loving sister toiled harder than ever to provide, if possible, the
means of comfort and restoration to health. All the world knows the
ending of such a hopeless strife as this. It is sometimes the will of
Heaven that the path of virtue, like that of glory, leads but to the
grave. So it was in the present instance: the blossom of this fair
young life withered away, and the grass-fringed lips of the child's
early tomb closed over the lifeless relics ere spring had dawned upon
the year.

Sorrow had graven legible traces upon the brow of my hapless mentor
when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my
daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of
idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labour,
and she pursued it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had
ever done. But the exquisitely chiselled face, the majestic gait, the
elastic step--the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken because
unassaulted by death and sorrow--where were they? Alas! all the
bewitching charms of her former being had gone down into the grave of
her mother and sister; and she, their support and idol, seemed no more
now than she really was--a wayworn, solitary, and isolated straggler
for daily bread.

Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy matter to
deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recompense poor Ellen
for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering in the arms of a
husband, who should possess as many and great virtues as herself, and
an ample fortune to boot. I wish with all my heart that it were a
fiction, and that Providence had never furnished me with such a
seeming anomaly to add to the list of my desultory chronicles. But I
am telling a true story of a life. Ellen found no mate. No mate, did I