The storm stole out beyond the wood,
  She grew the vision of a cloud,
Her dark hair was a misty hood,
  Her stark face shone as from a shroud.

Still sped the wild storm’s rustling feet
  To martial music of the pines,
And to her cold heart’s muffled beat
  Wheeled grandly into solemn lines.

And still, as if her secret’s woe
  No mortal words had ever found,
This dying sinner draped in snow
  Held up her prayer without a sound.

But when the holy angel bands
  Saw this lone vigil, lowly kept,
They gathered from her frozen hands
  The prayer thus folded, and they wept.

Some snow-flakes—­wiser than the rest—­
  Soon faltered o’er a thing of clay,
First read this secret of her breast,
  Then gently robed her where she lay.

The dead dark hair, made white with snow,
  A still stark face, two folded palms,
And (mothers, breathe her secret low!)
  An unborn infant—­asking alms.

God kept her counsel; cold and mute
  His steadfast mourners closed her eyes,
Her head-stone was an old tree’s root,
  Be mine to utter,—­“Here she lies.”

SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS.

Within the memory of men still in the vigor of life, American Slavery was considered by a vast majority of the North, and by a large minority of the South, as an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not a good which deserved to be extended and protected.  A kind of lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to be managed by local legislation, was the feeling of the Free States.  In both the Slave and the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent “abstractionists.”  Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed.  That these principles had the mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into the present war without any clear perception of its animating causes.

The future historian will trace the steps by which the subject of Slavery was forced on the reluctant attention of the citizens of the Free States, so that at last the most cautious conservative could not ignore its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality from his eyes, or its image from his mind.  He will show why Slavery, disdaining its old argument from expediency, challenged discussion on its principles.  He will explain the process by which it became discontented