and destroy, or give away if I please. I heard benevolent-looking old man, whose pale high my grandpapa tell Mr. Clifford only yesterday features wore a look of languor) sitting erect, that every thing he had in the wide world was wrapped in his velvet dressing-gown, and propped mine, and he had only me. Your flowers, in- up by cushions in his easy-chair before a table deed! nonsense! I tell you they are my flowers, covered with papers and writing materials. Mrs. all mine!" Forrester, his daughter-in-law, a young and still lovely woman, was sitting with him, and they both received Mr. Frazier with courteous kindness. "Well, Master Leon," said the man, sullenly, "maybe they be; I don't know about that. I did not mean they was mine, to be sure; I know they ain't, that's only my way of speaking. I only meant that Mrs. Forrester give me the care of 'em, and so they was mine to tend and take care of, that's all. I know your ma sets great store by that orange-tree. Your own father give it to her, a little slip of a thing in a bunch of flowers when they was married, and she got me to root it for her, and I did, and she sets her life by it; and that climbing rose your dog has tore down she brought out from town herself, and told me to take great care of it, and now, just look at it!" "Well, what if she did?" answered the boy proudly, though his chest heaved and his cheek grew crimson; "mamma loves me better than all her roses, I know!" "So she does, Leon," said the tutor, now stepping forward, and putting his hand gently on his little pupil's shoulder. "But do you think it is the best return you can make for all her love to destroy the flowers she prizes, and bring blame and discredit upon the servant she values and trusts ?" "No, no, indeed!" cried the repentant boy, springing into the arms of his friendly monitor, while the bright tears rolled from beneath his long silken lashes. "I did not think of that; I was wrong, very wrong. Parkins, I am sorry I spoke so to you," he said, holding out his little hand to the old man. "Ponto shall not come in here again if I can keep him out; and mamma shall not blame you either, for I will tell her it was I that broke her beautiful tree, and that Ponto tore down the roses." "Lord bless you!" said the old man, cordially grasping the little hand so frankly offered him. "You are the very moral of your own dear father; and maybe the rose is not so much hurt after all," he said, good-naturedly, as he lifted up the torn and trampled wreaths. "I'll trim it and trail it up again, and maybe Mrs. Forrester will not happen to take notice of it, and will never know it was broken." "Oh, but she shall know it," said the boy, "for I will go to her this moment and tell her all the mischief I have done. I had rather have her know it." "Not now, my dear Leon," said the tutor, gently detaining him. "Mrs. Forrester is with your grandfather now, and it is time to begin your lessons. Some time when you are less heated and excited you may tell your mamma, if you please: I should rather you should; but not now." And as the tutor and Leon entered the library Mr. Frazier was called into the sickroom of his invalid client. "And now, dear father," said Mrs. Forrester, as, after arranging the cushions, placing a restorative upon the table, and slipping a vinaigrette into the old man's thin fingers, she tenderly bent and pressed her lips to his pale, calm brow, "do not tire yourself in talking as you did yesterday with Mr. Clifford, will you?" "Never fear, dear Helen," said the old Colonel, kindly, "I will be careful." And then Mrs. Forrester, having significantly pointed out to Mr. Frazier the situation of the bell, in case he should wish to summon an attendant, bade them good-morning and retired. After her departure Colonel Forrester entered at once upon the business he wished to have arranged, calmly and distinctly pointing out the alterations he thought necessary to be made, while the lawyer took full but rapid notes of his expressed wishes. "And all this property," he said, as he ran his eye over a paper the Colonel had given him, is, if I understand you, to go to-" "To my grandson, Francis Leon Forrester;" and again there was silence, while the lawyer resumed his notes; at last, looking up from his papers, he said, "Excuse me, but I thought this property-I mean the St. Leon property-belonged to your eldest son." "You are right, it did," said the Colonel, with a sigh. "Let me explain. My first wife was the only child of Francis St. Leon. She died when my first child, Henry, was born, and all her own property which she inherited from her mother went to him. My younger son was the only child of my second wife, Olive Tracy. She had no fortune; but St. Leon, the grandfather of Henry, left, as you may have heard, a large estate. After the death of his daughter he became much attached to my second wife and her child, who was named for him; and when he died he left his property to his grandson Henry, but with the proviso that, if he died unmarried, the estate was to be given to me, to hold during my lifetime: but I was to give it by will to Francis and his children. Henry did, as you know, die unmarried not long ago; and my son Francis had already been called away; of course, as he left but one child, my little grandson Leon, all that property as well as my own goes to him. There are no other heirs to either of the estates, and I suppose he must be heir too to what Henry derived from his mother; but his estate has not been settled yet, his own lawyers will attend to that." "Excuse the pain I have given you, Sir," said He found Colonel Forrester (who was a fine, the solicitor: "I understand it now." He made a few more minutes, asked and received a few more directions, and then gathering up the papers, bade the Colonel adieu, and ringing the bell for an attendant, left the apartment. from the street; women from the wash-tub and the cooking-stove; children from their play; till the long room was crowded with a dense mass of pallid, eager, human faces; yet a silence almost like the silence of deepest midnight hung over the strange assembly, and not a sound broke upon the stillness, except when an occasional convulsive sob, or a deep, shuddering sigh burst involuntarily from some absorbed spectator, and and silent and motionless as the cold bosom of the dead child before her still bent the miserable and unknown mother. The beams of the same bright spring sunshine which streamed so clearly and cheerily through the plate-glass windows of Colonel Forrester's library were dimly struggling through the dusky casements of an upper room in an obscure lodg-broke the fearful hush which had preceded it; ing-house in the city; but upon how different a scene was that golden light pouring its soft radiance! The room, a long, low garret, extended the length of the house, open to the rafters overhead, and with bare, naked walls, unpainted, unfinished, even unplastered, lighted by small windows at either end, and nearly destitute of furniture; it looked, and indeed it was, one of the very cheapest and most desolate abodes in which abject poverty ever sought to secure for itself a temporary shelter. In the middle of the room, upon a rude, uncovered table immediately in front of the dim windows, lay the half-naked body of a little child, a boy of apparently four or five years old, the thin and tattered robe revealing its fair and beautiful proportions-fair, except that gaunt famine had somewhat narrowed the chest and made sharp the outlines of the small, delicate limbs, and pinched the pure, finely-cut features. The body had evidently been hastily deposited, and by rude hands, upon the table, and the little, white, ghastly, upturned face was bare to the gaze of the shuddering spectators; and where the soft rings of glossy, fair hair fell shimmering back from the high marble brow the blue veins looked thin and shrunken. But this was not all, for the clenching of the tiny hands, the set teeth, and widely-opened but glassy blue eyes told of a sudden and violent death. Close by the body of the child, with her thin, skeleton hands clutching its scanty robe, her head bent low upon the table, her dark hair concealing her face and falling in disheveled masses over the bosom of the boy, crouched the miserable mother-the suspected infanticide! An hour ago and she had been alone-alone with her dead, alone with her great, shoreless, measureless woe; but now the story of violence, the suspicion of foul and unnatural murder, had crept down the long, steep stairway and stolen into the obscure street and out by by-way and thoroughfare, curdling the listener's blood, and poisoning even the fresh morning air with its sickening horror. And with the strange love of the horrible which pervades many minds, they had come up thither men, women, and children--drawn, as the vulture and the carrion-crow, by the scent of blood they came-stealing in, one by one, in fearful silence and awful curiosity, and looking in upon the wretched mother and the dead boy as if it were some tragic spectacle of the playhouse. Thicker and thicker they had gathered; the laborer from his work; the shopman from his counter, the idler from the corner; the loafer Presently there was a stir in the hall below -quick steps ascending the miserable stairs-a parley held upon the landing-place, and voices of authority inquiring the way; and it was whispered by some one near the door that the doctors and the coroner's jury were coming; and as a party of gentlemen entered the room the unauthorized crowd, swaying to right and left, gave them passage-way to the central object of attention. Shuddering the new-comers approached the table, and shuddering they surveyed the pitiful spectacle before them; a few moments they, too, stood in silence, sadly contemplating it, and then the coroner stooped, and touching the arm of the miserable mother, he asked, probably according to some set formula for such cases made and provided, if she was guilty of the child's death. But the question fell upon unheeding ears; not once since the crowd had watched her had the wretched woman lifted up her head, or changed her constrained and painful attitude, or betrayed the slightest consciousness of what was going on around her, or indeed given any signs of life; and the question had to be repeated and shouted into her ear two or three times before her attention was aroused. At last she seems to hear, and lifting up her face, which (famished, ghastly, and colorless as that of the corpse on which she had pillowed it) still retained traces of rare beauty, she looked with dull, uncomprehending eyes upon the fearful scene around her. Slowly she turned her leaden gaze from the group closest about her, the physicians and the coroner's jury, to the wild sea of human faces, all bending their terrible eyes upon her, and slowly came back to her her consciousness and memory-until, as her gaze rested upon the body of the child, the terrible truth seemed to break in upon her; and suddenly a wild light leaped into her eye, a deep crimson glowed upon her cheek, and dashing back the disordered hair from her face, she laid her hand upon the boy's icy bosom and answered, in tones of frantic energy, "No, no!" she said, "not guilty, not guilty! I harmed him not, I could not; I am his mother, did not you know that? No, no! 'twas you and you that murdered my boy; yes! you, ye hard, unpitying men and women, who refused his mother a crust of bread for her famishing child. keepers of the lodging-house-a coarse but honest-looking man, and his wife, vulgar and most slatternly in her dress, but with a kind, motherly face, expressive now of strong emotions of pity and horror. The testimony of the man at once cleared up the mystery which hung about the case, and rescued his poor lodger from all suspicion of the most foul and unnatural crime, at which humanity shudders. His testimony, corroborated by that of his wife, and given with much unnecessary circumlocution of words, but with evident directness of purpose, when cleared of its superabundant detail, amounted to the plain fact, that his wife having taken up some coffee or other articles of food to their poor lodger, whose poverty they well knew and pitied, found she had gone out, and discovered the child hanging dead between the bed and the wall, where he had probably fallen, and was too weak to be able to extricate himself. Filled with horror, she had rushed wildly down stairs, and proclaimed the terrible fact; and while her husband went up, removed the body of the child to the table, sent for the coroner and the physicians, and went forth himself to seek the mother, the wife, overcome by the awful shock, had lain in strong and continued hysterics. The man's search had, however, missed the mother, who had in the mean time returned, wholly unprepared for the awful scene awaiting her; and the man having just got back from his unavailing errand, had come up at once to give in his testimony. As an examination of the little body fully confirmed this account, the coroner's jury at once rendered their verdict of "Accidental death." And when this was fully understood by the lookers-on, a few earnest words from the coroner soon cleared the room of its motley assemblage; and then, having done all which could now be done for the sad principals in this terrible tragedy, the gentleman, having commended the mother to the pity and care of the keepers of the establishment, leaving with them money enough to meet the present wants of the case, and promising to return and make the necessary arrangements for the burial of the child and the removal of the woman, they too departed. "Yes, I will tell you; my husband, the father | to the group around the table. These were the of this child, deserted us in our utmost need. He left me sick, and friendless, and penniless to the mercy of a merciless world; and worse, his slander, the slander of him who should have shielded us, closed against me the heart and the door ever open to me before; and no one, no one, not even my nearest and dearest, believed my sad story. Want came: and I applied to the parish for aid, but they said I had no settlement here; and I asked for employment, and they said I was a stranger and they dared not trust me. And beggary came: I asked for charity at the houses of the rich and great, but they told me I was young and healthy, and bade me work for my living; and then I parted with my garments, sold them, one by one, to procure food and shelter for my child till my scanty dress shocked the nice sense of those who go, night after night, to the opera to sit and witness, unblushingly, the hired display of woman's limbs; and I fled from the streets. And then I saw my boy's sweet eyes grow dim with want, and his blue lips turn gasping away, and quivering, shape themselves into a voiceless cry for 'bread, bread!' and I had no bread to give him. What was I to do? Had God forgotten us, the widow and the fatherless? I could not tell; I thought I could endure no more, I believed I was dying, and must I, could I, leave him behind to struggle, to suffer, perhaps to sin; to purchase it might be a short life of want and misery, with the loss of all Heaven's blessedness? And then the Tempter came to me and whispered awful things. He said my child was pure from every thought of sin, why might I not send him up in his bright innocence to Him who feedeth the young ravens when they cry, and where he should know hunger and want no more forever? Why might not his mother's love force open the gates of heaven and let him in? There he should be safe! I should never see him again, that I knew, for I should be a murderess! But would it not make a heaven of hell itself to think my boy was with the cherubim drinking from the river of life, and eating of the bread of heaven for ever and ever? But I did not do it-I did not, I could not, I had not the courage, I was too weak; and besides I was a Christian-I would not listen to the Tempter. I left my child alone while I went out to seek for food for him; I left him alone and asleep yonder, and I came back to find him here and thus-dead! dead! Oh, is there no mercy in heaven for me? And you thought I had murdered him, my child, my darling! Ah, if I had -if I had periled my own soul to save my child, you would have called me an unnatural mother, would not you? ha, ha, ha!" and with that wild, unearthly laughter bubbling from her pale lips the frenzied woman sunk down again beside her child in strong convulsions. As the two physicians, aided by the now pitying by-standers, lifted the poor unconscious mother from her sad resting-place and carried her to the miserable bed, two new-comers were added "George," said the elder of the two medical men, as together they made their way down the creaking, rickety staircase, and gladly emerged into the welcome fresh air and sunshine of the open street, doubly welcome after the scene they had just quitted-"I wish, if you are not particularly engaged, you would walk with me as far as my brother's office. I want to consult him, and I want you to go with me. The fact is," he said, putting his arm into that of his companion, "that I am faint and sick with horror." "Certainly; I will go with you with pleasure," said his friend. "And I do not wonder that you feel faint; I declare I almost feel so myself; that terrible scene has quite unnerved you, nor can I wonder at it. I never beheld any thing in real life half so tragic as that frantic woman's pursued the search-tracing the poor girl and look and manner. I protest I am afraid she will haunt us.” "It was horrible! horrible indeed, George!" answered his friend, shuddering as he spoke. "And more than that, George," he continued, convulsively pressing the arm upon which he leaned; "was there nothing, nothing in that wretched creature's look and tones which reminded you of-of-" her child stage by stage of their wearisome journey on foot to her native town, where they learned the false story of her shame had preceded her, and her indignant father-a stern, old, orthodox clergyman-had spurned the poor, broken-hearted wanderer from his door, and they could trace her no farther." "Good Heavens! then it might be her! What must she not have suffered! She spoke "Of-of what, Charles? Good Heaven, how of sickness, want, famine, and madness. And you tremble! What do you mean?" oh! what a fearful item to add to Harry For "Did she recall to you no memory of any one rester's long account." whom we used to know ?-think, now?" "No, Charles; by my word no! What and whom are you thinking of? And yet, since you suggest a likeness-oh! Charles, the eyes, the figure-and, more than all, the voice!-and yet, it could not be-it is not possible-it could not be her, she was well married! Charles, you can not mean the beautiful girl, the teacher from the country, whom we used to see in old Selwyn's pew at church ?" "The very same-Mary Stevenson." "I forget the name, but I mean the girl whose beauty we all used to rave about. Why, did not she marry Harry Forrester? She did, I know." "So she did, George." "The scoundrel!-don't waste your pity upon him!" 'Well, you may be in time to save the mother; but that beautiful boy! Oh! if the discovery had been made only one day sooner it might have saved him. And to think of what that child was born to! Why, if he had lived, and had his rights, I suppose he would have been almost a millionaire." "Quite one, I believe; he would have been heir to all his father's property, which was very considerable; all his grandfather St. Leon's wealth, which was very large; and, I suppose, half of the Forrester estate." "And who heirs all this wealth, failing him, "Well, then, that settles the question; it do you know?" could not be her." "Did you never hear that Forrester deserted her, declaring their marriage was not a formal or legal one?" "A little fellow about the same age, the child of Colonel Forrester's second son. How strange it is!-he has been brought up in luxury and ease from his birth; and this boy, who really owned it all, has been a pauper and an outcast, and died at last in want and misery!" "Not a word of it; and I don't believe it now. The miserable scoundrel-she was only too good for him! Do not you remember our Yes it is terrible to think of! That wan, sceing her with him at the regatta, and after-starved, half-naked, miserable, though beautiful ward at the play? It was soon after their mar-child-that little, ghastly, coffinless object-was riage-and how we all of us admired her loveli- in reality-think of it !-St. Leon's true heir! ness and her gentle, lady-like manners? I remember well her intense enjoyment of the gay scene, which was all new to her, of course. Why, she was perfectly radiant in beauty and happiness; and I believe she was as good as she was beautiful. I honestly believe she was his lawful wife." "I know that she was." "Yes; and it is about this that I want to consult my brother John. All this took place while you and I were in Germany, and it was only about a month ago that I chanced to hear of it. Possibly you do not know-for I did not till then that when Forrester was dying (you knew, perhaps, he was killed by being thrown from his horse?)—” "No; I did not even know that he was dead." "Well, then, he sent for John and his partner Ames (they were his lawyers), and owned the legality of his marriage, and furnished them with necessary proofs to establish her claim, and made his will, leaving all his property to her and his child; but he strictly enjoined upon them not to disclose the facts till they had found Mary, and placed her in a respectable position, which no one doubted could be done at once. But John told me how earnestly and vainly he had INFANCY AND AGE. [NFANCY was but the beaming If the life's morn's blushing ray; Each weak thought, prophetic dreaming Age is like the day-god setting In the West, beyond the plain; Through the portals of the tomb, IN RECOLLECTIONS OF THOMAS. N the last number of this Magazine was given | battery of light rifle-guns; or, in the language a sketch of General Sherman, in which it was endeavored to show that the distinctive feature of his character is a certain nervousness of thought and action inspiring a restless and resistless energy. A good idea of General Thomas may be obtained by contrasting him with Sherman. One may be called a nervous man, while the other is a man of nerve. Sherman derives his strength from the momentum resulting from the rapidity with which he moves; Thomas moves slowly, but with equally resistless power, and accomplishes his purposes by sheer strength. Sherman is naturally the dashing leader of light, flying columns; Thomas the director of heavily-massed columns. He may be called heavy ordnance in contradistinction to Sherman, who may be likened to a whole of the prize-ring, Sherman is a light-weight and quick fighter, while Thomas is a heavy, ponderous pugilist, whose every blow is deadly. Sherman's plans are original, embracing new rules of war; Thomas originates nothing, but most skillfully directs his army on well-defined principles of the art. Sherman jumps at conclusions; Thomas's mind and body act with equal deliberation. His conclusions are arrived at after long and mature reflection. Sherman never takes thought of unexpected contingencies or failure. There is always a remedy for any failure of a part of Thomas's plans, or for the delinquencies of subordinates. Sherman never hesitates to answer. Thomas is slow to reply. One is quick and positive. The other is slow but equally positive. Thomas thinks twice be |