On the lake side it is fine to see the great boats come panting it from
their rapid and marvellous journey. Especially at night the motion of
their lights is very majestic.

When the favorite boats, the Great Western and Illinois, are going out,
the town is thronged with people from the south and farther west, to go
in them. These moonlight nights I would hear the French rippling and
fluttering familiarly amid the rude ups and downs of the Hoosier
dialect.

At the hotel table were daily to be seen new faces, and new stories to
be learned. And any one who has a large acquaintance may be pretty sure
of meeting some of them here in the course of a few days.

Among those whom I met was Mrs. Z., the aunt of an old schoolmate, to
whom I impatiently hastened, as soon as the meal was over, to demand
news of Mariana. The answer startled me. Mariana, so full of life, was
dead. That form, the most rich in energy and coloring of any I had ever
seen, had faded from the earth. The circle of youthful associations had
given way in the part, that seemed the strongest. What I now learned of
the story of this life, and what was by myself remembered, may be bound
together in this slight sketch.

At the boarding-school to which I was too early sent, a fond, a proud,
and timid child, I saw among the ranks of the gay and graceful, bright
or earnest girls, only one who interested my fancy or touched my young
heart; and this was Mariana. She was, on the father's side, of Spanish
Creole blood, but had been sent to the Atlantic coast, to receive a
school education under the care of her aunt, Mrs. Z.