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100 THE EXAMINER.

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y ! iy 3 BA y y a 3 might the merchant be called old Ellison. The well- La 2 dressed polished man had certainly grown rusty. The

- con ===! sleek smooth locks had now a mingling of silver threads among them. ‘The sharp quick eye was wild and restless—frowns intersected the wrinkles on hig blow, and the expression of his lip was withering, the com- plexion of his face was black and yellow mingled, and altogether it might have been difficult for those who had known the smooth, smiling, piquant, luxurious stock- jobber a little twelvemonth before, to have recognised him again, as he sat thus moodily in the dead of the night, in his lonely dressing-room, with his two wax candles guttering down beside him.

‘No help! no outlet! no escape ! muttered the stock- Than gold around them. Oh be sure of this— jobber. ‘Nothing but ruin staring me inthe face on The alms most precious man can give to man every hand! Ruin! ruin! ruin! ‘To-morrow seals my Are kind and truthful words; nor come amiss doom. ‘l'wenty thousand pounds worth of bills, and Warm sympathising tears to eyes that scan The world aright! The only error is, Neglect to do the little good we can!

SONNET. BY CALDER CAMPBELL.

Yr who the lack of gold would plead as lack Of power to help another, think not so;

But where the stumbling steps of sickness go, Follow with friendly foot; and in the track Of life when ye encounter, ’midst the snow Bewildered wanderers, turn not proudly back, But lead them gently from their walks of wo By such kind words as cast a brighter glow

up on those accursed walls! A name that never had an idle breath upon it until now !—and as men pass they will point, and smile, and sneer, and say, ‘ Have you heard! look there! Ah, there’s no knowing any one in: this world! Would you have thought he was so rotten! Good lack! and, O dear! and who'd have tiiought it! And then one will say, How much are you in for? and what have you lost by that scamp? and what are you done in? and—and’—the stock-jobber ground his teeth together.

A sort of despairing calmness succeeded to this frenzy. ‘The flush of passion subsided into a sort of malignant, fiend-like feeling, not altogether without a spice of triumph in it.

‘But | need not fear it! need not see it!—There is one way of escaping! I can get out of the way. Who cares for their mockery ?—Not I? [ laugh atit! Ecan grin in their faces, and they shall be afraid to look at me! [can answer them sneer for sneer, and the cow- ards shall huddle away!’

‘L wonder if I shall feel when [amin my coffin; I THE MERCHANT’S DAUGHTER. suppose they will bring me in insane, and give me

Christian burial! Ha! ha!ha! Ah! what is that be-

BY ABBOTT LEE. hind the curtain? Mocking fiend, I see thee beckoning (Concluded.) me! What, another, and snother! Away! away !— SELOT | : and yet, better with ye than alone! Ah! how awful

We pass for a moment from the trivialties of girlhood/to be alone! Well, fiends that ye are! ye are the only in Jaxurious bondoirs to the fury of men in the battle-! friends that are left me. weld. ‘The peals of reverberating cannon had died} + How strange that the shadows of my childhood away, the smoke of gunpowder, fit for the incense of} should come upon me at this hour; | remember me hell, had dissipated afar, and a hushed stillness succeed-| wej], when I was a little child, my mother taught me ed to the dire din of the horrible confusion, broken only|to pray. It was a pretty prayer that childish lisping hy the deep groans of the dying, who lay weltering in|that my mother taught me. I wonder if | could remem- blood. ‘I'he streams of life from thousands of hearts| ber it now. Forty years ago. I was just four years old whose affections might have thrown sunshine over as} when she died. 1 am forty-four years old—they will many household hearths, were commingling there, and put it on my coffin! saturating the very earth. The cords of love that had} ¢ Poor Isabella, I wish she had been well settled. I so lately bound the living to the dead, were rent and| wish [had suffered her to marry that Lieutenant Lin- broken. «The survivors spoke in hushed voices, feeling! coln, She submitted to me without a murmur, but she that they were in the ghastly majesty of death’s presence. |has never held up her head since. Poor thing, she will Thousands, whose pulses had throbbed no quicker under! be sad enough when she hears—but Providence will the flash of the sword or the roaring of the cannon, raise her up a friend. Is there, then, a Providence ? quailed before the solemn sovereignty that then possess-| What is it, then, that goads my inmost soul and pricks ed the field of Waterloo. Many aman who fears not! my spirit? Well, in another hour J shall know this a livingenemy, trembles at the proximity of a dead one.| oreat secret!

Multitudes were there who until that hour had never rf The stock-jobber rose from the damask-covered easy seen the awful aspect of the king of terrors ; many were chair on which he had been sitting. ‘No,’ he said to fearfully altered, the buoyancy of youth being changed himself—‘ no; pistols are doubtless prompt enough, and into the sternness of men by an almost instantaneous|{ would rather die in my own house, whilst | might process. Insome, the awful horrors of the scene hadjcal} it my own; but [ will not. No, no, [ will not go banished all bodily feelings of fatigue ; in others, worn- | ont of the world committing an act of cruelty ; I will not ont nature so imperatively needed repose, that men Jet those eyes first see me, whose blood it must curdle. might be seen even making a pillow ofadead foe; [ haye always deprecated the brutality of those men, while here and there, some of those harpies that are who, having resolved on suicide, commit the fearful known to follow in the wake of an army were seen ho-| action, so that their mangled bodies first curse the sight vering over the dlood-dyed field, and pillaging the dy- of some poor, weak, doting, helpless woman. Poor aug and the dead. \Isabella—she shaJl not find my blood upon the floor. -* The hero of a hundred fights’ leapt from the brave No, no, it shall not stain her feeble hands, or blast her horse that had carried him through the rage and fury quailing sight. She may hear what has befallen her, ofthe battle. ‘An express for home—for England!’ and that will be heavy enough, but she shall not see! exclaimed the commander-in-chief. No, no. A quarter ofan hour will bring me tothe river,

"he officer to whom this daty was entrusted, presum-| and there is water enough to wash away all my troubles ed to speak afew words tothe commander-in-chief.| Nota puff of emake. had yet issued from any of the They referred to a tal] pale young man who was stand-'tall chimnies whose vast accumulation mark the loca- ing at his elhow, blackened with smoke and smeared jity of our great city, when the unhappy. merchant with blood, and evidently exhausted in body, yet look-| unchained and unboited, for the first time in his life ing stern and intensely anxious. As the officer spoke,| the door of his own dwelling. His own servants were the general cast his eye on the young man and answer-| wrapped in heavy, stupid, dreamless sleep, and when ed, * ’ es, let him accompany you. He has signalized|they woke their greatest grief was but the trouble of himsetf. [ marked him, He may look for promotion.|idleness. The merchant envied the very dog that Take him with you. was only too sleepy to snarl at him as he passed. Old

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SONNET TO THE BUTTERCUP.

Wi. no one sing of thee, thou pleasing flower, With livelier tint than daisy e’er put on?

Who, when warm Phebus gives to May her dower, Siniling art seen the grass-green meads among ; What time the cuckoo tunes his mellow flute,

And on the sward the grasshopper we hear,

Tis then all gaily in thy yellow suit

A smiling floral star thou dost appear.

Meinory wipes off the dust of time, and brings Sweet recollections of those joyous hours,

When wandering gladly near Dove's pleasant springs, i culled acopious harvest of thy flowers;

With pinafore filled out—a venturous boy,

i tumbled in the grass, and shouted wild for joy.

pot twenty pounds to meet them, I shall be chalked)

a RR eae stock jobber hurry forward on his accursed purpose of self-murder.

‘The stock jobber walked as if life rather than death de- pended on his speed, or like a slave under the lash seek. ing to escape from its goadings, and in a little while he stood in one of the recesses of Blackfriars Bridge, his head leaning over the balustrade, and gazing oe the black moody tide that was ebbing away beneath,

‘T shall soon know it all! said the stock jobber— ‘all! If there be a Providence, why does it not intey- fere with me? ButI am left to myself—or, rather, | am left to the fiends! Providence has nothing to do with me:so down into that yawning grave—down! down!’

The stock jobber clambered to the top of the para- pet, and expanded his arms for the fatal plunge: the impulse had been given, and another moment would have precipitated him into the current; but even at the instant when he was arraigning Providence, a strong muscular grasp from behind pulled him headlong down upon the ground, and, both stunned and astonished at this different termination of his purpose, the stock jobber lay for a few moments in sullen berwilderment, with a tall thin young man, muffled up ina military cloak, leaning over him.

‘Madman exclaimed the stranger, ‘is death such a pleasant thing that you court it thus roughly? I tell you, better any life of woe, or toil, or drudgery, than noisome death. Be thankful that you are spared from this mad reckless act.’

‘Death is my only friend,’ replied the stock jobber sullenly, ‘and I know not where to look for another.’

‘Had you seen it in as many shapes as I have,’ re- ‘plied his companion, ‘you would have thought that ‘whole bones, ina whole skin, with the breath still in your body, a better condition than that of a dead king. But how do you know that you have not better friends in the living than the dead?”

‘You are a stranger to me,’ replied the stock jobber moodily. ‘You may think you have done me a service that entitles you to be free, but I think differently. You are a stranger! Go your way, and I will go mine.’

‘Your way is my may!’

Old Ellison stamped his foot angrily upon the ground. ‘Go! leave me! I do not thank you for what you have done. JI am in no hnmour to brook intrusion.’

‘Mr. Ellison, I shall not leave you at your bidding.’

‘Ha! do you know me then ?

‘Tam no stranger,’ replied the other, ‘as T will soon satisfy you.” Andas he spoke. he opened his large military wrap cloak, and lifted off the undress cap.

‘Lincoln! Is it possible! exclaimed the stock job- ber.

And Lincoln it was, though strangely and grievously altered. His under garments. were those that he had worn in the field of batile, torn, smeared, soiled, stain- ed, and bloody. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his lips parched and pallid, his face withered, and he bore the stamp of a man worn to the utmost limits of in- tense fatigue and anxiety.

‘Is this accident, or are you here to reproach me in my extremity 7’ exclaimed the stock jobber.

‘Neither, returned the young soldicr.—‘ With the exception of one circumstance, you were ever a kind friend to me, and even for that one, I-have grown so far worldly wise as to feel that you had justice and ree- son on your side, Thad no right to wish to reduce your daughter to beggary.’

¢And within this hour { have been wishing that t had not denied you. ITsabella’s feelings were with you, and I should not then have left her alone in the world,

holding out his hand, which the stock jobber shook, ‘and T trust that brighter days are in store for us all.’

‘lama ruined man! exclaimed the stock jobber. ‘Nothing can save me! I will not live to be pitied ane despised

‘7 can save you" replied the soldier.

‘ Pshaw exclaimed the stock jobber ;‘ you have noth- ing but your paltry pay, and I owe seventy thousand pounds |”

‘No matter” replied Lincoln, ‘even though it were double! 1 have been growing worldly wise since I last saw you. I own to you that I am tired with this mean position which I fill ia the world. IT confess lL love the ease and the deference that wait on wealth.

those slow processes by which other men delve on at

a pale face of the stern-looking young man flusk-| Ellison looked around: the grey mist of the morning’ SoeweiineenT and the bloody smearings, and he wae gently melting away before the coming sunlight, 1) ; ‘but still the objects around were lying indistinctly in) Ph +t —e man —e our old acquaintance, Lieuten-|the shade. The gas was burning, but seemed every ant Lincorm, oe e moment to grow paler under the influence of the on- Old Ellison was sitting in his own dressing-room, coming day. The merchant glanced suspiciously with his elbows on the table, and his face buried in his} around, as men do who know they have something to hands. ! he silence was so deep, that even the ticking hide, though it be but a feeling; he looked up he tale of his watch seemed a powerful sound. ‘The house|own dwelling, the home he thought to behold no more was hushed in repose. Who has not felt how insup-|and at the trees whieh he had never till that moment! portably painful that stillness is, which is not the sti!l-| believed that he cared for, but which, now he was los- ness of peace: . : ing them forever, he felt as if he loved. Strange, how ‘I'he clock of the neighbouring chnrch doled out its|the melted feelings flow into every nook and cranny | solemn ineasarement of life—the merchant started and! round them! ‘The only living being was a man shag

‘ + +R has We 2 fax #}, . at a ; i : ; Re ted Be his head. One, anes beere As he listened to) ped ina jarge coat, leaning against the railings of the nes a asureme fF time—of lift i3 s as-laqnnre. and at ' Cit or ei. . 5 - we solemn measuremene of tine life—his eyes a3-| square, and ag the stack jobber closed his own door be-

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gamed an expression nas’ mignt be supposed to|hind him, he almost fincied that the individual started — iad len sae ose dav a ia ‘ / t ee se La J : : weigh pon a man whose days are pumbered. Ab! las if coming towards him. Perhaps the idea disturbed

thy, sweetie ff slaatt ? ; “ryt | ; z 1 » ancertainty of death, And now welllany fnrther trains of thoucht and feeling, and made the } 3 3 - - ¢ ro 3 ta 434 «ww w

half-crown profits, and Lam venturing all upon a mas- terly stroke. Mr. Bilison, will you come into my terms ? If! show youa road toa princely fortune, to be made in a day. will you give me half of it and Isabella?

Something like the stock jobber’s old scornful smile broke over his haggard face as he answered,

‘I remember telling you that you were young, and now I am wondering how you have grown so old in so short a time.’

A little flush of embarrassment broke over the soldier's face.

‘In mingling with the world, Mr. Ellison, we grow

'worldly too, and perhaps it was vourself who gave me ‘one of my first lessons, Is it or is it not a bargain :’

‘Are you not sancvine abort the means?

‘If fam so of course I miss the end,’

‘Well I have nothing to lose, replied the stock job- ber. ‘I fear you are too credulous—or perhaps you ar@ only cheating me into another day of life.

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‘J thank you for that wish,’ returned the soldier,

I fully believe that I can never acquire these by any of

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