Mine own!  I fear to bless thee,
  I hardly dare caress thee,
  Because I love thee with a love
    That overgrows my life;
  And as the time gets longer
  Its tender throbs grow stronger: 
  My maiden troth but waits to be
    The fondness of the wife.

  Alas! alas! my dearest,
  The look of pain thou wearest! 
  The kisses thou dost bend to give
    Are parting ones to-day! 
  Thy sheltering arms are round me,
  But the cruel pain hath found me. 
  What shall I do with all this love
    When thou art gone away?

  Ah well!  One poor endeavor
  Shall nerve me while we sever: 
  I will not fret my hero’s heart
    With piteous sobs and tears. 
  I send thee forth, my dearest,
  My truest and my rarest,
  And yield thee to the keep of Him
    Who blessed our happier years.

  Once more good-bye! and bless thee! 
  My faltering lips caress thee. 
  When shall I feel thy hand again
    Go kindly o’er my hair? 
  Let the dear arms that fold me
  One last sweet moment hold me: 
  In life or death our love shall be
    No weaker for the wear!

HOWARD GLYNDON.

A NIGHT IN BEDFORD, VIRGINIA.

“The general has been sending his ambulance”—­Bless these ambulances! they are as common in Virginia as hen-nest grass or clumps of sassafras—­“to the depot every morning for three or four days for you.”

“The deuce he has!  Then why didn’t he let me know by letter, as I asked him to do?”

“Can’t say, really.”

This conversation took place in the main street of the extraordinary city of Lugston—­a city so very peculiar that I must give it an entire article some day.

Repairing forthwith to a newspaper office, I wrote to the general how sorry I was that he had been put to so much trouble—­I had not received the letter which he must have written—­obliged to go home in the morning—­hoped at some future time to have the pleasure, etc., etc.  Then I went to my lodgings on Federal Hill, and, behold! there was the letter.  “Although the ambulance”—­ever blessed!—­“had been so often to the depot, it would be there on Monday morning, and again on Tuesday evening.  Don’t fail to,” etc.  Whereupon I called for paper and wrote the general that, in spite of the necessity for my returning home the next day, I would be at Blank Station on Tuesday evening and meet that ambulance—­blessed ambulance!—­or die in the struggle.  Go I would, and go I went—­if that is grammar.

A newspaper editor—­there is no end of editors in Virginia:  wherever there is a tank, a tan-yard or a wood-pile, there you find one—­a learned professor who had a flourishing school a few miles up the road (public instruction is playing hob with most of the private schools in Virginia), and a judge on a lecturing-tour (how is a Virginia judge to support his family without lecturing, wood-sawing or other supplementary business?) entertained me most agreeably on my way to the station.