Part 26 (2/2)

Is there a thorn in the crown that you wear?

Let it hide in my heart till a rose blossom there!

For grief or for glory--for death or for life, So shall I love you, my sweetheart, my wife.

THE LITTLE BROWN CURL.

A quaint old box with a lid of blue, All faded and worn with age; A soft little curl of a brownish hue, A yellow and half-written page.

The letters, with never a pause nor dot, In a school-boy's hand are cast; The lines and the curl I may hold to-day, But the love of the boy is past.

It faded away with our childish dreams, Died out like the morning mist, And I look with a smile on the silken curl That once I had tenderly kissed.

One night in the summer--so long ago-- We played by the parlor door, And the moonlight fell, like a silver veil, Spreading itself on the floor.

And the children ran on the graveled walk At play in their noisy glee; But the maddest, merriest fun just then Was nothing to John and me.

For he was a stately boy of twelve, And I was not quite eleven-- We thought as we sat by the parlor door We had found the gate to heaven.

That night when I lay on my snowy bed, Like many a foolish girl, I kissed and held to my little heart This letter and silken curl.

I slept and dreamed of the time when I Should wake to a fairy life; And sleeping, blushed, when I thought that John Had called me his little wife.

I have loved since then with a woman's heart, Have known all a woman's bliss, But never a dream of the after life Was ever so sweet as this.

The years went by with their silver feet, And often I laughed with John At the vows we made by the parlor door When the moon and stars looked on.

Ah? boyish vows were broken and lost, And a girl's first dream will end, But I dearly loved his beautiful wife, While he was my husband's friend.

When at last I went to my childhood's home Far over the bounding wave, I missed my friend, for the violets grew And blossomed over his grave.

To-day as I opened the old blue box, And looked on this soft brown curl, And read of the love John left for me When I was a little girl,

There came to my heart a throb of pain, And my eyes grew moist with tears, For the childish love and the dear, dear friend, And the long-lost buried years.

DE PINT WID OLE PETE.

Upon the hurricane deck of one of our gunboats, an elderly looking darkey, with a very philosophical and retrospective cast of countenance, squatted on his bundle, toasting his s.h.i.+ns against the chimney, and apparently plunged into a state of profound meditation. Finding, upon inquiry, that he belonged to the Ninth Illinois, one of the most gallantly behaved and heavy losing regiments at the Fort Donelson battle, I began to interrogate him upon the subject.

”Were you in the fight?”

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