colonial times. She scorned Rose Grafton's humble parentage, and
caused her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he
would have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers
parted, and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same
mansions, but not at the same time; for one was bidden to the festal
hall, and the other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure
and Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was
long secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married
with the revengeful hope of breaking her false lover's heart. She
went to her bridegroom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than
young girls ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal chamber.
Yet, though her husband's head was getting gray, and his heart had
been chilled with an autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and
wondered at her own conjugal affection. He was all she had to love;
there were no children.

In a year or two, poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome
infirmity which settled in his joints, and made him weaker than a
child. He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner-
time and eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife's
heart, but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a
melancholy dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife, if she
sometimes blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him
coming, looked for the appearance of some old, old man; but he dragged
his nerveless limbs into the parlor,--and there was Mr. Toothaker!
The disease increasing, he never went into the sunshine, save with a
staff in his right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing
heavily downward, like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman,
still looking maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested frame
along the pathway of their little garden, and plucked the roses for