THE LOVELY LAURA. WITH AN ENGRAVING. "SWEET sensibility, oh, la! ROVER. The readers of the ROVER must be aware, and therefore we need not stop to tell them, that we are not much and often prone to be dabbling in the sentimental and the fashionable; that we are not always nibbling at these commodities; that is, they do not constitute our daily food, nor are they, in short, the alpha and omega of our existence. Still however, if any one has imbibed an impression that we eschew such things altogether, we beg leave to inform him that he has fallen into an error. But though we do not often sit down to a dish of this kind, when we do, we go it strong, and make a meal of it. We therefore present our readers this week with a high-flavored fashion-plate, worth more than all the fashion-plates they will get in the monthlies for a year. It is a sweet portrait of one of the sweetest ladies that ever walked the Bowery-yes, gentle reader, the Bowery -and we hug ourselves somewhat with pride and pleasure in presenting it, inasmuch as the everlasting praises of the beauty and fashion of Broadway have left her sister thorough-fare, the modest and unassuming Bowery, quite in the shade. And pray, what is Broadway, that she should thus triumph over her elder and worthier sister? Does age confer the prerogative? The Bowery saw "the cows come home" thousands of times before Broadway was born. Should Broadway be "stuck up," and allowed to put on airs in the face of her sister, because she has the whole train of dandies, and "them critters," at her heels? Hath not her sister a whole army of "Bowery boys" at her command? And could they not sweep Broadway in five minutes, and brush her whole race of dandies into the dock below the battery? If Broadway has more beauty, the Bowery has more strength. Is Broadway strait and graceful? Be it remembered the Bowery is not bent with age; her curve is nothing but a beautiful Grecian bend, which she hath worn from her youth up. And as to the notion, so industriously held up, that Broadway ought to 'be considered as taking the lead in beauty and fashion, we triumphantly point to our engraving this week as a sufficient refutation. But prose is too tame for such a subject. Senti ment, and beauty, and fashion should be embalmed in poetry, that they may live forever. And as we never choose to leave our work half done, we shall go the whole meal, desert and all. We have a poem for the occasion, written in the highest style of the art, and much after the manner of some of our most esteemed and fashionable bards. We shall not give the author's name, for we have always thought there was a glorious grandeur and sublimity in the idea that nobody could ever tell who wrote Homer. So we are inclined to leave this bone for 'future generations to pick, and let them find out, if they can, where it was written and who was the au thor. ODE TO THE SENTIMENTAL AND THE BEAUTIFUL. Who has not heard what few have seen, When this poem gets across the water, if that growling Dickens does not eat his own words again about American poets, we are much mistaken. VOL. II.-No. 21. Sweet the rose, when wet with dew; From cloud to cloud, from east to west, LUNACY, OR FANNY PARR. BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. READER mine, hath it ever been thy good or thy evil fortune to find either one man or one woman with an entirely sound mind, free from every little by-kink; with no cosey whim-wham, no ambling hobby, no snug little corner of lunacy, into which either he or she was wont to retire, and, throwing of the straight jacket imposed by society, give free scope to some favorite predilection-sit down the true unguarded heir of humanity, "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw?" If thou hast, I warrant me thou didst find a most dull and undesirable commodity; a true mediocre specimen; a living mummy, swathed and embalmed, but of no earthly use; a vital Mahomet's coffin, suspended between earth and heaven, to share in the glories of neither; a perpetual hibernate; a—but why multiply metaphors to describe a nonentity, a monster of a man? A mind perfectly balanced! we hear a world of twaddle about it-oceans of nonsense; such a thing never did and never will exist; it isn't in the nature of things. There would be no impulse, no motive to action. Men would walk our streets with a sepulchral tread; with great dull eyes, devoid of "speculation." Machines are put in motion to go on without change till the parts become clogged or worn out. Why, 'tis the perpetual change, the ebb and flow, the preponderance of this over that, which gives life, action; seizes upon time and circumstance, and makes society an acting, breathing mass; a discipline; a congregation of discordant and pestilent vapors, it may be, yet holding the conservative principle within, that shalį hereafter work out the good and the true. Swallows warble, through the shade, Sighs and simpers, grins and groans; Celia's waist, and blooming sonnets. Blue ey'd bells, and black ey'd beau's, Sound the trumpet, beat the drum, Tweedle-dee, and tweedle-dum, I honor either man or woman capable of healthy, vigorous impulse-who can feel towering passion, dignified indignation, and the thousand promptings incident to a full, noble and godlike nature. Such may and often do err, but their return to the right is full of majesty. I am writing an essay when I designed but a tale. Did you ever see a pretty lunatic? I have, many a one. True, they do not pass for such, but they are, nevertheless. Love-sick girls, with their pretty abstracttions, and melancholy sighs, are of this class, till marriage brings them to their senses, or drives them mad; or disappointment, "like a worm in the bud, preys on their damask cheek," and they go down to the grave, consumptives, as they are called, but in truth victims to the one emotion that decides the fate of woman forever. Whosoever becomes the victim of one absorbing thought or emotion, is, for the time being, a "deranged" man. The disease is more or less confirmed, proportionate to the length of time and virulence of the symptoms. It may be simply a love fit, which in your sex, Mr. Editor, is of short duration; it may be speculation, to result in theories, whimsies, hobbies; or, if still more intense, be the working in passion, vice, crime; and a total prostration of the will, consigns the patient to our halls of justice, or to the walls of an insane hospital; or, where the case is pronounced inveterate, a cure is effected by means of strangulation. I digress, but it is the very vice of my subject. the world, like Hamlet, will say: "bring me to the test, And I the matter will reword, which madness Half yet apply the test when off their guard, and you find them "gambol" from the subject in hand like very madmen. One train of association strikes another, and they are off every moment upon a tangent; their hearers call it a digression, a beautiful episode, because they find therein an apology for the like in themselves; but it is a dash of lunacy-just enough to make them delightful, but the thing, nevertheless. A pretty lunatic. Ophelia must have been one. We never weep for Ophelia-Shakspere never designed we should do so we feel a sweet refreshing sadness come over us, but nothing like suffering at her fate; she is too airy, too sweet and earnest, for common life, and we are prepared for what follows. We take her own "rosamary for remembrance," and her posies for thought, and even take up with a sad pleasure her pretty burden of, "And will he not come again? for we we feel it to be the sweet language of a young Fanny [Parr was just such a one. A pretty blueeyed girl, with long fair hair, and a figure like a sylph. Her eyes had the prettiest look of appeal in the world, and she had a way, unconscious to herself, of drawing up beside the one she was addressing, as if she were alive with tenderness, and sought protection. She had many lovers, but, herself simple and true-hearted, loved only one. I doubt if she ever dreamed that a woman's heart could change. She read of such things, indeed; but then she always regarded them as the fancies of the poets, and she had a thousand of her own, so she could never believe them real. She had a world of illusions, beautiful, trustful and pure; and that became the real to her. When her lover first went away, Fanny amused herself in feeding the birds he had given her, and tending the flowers that grew most beautifully under her care. Quiet and secluded, she had little to occupy her attention, and the songs she sang, the books she read, the walks she took, all indicated the presence of her lover to her mind's eye. He would be home in six months, and then he would make her his wife. Time is always a laggard to divided lovers. A thousand methods are devised to kill him, yet he stays by with his leaden face as if his journey would never cease. Six months passed away, and Fanny was buoyant with the hope of the return of her lover. Day after day she sat in expectation, and yet he came not. She had ceased to hear from him, but she did not heed that, for surely he will soon be here, she thought, and all will be explained. A month more passed, and yet he came not. No tidings reached her, and the hope that had hitherto consoled her began to fade from her heart. Her cheek grew pale, and a listlessness crept upon her, making exertion of any kind painful. Her friends resorted to many expedients to rouse her, but in vain. They tried to excite her woman's pride by tales of his desertion and falsehood; but she shook her head mournfully, and the large tears gathered in her eyes. "He is ill, he is dying," she would articulate, "or the ocean has become his grave." A year passed in this way, and Fanny was wasted to a shadow. One day she was seated in the verandah with her hands folded in her lap, when 'a mendicant came to ask alms. The woman regarded her for a moment in silence, and then respectfully took her hand and read the lines upon the palm. Fanny was instantly all attention. But the woman was silent, and turned away. "Tell me if he is alive," cried Fanny, carnestly. "You will never be his wife," replied the woman. "He is dead! he is dead!" shrieked the poor girl, and fell to the earth. When Fanny recovered she found the beggar looking sorrowfully into her face, while her friends were bathing her temples. She beckoned her forward. "Is there no way, good woman, by which you can tell me his fate?" The woman shook her head, only saying, "Lovers are often false." "No! no! not false! Henry could never be false; he was all truth and nobleness; besides, who could be false to love like mine?" The woman took a pack of cards from her pocket, and sat down at the feet of the poor girl, and began to shuffle them over. "Now wish," she said, "and cut the cards three times, all the time with the same wish." Fanny did as she was directed, repeating her wish aloud, "I wish Henry will soon be here," three times over, and laying the cards on the scat beside her. The woman then looked them over and put them by. "Tell me what it is. Shall I have my wish ?" cried the half bewilderd girl. "Leave the future with the Almighty, lady. No good can come of this." "Tell me all. I can bear anything now;" and she burst into tears. FANNY PARR. Thus adjured, the woman said in a low voice, "There is sickness and death to your lover." "I knew he wasn't false," cried Fanny, bursting into an hysteric laugh. "I knew he wasn't false," as if even death was preferable to falsehood. And now, weeks, months passed away, and every day Fanny might be seen with the cards between her fingers, her lids drooping, and eyes fixed upon their characters. Her face was calm and serious, a faint smile only stealing to her lips, as at each operation "I am dying; do you not see I am? Teach me your art, that I may know the worst that is to befall me." The woman arose to go, but Fanny recovered herself she observed the deuce of spades was never beside her and grasped her arm. lover. "I knew he wasn't false," she would murmur, and then cut and shuffle the cards again. If at any time the obnoxious card bore a juxtaposition, her brow would contract, and she would whisper, "No, no, Henry isn't false, but he fears for me; he fears I may forget him in his long absence. No, Henry, never! never!" and she would burst into tears. The woman looked pityingly in her face, and kissed her thin hand, while a tear fell upon it. That tear revealed the depths of womanhood; the strong, never to be effaced characters upon the heart, to be read, it may be, only by the eye of the All-seeing. Have love and sorrow become one? Both are superstitious, and both are asking of the future. The village girl has a thousand methods by which she seeks to test the sincerity of her lover, and her anxiety is just in proportion to the earnestness of her own attachment. The beggar was respectable in her appearance, and had an air of mysticism, entirely foreign to anything like imposture; she was evidently deluded in her own imagination. She had unqualified faith herself in all she taught. "These pieces of paper," she began, "look simple and unmeaning enough: yet it was the operation of a marvelous mind that conceived their number and devices. They have a character affixed to each, and the position which they occupy is fixed by fate. Where the wish is strong in the soul it decides the place of each, and they become oracular. But it will take you long, very long, to learn their true meaning; indeed you must have the experience and suffering that I have known, it may be, before you will rightly understand them." The eyes of the two met, and there was that strange look of affinity, an expression akin each to the otherthe faint overshadowing of reason in each, that had at once established a sympathy between them. She went on to explain. "This ace of hearts is your house. You are fair, and you must be the queen of diamonds; your lover must be the king to the same suit. Now shuffle the cards and see what is next you." She did so, and the woman went on. "There you see is your house, you are beside it; and the ten of spades, and the ace of spades are between you and your lover. Good angels shield you, poor child, for that means sickness and death." Fanny shuddered, still repeating, "I knew he couldn't be false," as if that were yet a comfort. She took the picture of her lover from her bosom, and the two looked upon it and wept, with a strange sympathy. Alas! poor girl, so thorough had become the sympathy between the two bewildered minds, that each had forgotten that their intercourse had been that only of a few hours. 323 The woman took her leave, first putting the cards in Fanny's hands, that she might read her own fate. The village maidens learned to sympathize with the poor girl, and brought her fruits and flowers, and tried to wile her from her melancholy. They would in part succeed, for Fanny was exceedingly gentle, and won by the voice of tenderness. Then they would ask to have their own fortunes told, and, strange to say, a belief in her predictions gained ground, and the maidens learned to rely upon what she told them. Fanny would say they must be sincere and earnest in what they wished or she could predict nothing by the cards. All would be confused and only mislead both. At length the woman looked up. "You are young and beautiful. Forget the past and learn to love another. I have known much of the world; and thou-paired. sands, tens of thousands, forget their first love, and are happy in another." Fanny looked at her with amazement. "I! what I be false to Henry! false to myself! and you counsel it !" The lunacy of the poor girl had its uses. Her companions began to assimilate to her own earnestness; to dread falsehood, and to forbear trifling in affairs of the heart. Often when two or three were gathered about her, Fanny would tell the fortunes of one, and then bid them wait while she cut for herself. As piece after piece came before her eye, she would read the details in a low voice: "Yes; a long removal by water; tears and kisses obstructed: yet love, a great deal of love, and disappointment with it. Fanny and Henry close to the house, and sickness and death between; always the same; no hope, alas! only in our faith;" and the tears would trickle over her pale cheeks while her companions stood weeping around her. At length, one bright morning in June, when the rose was filling the air with gladness, a carriage stopped at the door, and Henry, pale and emaciated, tottered to the house. He had been shipwrecked, had been ill in a foreign port, and now he had come home to die with Fanny. She felt it must be so, and she nestled in his bosom, more than content, for she felt she too must be a victim. It was pitiful to see the lovers, each with the hand of death upon them, yet so cheerful in the belief. Henry, indeed, wept bitter tears over the wreck of thought in the poor girl, but then he learned to feel it more merciful thus to have been, for these fantasies had wrought their own relief. Fanny brought her cards, and taught her lover how to read their fate; and it may be that a harmless credulity crept even upon his own mind, for illness is sure to bring down the arrogance of mere reason, while the affections and sentiments, the true soul, remain unim "Here is a marriage ring beside us, Fanny; be my wife, dearest," said her lover, as they reclined beside the window, Fanny with her head upon the shoulder of her lover, who held the cards in his thin fingers. Fanny pressed her lips to his head and murmured, "Dear, dear Henry." The priest was summoned, and they were made one, not in vows merely but in soul. They sat and looked into each other's eyes. "Put by the cards, dearest," said Fanny; "I have had a long, sad, and yet sweet dream. But now I am thine, Henry, thine!" She had knelt at his feet, subdued by the sweet reverence and tenderness of her woman's heart, and as she ceased to speak her head fell upon his lap. Henry raised her to his bosom. Fanny had ceased to dream. It is many years since the lovers were laid side by side in the little churchyard of N, but the maidens of the village yet scatter their graves with flowers, and the story of their truth and constancy has wrought as a leaven upon the community, making the vows of love a holiness among them. NOTE.-The story of Fanny is in every essential a true one, an incident similar having come under the writer's own obser vation. But as he descends the western declivity of the mountain, the din of real life rises to greet his ear, and he soon penetrates into the midst of the ancient settlements, of which we have before spoken. The Dutch farmers placed their flat houses near the middle of their farms, with little regard to symmetry or taste in their arrangements. Probably at the time many of these houses were erected, no roads piercing farther into the interior had been laid out. At the date of our story, some enterprizing Yankees had cut a straight turnpike road across the valley much to the annoyance of its old fashioned inhabitants; and the wandering tracks by which their farm houses were connected with this profane channel, resembled, in their anguralities and versions, the diagrams of geometry. HANS SWARTZ. A MARVELOUS TALE OF MAMAKATING HOLLOW. Well established in the fattest part of this exuberant valley, lived Hans Swartz, one of the patriarchs of the WEST of the Shawangunk mountain, lies a sweet village. His ancestors had been patriarchs time out of valley, in the days of our story called, "Mamakating mind, the chimney of his parental mansion contained Hollow." It diverges from the valley of the Hudson certain amorphous masses, which tradition designated River, at Æsopus, and makes its way like the bed of as the identical bricks brought by his ancestors from some ancient stream in a southerly direction, until it Holland. The house of Hans covering an immense meets the northern line of New Jersey. It requires area, with its roof descending on each side nearly to but little fancy to conceive that the Hudson river once the ground, resembling one of those homely impleploughed its course through this wonderful ravine, and ments in New England, yclept a hen-coop; his barmingled its waters with those of Delaware Bay. In- racks, made of four perpendicular timbers, surmounted deed, were the barrier which fills the northern mouth by a square, thatched roof, in which he persisted to of the Mamakating Hollow, even now removed, it store his grain and hay, notwithstanding the modern might contend with the Highland channel for the hon-invention of barns; the diverging corn crib before his or of conducting to the ocean the rich billows of our door; the pig pens in their neighborhood; the grindnorthern Pactolus. And magnificent as is the High-stone, aviary and out door oven, scattered around in land scenery, the traveler would lose but little in ex- mockery of symmetry; all bespoke a man of weight changing it for the stern cliffs of the Shawangunk, and means, according to the estimation of that day. which, like a sturdy brother, walks beside this beautiful valley, from her northern to her southern limit. Hans, however, had become somewhat degenerate. His wife was of mixed blood; and as a punishment for marrying out of caste, she proved to be a terrible thorn in his side. She exercised a pretty decided supremacy in all matters occurring in her personal presence, for Hans was naturally good tempered and yielding, and the habit of obedience had become a second nature. The judicious descendants of DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER were the first to discover and improve this rich alluvial, the natural entrance to which is from Esopus. Their farms, some twenty years ago, before turnpike roads and a canal intersected those regions, were stretched across the Hollow from the Shawangunk to the corresponding mountain on the west. They were The most severe test of his docility, was on the ocfurnished, at either extremity, with woodland and pas-casions of interruptions, from his better part, of certain tures; while the spacious bed between the ridges, va- patriarchal levees, which Hans had, from time immerying from two to five miles in width was a carpeted morial, been accustomed to hold at the door of his mansion. It was his delight, as it had been that of his fathers, to collect around him on a summer's eve, those, who, like himself, loved the cup and pipe better than hard work. At such times Hans was in his true glory. Seated in a large chair, upon the step of his door, with the above mentioned instruments of quiet enjoyment in either hand, he discussed at length the hardships of olden times, the decay of fine horses, the woful laxity of Dutch integrity, and the inroads of the bustling Yankees, to the great edification and enjoyment of meadow. The traveler who sets out in the morning from the beautiful village of Bloomingburgh, to pursue his journey westward, soon finds himself by an easy ascent, on the summit of the Shawangunk. Before him will generally be spread an ocean of mist, enveloping and concealing from his view the deep valley and lovely village which lie almost beneath his feet. If he reposes here for a short time, until the vapors are attenuated and broken by the rays of the morning sun, he is astonished to see the abyss before him, deepening and his subordinate friends, who, stretched on the seats of opening on his vision. At length, far down in the turf or slate on either side, quietly enjoyed the patrinewly-revealed region, the sharp white spire of a vil-arch's discourse and hospitality. lage church is seen, piercing the incumbent cloud : and as the day advances, a village, with its ranges of bright more than once disturbed this quiet, vegetating cirThe terrible inroads of Hans' wife had, however, colored houses and animated streets, is revealed to the cle of worthies; insomuch that the most urgent enadmiring eye. So strange is the process of its deve-treaties of Hans, backed by the potent arguments of lopement; and so much are the houses diminished by the bowl, could seldom prevail on his faint hearted the depth of the ravine, that the traveler can scarcely friends to retain their places after the clock had tolled believe he is not beholding the phantoms of fairy land, nine. or still ranging in those wonderful regions which are unlocked to the mind's eye by the wand of the god of dreams. One summer's eve, surrounded by his obsequious neighbors, Hans had descanted with uncommon feli. city of utterance on the woful conflicts of their an |