The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

"Oh, yes, indeed! the very finest, the most delicate, a kind of aërial perfume; they must of course alchemize the air into which they waste their fibres with some sweetness."

"A smell of earth fresh from 'wholesome drench of April rains,'" said Mr. Raleigh, taking the dish of white porcelain between his brown, slender hands. "An immature scent, just such an innocent breath as should precede the epigea, that spicy, exhaustive wealth of savor, that complete maturity of odor, marriage of daphne and linnaea. The charm of these first bidders for the year's favor is neither in the ethereal texture, the depth or delicacy of tint, nor the large-lobed, blood-stained, ancient leaves. This imponderable soul gives them such a helpless air of babyhood."

"Is fragrance the flower's soul?" asked Marguerite. "Then anemones are not divinely gifted. And yet you said, the other day, that to paint my portrait would be to paint an anemone."

"A satisfactory specimen in the family-gallery," said Mrs. Purcell.

"A flaw in the indictment!" replied Mr. Raleigh. "I am not one of those who paint the lily."

"Though you've certainly added a perfume to the violet," remarked Mr. Frederic Heath, with that sweetly lingering accent familiarly called the drawl, as he looked at the hepaticas.

"I don't think it very complimentary, at any rate," continued Marguerite. "They are not lovely after bloom,–only the little pink-streaked, budded bells, that hang so demurely. Oui, dà! I have exchanged great queen magnolias for rues; what will you give me for pomegranates and oleanders?"

"Are the old oleanders in the garden yet?" asked Mrs. Laudersdale.

"Not the very same. The hurricane destroyed those, years ago; these are others, grand and rosy as sunrise sometimes."

"It was my Aunt Susanne who planted those, I have heard."

"And it was your daughter Rite who planted these."

"She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot, after her brother had examined them,–a ring or two, a coin from which she broke and kept one half"–

"Oh, yes! we found the little box, found it when Mr. Heath was in Martinique, all rusted and moulded and falling apart, and he wears that half of the coin on his watch-chain. See!"

Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs. Purcell sprang from her elegant lounging and bent to look at her brother's chain.

"How odd that I never noticed it, Fred!" she exclaimed. "And how odd that I should wear the same!" And, shaking her châtelaine, she detached a similar affair.

They were placed side by side in Mr. Raleigh's hand; they matched entirely, and, so united, they formed a singular French coin of value and antiquity, the missing figures on one segment supplied by the other, the embossed profile continued and lost on each, the scroll begun by this and ended by that; they were plainly severed portions of the same piece.

"And this was buried by your Aunt Susanne Le Blanc?" asked Mrs. Purcell, turning to Mrs. Laudersdale again, with a flush on her cheek.

"So I presume."

"Strange! And this was given to mamma by her mother, whose maiden name was Susan White. There's some diablerie about it."

"Oh, that is a part of the ceremony of money-hiding," said Mr. Raleigh. "Kidd always buried a little imp with his pots of gold, you know, to work deceitful charms on the finder."

"Did he?" said Marguerite, earnestly.

They all laughed thereat, and went in to tea.

[To be continued.]

EPITHALAMIA

I

THE WEDDING

O Love! the flowers are blowing in park and field,
With love their bursting hearts are all revealed.
So come to me, and all thy fragrance yield!

O Love! the sun is sinking in the west,
And sequent stars all sentinel his rest.
So sleep, while angels watch, upon my breast!

O Love! the flooded moon is at its height,
And trances sea and land with tranquil light.
So shine, and gild with beauty all my night!

O Love! the ocean floods the crooked shore,
Till sighing beaches give their moaning o'er.
So, Love, o'erflow me, till I sigh no more!

II

THE GOLDEN WEDDING

O wife! the fragrant Mayflower now appears,
Fresh as the Pilgrims saw it through their tears.
So blows our love through all these changing years.

O wife! the sun is rising in the east,
Nor tires to shine, while ages have increased.
So shines our love, and fills my happy breast

O wife! on yonder beach the ocean sings,
As when it bore the Mayflower's drooping wings.
So in my heart our early love-song rings.

O wife! the moon and stars slide down the west
To make in fresher skies their happy quest.
So, Love, once more we'll wed among the blest!

ARTHUR HALLAM

We were standing in the old English church at Clevedon on a summer afternoon. And here, said my companion, pausing in the chancel, sleeps Arthur Hallam, the friend of Alfred Tennyson, and the subject of "In Memoriam."

"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid."

His burial-place is on a hill overhanging the Bristol Channel, a spot selected by his father as a fit resting-place for his beloved boy. And so

"They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave."