny had wheeled her sofa to the fire, and had just buried her face in a velvet cushion to weep as long and as much as she wished. Mr. Evans, in his concern for her, had followed Norah, and stood outside the door.

“Tell him not to trouble himself to come up. I shall do very well as soon as I have slept.”

“If you had asked me to take the trouble to stay down stairs, I might have thought of it; but seeing I am here, it is no trouble to come; and you are so bright and cosy, suppose you let the girl bring the waiter up here and make my tea for me.”

Mr. Evans was quite sure that something beside sickness had happened to Fanny, and he intended to be confessor or doctor, as the case might be.

“Norah, bring Mr. Evans’s supper to my room,” said Fanny, more cheerfully than she would have thought possible a few minutes before. And shepassed into her bed-room and bathed her face and her eyes, and arranged her hair, and came back to make tea for Mr. Evans very much improved. But she could not talk—she had fairly lost her tongue.

Mr. Evans seemed more unconstrained and more fully himself than since his unfortunate offer of himself to Fanny.

“Fanny,” said he, after the tea things were taken away, “I would like to ask you what is the matter, if I thought you would like to tell me. It is no common headache that is tormenting you; I would sooner guess it is a heartache.”

“And what if it is a heartache?” said Fanny.

“You mean to ask what I should have to do with the diseases of your heart. I tell you, Fanny, I am not as bad as you may think, or so big a fool either. For instance, though I love you a great deal better than Heaven, and would sooner have you for my wife than an angel, yet knowing that you can’t love an old codger like me, I want to see you happy with the man of your choice, and I tell you now, for the cure of your headache, or heartache, that you have my consent to marry Mr. Wilson.”

Fanny burst into so violent and uncontrolled a fit of weeping, that Mr. Evans was alarmed and puzzled.

“Speak to me, Fanny, tell me what is all this. I thought to give you great joy, and I only set you weeping. Tell me, what does all this mean?”

“Dear Cousin Charles,” said Fanny, “you have given me the greatest joy of my life.”

“Then you love Wilson, as I thought,” said Mr. Evans.

“No, no—not Wilson, but you, Cousin Charles; and you said you would rather have me for your wife than an angel.” And Fanny threw her arms around Charles Evans’s neck; and there is not a shadow of doubt that he would cheerfully have exchanged all the pleasures of his long bachelorate in a lump, for the kisses of the next five minutes.

They were a happy couple that evening; but Wilson’s prospects were worse damaged than his heart.

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