friends; and if she ever looked back to the home she had left, it was not with one thought of regret. The house in which she lived was on an eminence sloping gradually down to the river that flowed below, and here she sought in her leisure hours to revive the beauties and ornaments she had deserted. Flowers sprung up here and there; vines were planted to run over the house and the little porch, and during the hours in which Harry was absent from home, she employed her time in contriving some new object to surprise him when he returned. It was the first and pure gushing out of her wedded love, and as he folded her to his heart, and called her his own beloved Marion, and exhibited his delight in all she did, she felt that it would be foolish and ungrateful, should she ever suffer herself to regret even for one moment the change she had made when she left all for him.

Months rolled on, and the anniversary of their marriage came, and with it came the birth of a boy--their infant Harry. It was a new object of affection-a new tie between the two hearts that loved so fondly. Marion had often heard indirectly from her father, and now she wrote to him again. The letter was full of her own overflowing happiness and joy, but she said nothing of reconciliation, though now her heart felt an indescribable longing to lay her boy in her father's arms, and, proud as he was, hear him call him his boy. But no answer came, and she yielded without a sigh. She had still her husband and her child, and what more did she want?

Let me now pass over the next two yearsyears of unalloyed happiness, during which time their boy grew and became the idol of their hearts. He was a beautiful and noblelooking boy. The house was filled with guests, for it was the anniversary of their marriage again—the third, and the second birthday of the little Harry, and they had prepared to celebrate the two events in one. All was joy. The child, in his rich dress, was sporting among the flower beds in the lawn with his nurse by his side. She left him but a moment, to enter the house at his mother's call, and when she returned he was gone.

Wildly the poor woman ran through the place. It was but a moment she was absent; he must be near; he cannot have gone far. It was in vain. He could not be found. Poor Marion-how the news fell upon her. She could not believe it at first, but when it became

certain, after all efforts to find him had proved fruitless, and day passed after day and no tidings of her darling boy, she gave herself up to the wildest grief. They concluded that he must have fallen into the river, swollen and rapid from recent rains, and been washed down to the lake.

It is a terrible thing to watch over the gradual inroads of disease, sapping day by day the foundations of life in a darling child, an only one; to see consuming sickness drink up its life's blood; to watch the wasting away of its beautiful limbs with a slow emaciation, and see the light in its bright eye fade, and grow darker, darker and more dim, till it goes out in death. It is a terrible thing for a young and happy mother. But, oh! how far more terrible to Marion Lee, thus in the very hour of her heart's highest happiness and joy, thus surrounded by her friends, rejoicing with her on the birthday of her boy, to have him snatched away by an unseen hand; one moment by her side and the next, gone, and her eye never again to behold him. It would have been lighter, if even then she could have found his body, that she might fold it once more to her agonized heart in one last yearning caress, to prepare her to let him go. But even this was denied her. It would have crazed the brain of many a woman. But not so with Marion. She had a portion of her father's spirit, and though smitten down with the bereavement, she endured it. Yet she was not again the same she had been, and though, after days had passed, and she became more calm, she gathered back to her memory the teachings of her mother, and then, led by them, turned to the consolations of the Bible, and there found comfort, still the wound had sunk deep into her spirit. To Marion and her husband, for a long time, the path of life looked gloomy and dark.

Again she wrote to her father. She told him how her boy had grown, and become dearer to them as he grew, and had added to their happiness every hour of his life, and how he was gone-torn from her-and what desolation it had made in her heart; and the words were marked with her tears. But she had still her husband, her own Harry, who was more to her now than he had been in the first days of their married bliss. Did she think to soften his hard old heart? It was too late if she did.

Before it reached him, she received one from him, or from his physician, saying that he was

sick-had been sick for weeks, and was now fast sinking into the grave. Death, or the sight of the grim tyrant, is a wonderful thing to break up old feuds; and when James Anderson felt that he had not long to live, his aristocratic pride sunk down to the measure of the narrow house he was about to occupy, and he sent at once for Marion, and her boy, and Harry Lee. Yes, the very man he had thrust out from his door, he sent for by name, and sent, not his forgiveness, for that he felt they did not need, but his confession that he had done him wrong, and his Marion wrong, and he only lived now to have them come back to smooth his dying pillow. Oh! how Marion wept, that her boy was gone, and she could not take him to her father that he might love and bless her child.

Her father died in her arms, with his hand in that of her husband, and they buried him in the old family burying ground, and raised a costly pillar at the head of his grave. And by its side a neat and beautifully sculptured monument was erected, bearing only the words"OUR FIRST-BORN."

They were in memory of the loved and lost child.

Twenty years!—they seem long in prospect -long in passing-but oh! how short when gone. Twenty years passed over the heads of Marion and Harry Lee, and no other child was born to them. But a little girl-another Marion-a daughter of one of Harry's sisters who died, was taken to their hearts to fill the void there. They had returned to the old mansion of her fathers, where they continued to reside. Time brought its healing to their wounded spirits, and they mingled again with the world as if no child had been sundered. The little Marion grew up to be a beautiful woman, and loved-loved a stranger. She met him on one of their summer journeys, and had been with him amongst the beautiful and noblest scenes of our country, and listened to his voice, breathing out those glowing words that only come from a heart full of love for Nature in her grandest scenes, and which soon win their way to the heart of such a woman as our younger Marion. But no one knew who he was, and though his attentions to her were always of the tenderest kind, and revealed to her as plainly as words the workings of his heart, and to others, still he had never spoken to her of himself nor his love.

13

Harry and his wife were sitting in their room one evening, at the hotel in where they had been spending a few days, and Marion had gone out with the stranger.

"I cannot but feel a little apprehension for our Marion," said Harry to his wife. "That her heart is deeply interested in this stranger, no one can fail to see."

"Do you fear that she will do as I did, Harry?" said she, with a smile, which he returned. "Oh, no! I only fear that her heart may be too much taken with him to bear up if she should be disappointed. He seems to be a worthy young man, but who is he ?”

"He is your namesake, at any rate, Harry, for that is his name. It would be a strange coincidence, as they say-another Harry and Marion ;" and she laughed at the thought.

"Would it not be well to speak to her on the subject? You must remember she belongs to my side of the house, and has not the heart of Marion Anderson to sustain a disappointment."

"No, no," said she; "I do not fear for her, and I have formed so high an opinion of him that I should be slow to believe his soul is not all honor."

At this moment Marion entered, leaning on the arm of the stranger.

"This lady tells me, Mr. Lee," said he, "that you are to leave for your home in the morning."

"Such is certainly our intention," replied Mr. Lee.

"Then, late as it is," said the stranger, "I must beg you still to hear an explanation I wish to make, and for which we shall not probably have an opportunity in the morning."

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Anything that concerns yourself I shall listen to with pleasure," said Mr. Lee.

"I will return in a moment," he said, and left the room.

Marion-I call the younger lady by this name-was gone when he returned. Perhaps she anticipated the object of his communication to her uncle, and young ladies do not like to receive proposals in public. The stranger held in his hand a bundle, and took a seat in front of Mr. Lee.

"The communication," said he, "which I am about to make to you, is one in which I feel a deep interest, and much of my future happiness, I will not say all, depends upon the result of it."

He paused a moment as if to collect himself, and then proceeded with an unhesitating voice

and frank manner, that at once impressed his auditors in his favor.

"I love your niece, Mr. Lee. You must already have noticed this in my attentions to her, though to her I have never yet breathed a word in reference to it. Perhaps I have done wrong in what I have done, for I am a stranger to you all, and to confess the truth, sir, I am as much a stranger to myself. I know not who I am. This package, which I have had in my possession for many years, is the only record I have of my parentage, and is in truth a very insufficient one, even when my history is told."

As he said this he opened the bundle, which seemed to consist of several packages. From the first he drew out a number of small articles, the ornaments of a child's dress. The next revealed the dress of a child. He was proceeding to open another, when, with a cry of agony, Marion sprung from her seat, and seizing the little dress, exclaimed"Where did you get this? me-where did you get it? little Harry!"

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Oh! tell me, tell My boy, my poor

They are his own, our dear boy's," said Mr. Lee, his voice choking with emotion. "What do you recognize?" inquired the stranger, himself not less affected.

"They were my son's, my little Harry's, who was drowned more than twenty years ago," said Marion Lee.

northern shore of Lake Ontario, by a wealthy man who gave me his own name, and who died about a year since, leaving me all his property. He often told me that I was not his son; but that one morning, many years since, he had gone down to the shore of the lake, when he saw an Indian landing his canoe on the beach, and with him a child about two years old, crying bitterly. From the appearance of the child he knew that he must have been stolen, and he succeeded in obtaining him from the Indian. I was that child, and as he had no children, he treated me as his own. These clothes and trinkets he carefully preserved, and often told me, in after years, they might be the means of my finding my parents. I knew no father but him, and never felt a desire to know or find one till he died. And even then I cared little about it, preserving these things rather out of curiosity, than with any wish to discover my parentage. I loved him as a father, till he died. Since that time I have been travelling in the States. But when I first met your niece, my cousin now, and learned to love her as I told you, then I first learned, also, that there was any value in knowing my true parents. Day after day have I resolved to break away, and still my heart held me back; till to-night, learning that you were to depart in the morning, I determined to cast myself upon your feelings as a man, and tell you all I knew of myself, and ask for a fatherless man the hand of Marion."

"I thank God that you did," said the joyful father; "but ask herself, my son."

At that moment she entered, and he sprang to her side and whispered a few words. One anxious, questioning look to the others, and she threw herself into his arms. Then, for the first, she heard who he was.

There is no monument to " Our First-born " standing in the old grave-yard now.

"LIFE is short, and they mistake its aims and lose its best enjoyment, who depend for happiness on outward things, and not the state of the heart. The affections, reposing and sweetly twining round their just objects, are a never-failing source of improving delight; but

condition, show, power and riches, or envy, pride and contempt, the common retinue of them all, do but burn out or burden our nature, so that what we call happiness is but a poor and starving imitation of it."