The most picturesque objects to be seen from Chicago on the inland side were the lines of Hoosier wagons.  These rude farmers, the large first product of the soil, travel leisurely along, sleeping in their wagons by night, eating only what they bring with them.  In the town they observe the same plan, and trouble no luxurious hotel for board and lodging.  In the town they look like foreign peasantry, and contrast well with the many Germans, Dutch, and Irish.  In the country it is very pretty to see them prepared to “camp out” at night, their horses taken out of harness, and they lounging under the trees, enjoying the evening meal.

On the lake side it is fine to see the great boats come panting it from their rapid and marvellous journey.  Especially at night the motion of their lights is very majestic.

When the favorite boats, the Great Western and Illinois, are going out, the town is thronged with people from the south and farther west, to go in them.  These moonlight nights I would hear the French rippling and fluttering familiarly amid the rude ups and downs of the Hoosier dialect.

At the hotel table were daily to be seen new faces, and new stories to be learned.  And any one who has a large acquaintance may be pretty sure of meeting some of them here in the course of a few days.

Among those whom I met was Mrs. Z., the aunt of an old schoolmate, to whom I impatiently hastened, as soon as the meal was over, to demand news of Mariana.  The answer startled me.  Mariana, so full of life, was dead.  That form, the most rich in energy and coloring of any I had ever seen, had faded from the earth.  The circle of youthful associations had given way in the part, that seemed the strongest.  What I now learned of the story of this life, and what was by myself remembered, may be bound together in this slight sketch.

At the boarding-school to which I was too early sent, a fond, a proud, and timid child, I saw among the ranks of the gay and graceful, bright or earnest girls, only one who interested my fancy or touched my young heart; and this was Mariana.  She was, on the father’s side, of Spanish Creole blood, but had been sent to the Atlantic coast, to receive a school education under the care of her aunt, Mrs. Z.

This lady had kept her mostly at home with herself, and Mariana had gone from her house to a day-school; but the aunt, being absent for a time in Europe, she had now been unfortunately committed for some time to the mercies of a boarding-school.

A strange bird she proved there,—­a lonely swallow that could not make for itself a summer.  At first, her schoolmates were captivated with her ways; her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and of wit.  She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time, charming.

But, after awhile, they tired of her.  She could never be depended on to join in their plans, yet she expected them to follow out hers with their whole strength.  She was very loving, even infatuated in her own affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her, the devotion she was willing to bestow.