7.8. THE WIFE.

"Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry.
All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep, or she will die.'"

The propriety of introducing a sad story like the following, in a
book intended to be rather cheerful in its character, may be
questioned; but it so beautifully illustrates the firmness of woman
when grief and despair have taken possession of "the chambers of her
heart," that we cannot refrain from relating it.

Lucy M-- loved with all the ardor of a fond and faithful wife, and
when he upon whom she had so confidingly leaned was stolen from her
by death, her friends and companions said Lucy would go mad. Ah,
how little they knew her!

Gazing for the last time upon the clay-cold features of her departed
husband, this young widow--beautiful even in her grief; so ethereal
to look upon, and yet so firm!--looking for the last time upon the
dear familiar face, now cold and still in death--oh, looking for the
last, last time--she rapidly put on her bonnet, and thus addressed
the sobbing gentlemen who were to act as pall-bearers:--"You
pall-bearers, just go into the buttery and get some rum, and we'll
start this man right along!"

7.9. A JUVENILE COMPOSITION.