An angel's wing methinks has stirred the waters of your heart;

So holy seem its outlets blue where sparkle yet the tears,
Like stars that tremble in the sky when not a cloud appears.
Art ready now? The evening wanes; the guests will soon be here,
And the glad bridegroom waits his own. God bless thee, sister dear!






LOVE vs. HEALTH.





ABOUT a mile from one of the Berkshire villages, and separated from
it by the Housatonic, is one of the loveliest sites in all our old
county. It is on an exhausted farm of rocky, irregular, grazing
ground, with a meadow of rich alluvial soil. The river, which so
nearly surrounds it as to make it a peninsula "in little," doubles
around a narrow tongue of land, called the "ox-bow"--a bit of the
meadow so smooth, so fantastic in its shape, so secluded, so adorned
by its fringe of willows, clematises, grape-vines, and all our
water-loving shrubs, that it suggests to every one, who ever read a
fairy tale, a scene for the revels of elves and fairies. Yet no
Oberon--no Titania dwelt there; but long ago, where there are now
some ruinous remains of old houses, and an uncouth new one, stood