The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859

"Whom have you seen?"

"Mr. Monroe, an acquaintance of mine."

"The same. The lady, it seems, is his cousin,—and is, or was, my betrothed."

"And you two brave men give up, foiled by a country-girl of twenty, or thereabouts!"

"How is one to find her?"

"What is the advantage of brains to a man who doesn't use them? Consider; she will look for employment. She won't try to teach, it would be useless. She is not strong enough for hard labor. She is too modest and reserved to take a place in a shop behind a counter, where she would be sure to be discovered. She will, therefore, be found in the employ of some milliner, tailor, or bookbinder. How easy to go through those establishments!"

"You give me new courage. I will get a trades-directory and begin at once."

"To-morrow, my friend. She hasn't got a place yet, probably."

"So much the better. I shall save her the necessity."

"Go, then," said Easelmann. "You'll be happier, I suppose, to be running your legs off, if it is to no purpose. A lover with a new impulse is like a rocket when the fuse is lighted; he must needs go off with a rush, or ignobly fizz out."

"Farewell, for to-day. I'll see you to-morrow," said Greenleaf, already some paces off.

[To be continued.]

PRAYER FOR LIFE

Oh, let me not die young!
Full-hearted, yet without a tongue,—
Thy green earth stretched before my feet, untrod,—
Thy blue sky bending over,
As her most tender lover,
With infinite meaning in its starry eyes,
Full of thy silent majesty, O God!
And wild, weird whispers from the solemn deep
Of the Great Sea ascending, with the sweep
Of the Wind-angel's wings across the skies,
Burdened with hints of awful memories,
Whose half-guessed grandeur thrills us till we weep!—
I love thy marvellous world too well—
Its sunny nooks of hill and dell,
Its majesty of mountains, and the swell
Of volumed waters—for my heart to yearn
Away from the deep truth which veils its splendor
In beauty there less dazzling, but more tender.
With grave delight I turn
To all its glories, from the tiniest bloom
Whose hour-long life just sweetens its own tomb
As with funereal spices,
To the far stars which burn
And blossom in fire through their vast periods,—
Borne in thy palm,
Like the pale lotus in the hand of Isis,
When throned white, and calm,
In solemn conclave of the mythic gods.

Oh, let me not die young,
A brother unclaimed among
The countless millions of thy happy flock,
Whose deepest joy is to obey,
Whereby they feel the measured sway
Of thy life in them, their own living part,
Whether in centuried pulses of the rock
By slow disintegration
Ascending to its higher,
Or the quick fluttering of the Storm-god's heart,—
An instant's palpitation
Through all its arteries of fire!
One common blood runs down life's myriad veins,
From Archangelic Hierarchs who float
Broad-winged in the God-glory, to the mote
That trembles with a braided dance
In the warm sunset's vivid glance;
And one great Heart that boundless flow sustains!
In all the creatures of thy hand divine

Thy love-light is a living guest,
Whether a petal's palm confine
Its glitter to a lily's breast,
Or in unbounded space a starry line
Stretches, till flagging Thought must droop her wing to rest.

Oh, let me not die young,
A powerless child among
The ancient grandeurs of thy awful world!
I catch some fragment of the mighty song
Which, ere to darkness hurled,
My elder brothers in the eternal throng
Have caught before,—
Faint murmurs of the surge,
The deep, surrounding, everlasting roar
Of a life-ocean without port or shore,—
Ere I depart, compelled to urge
My fragile bark with trembling from the verge
Of this Earth-island, into that Unknown,
Where worlds, like souls forlorn, go wandering alone!

Oh, let me not die young,
With all that song unsung,
A swift and voiceless fugitive,