1872.

With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long abuse,
By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.

Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the mistress stepped,
Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with his hands, and wept.
Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply, with brows afrown:
"What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge of the town?"

"Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know and God knows
I love her, and fain would go with her wherever she goes!

"Oh mother! that sweet face came pleading, for love so athirst.
You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's angel at first."

Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down a bitter cry;
And awed by the silence and shadow of death drawing nigh,

She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer the young girl pressed,
With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to her breast.

"My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice cruel grown.
She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her alone!"

But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his lips to her ear,
And he called back the soul that was passing: "Marguerite, do you hear?"

She paused on the threshold of heaven; love, pity, surprise,
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her eyes.

With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never her cheek grew red, And the words the living long for he spake in the ear of the dead.

And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to blossoms grew;
Of the folded hands and the still face never the robins knew!

1883.

His life was not his own,
Nor lived for self alone.

"Hater of din and riot
He lived in days unquiet;
And, lover of all beauty,
Trod the hard ways of duty.

"He meant no wrong to any,
He sought the good of many,
Yet knew both sin and folly,-
May God forgive him wholly!"

THE

Edmund Quincy.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1808. DIED at Dedham, Mass., 1877.

AN OLD HOUSE IN BOSTON.

[The Haunted Adjutant, and Other Stories. 1885.]

HE good old class of "garden-houses," in which it is recorded that Milton always chose to live, is now almost as entirely extinct here as in London itself. How well do I remember one of these, in which some of my happiest days and merriest nights were spent! It stood with its end to the street, overshadowed by a magnificent elm of aborigi nal growth, which made strange and solemn music in my boyish ears when the autumn winds called forth its hidden harmonies at midnight. Entering the gate, you proceeded on a flagged walk, having the house close to you on your left, and on your right the courtyard, filled with "flowers of all hues," and fragrant shrubs, each forming the mathematical centre of an exact circle cut in the velvet greensward. When within the front door, you had on your left hand the best parlor, opened only on high solemnities, and which used to excite in my young mind a mysterious feeling of mingled curiosity and awe whenever I stole a glance at its darkened interior, with its curiously carved mahogany chairs black as ebony with age, its blue damask curtains, the rare piece of tapestry which served as a carpet-all reflected in the tall mirror, with its crown and sceptred top, between the windows. I remember it used to put me in mind of the fatal blue chamber in Bluebeard. I am not sure now that there was not something supernatural about it.

But it was the parlor opposite that was the very quintessence of snug

ness and comfort, worth half a hundred fantastic boudoirs and modern drawing-rooms bedizened with French finery. On your right hand as you entered were two windows opening upon the courtyard above commemorated, with their convenient window-seats-an accommodation which I sadly miss-with their appropriate green velvet cushions, a little the worse for wear. On the opposite side of the room to the windows was a glass door opening into the garden,—a pleasant sight to see, with its rectangular box-lined gravel walks, its abundant vegetables, its luxuriant fruit-trees, its vine trained over the stable-wall. As you returned to the house through the garden-door, you had on your right the door of a closet with a window looking into the garden, which was entitled the study, having been appropriated to that purpose by the deceased master of the house. This recess possessed substantial charms to my infant imagination as the perennial fountain of cakes and apples, which my good aunt of whom presently-conducted in a never-failing stream to the never-satisfied mouth of an urchin of six years old. I thought they grew there by some spontaneous process of reproduction.

A little farther on, nearer to the study-door than the one by which we entered, was the fireplace, fit shrine for the Penates of such a household; its ample circumference adorned with Dutch tiles, where stout shepherdesses in hoops and high-heeled shoes gave sidelong looks of love to kneeling swains in cocked hats and trunk-hose; while their dogs and sheep had grown so much alike from long intimacy as to be scarcely distinguishable. How I loved those little glimpses into pastoral life! I have one of them now, which I rescued from the wreck of matter when the house came down. Within the ample jaws of the chimney, which might have swallowed up at a mouthful a century of patent grates, crackled and roared the merry wood fire,-fed with massy logs which it would take two men to lift, as men are now,-casting its cheerful light as evening drew in on the panelled walls, bringing out the curious "eggand-anchor" carvings, which were my special pride and wonder, and flashing back from the mirror globe which depended from the beam which divided the comfortable low ceiling into two unequal parts. And let me not forget the mantelpiece, adorned with grotesque heads in wood and clusters of fruit and flowers, of which Grinling Gibbons him self need not have been ashamed. And then the Turkey carpet, covering the breadth, but not the length, of the room; and the books,--the "Spectator's" short face in his title-page, the original "Tatler," the first editions of Pope. But time would fail me were I to record all the wellremembered contents of that dear old room,—the sofa or settee, of narrow capacity, looking as if three single chairs had been rolled into one; the card-table, with its corners for candles, and its pools for fish scooped out of the verdant champaign of green broadcloth. But enough: let us