sician will return presently, and she ought not to be further agitated today." "But I wish to see her physician too." "Not so, madam, my mistress especially desires that no one of this city shall see you with her: not from a lack of love for you, dear madam, her heart has gone ahead to meet you, since ever we left England. Return this afternoon, if you please, and leave her

now."

My story is getting tediously long, my dears; you need not shake your heads-ah! "Heaven save us!" and Aunt Milly wiped her eyes, "that was a sad and serious time. Thirty years have rolled away since Madge came back to die on her native soil. I remember every word she said, every word I said, how she looked, what she wore; I recollect the pattern of her favorite shawl-she gave it to Mrs. Paget-I know to this day how the succory water tasted that she drank. You see she was my dear est friend always, and she had been very unhappy, and I think sadness endears people more to us than mirth. You understand why the doctor was never to see us together? she did not wish to be recognized: and after a while, when I scarcely left her, whenever he came to visit Mrs. Smith (that was the name she bore in the hotel) I always waited in the adjoining room until he had gone., At home, I had great difficulty in accounting for my absence, but I merely said that I had found an invalid, a poor woman to whom my society was necessary, and so the matter ended.

Of course we had many mutual questions to ask and to answer when poor Madge was strong enoughbut it was by snatches almost that I learned her story.

Yes-Madge, broken, feeble, dying Madge was that bright and genial, and glorious actress, "whose

voice was like the music of the summer wind, whose laugh was like the chime of silver bells." "I, the original I, dear Milly," said she, "died and was buried, fourteen years ago, when I kissed you and went away. From my ashes, sprang a curious compound of cleverness and folly which happened to hit the fancy of the times. All the gayety of my former self, all the rollicking nonsense of my early days, all those fitful bursts of glee and sunshine which used to dazzle and shock you, burst out each night upon the boards. While the foot-lights irradiated my face, and all the mimic glories of the stage joined to the applause which I saw, and felt, and heard, filled my senses with their subtle perfume, I thirstily drained the cup-it never palled. Then, the curtain fallen, I came home as quietly and soberly as my old Paget. I was fifty, I was a hundred years old, but before the public, my dear, I was sixteen!"

"And now, my darling?"

"Oh, now," she said, wearily, "I am a ghost. Don't you see, I never speak, unless you speak first."

Her malady had been a year in progress-she had left the stage without any parade or notice. "But it was only there that she was happy," Paget told me, " her heart was broken before I ever knew her."

Soon, Madge mentioned her children, her "little boys" that were now grown men. "Imust see them," she said, "not just now, but presently." I knew what she meant by presently. I asked her if she did not wish to see the other members of her family, those "best friends?" a spasm of pain crossed her wan face. 66 Why should I if they are kind I will but regret to leave them. If they are what they used to be, why renew my sad experience?"

"But you would not, my Madge,

and I, consulted again about her.

Ought she not to see her family, her sons should we ask her? or send for them without her knowledge? And her husband, you may ask? fortunately there was no question of him he was at the West.

I took counsel, where only, when we seek it, the answer must be true and safe. I kneeled by the side of my poor, unhappy friend-I prayed that her sins might be forgiven her, and that now, at the last, she and I might be directed aright. I was alone with her she opened her eyes and looked affectionately at me, gratefully, so sweetly-ah! what a heart she had!

Well, dears, she consented. First she saw her sons. They were very fine lads and behaved beautifullyit was pitiable to see her. She was so weak, she could not speak, but her remnant of life, her very soul gazed out of her eyes at them. The Doctor soon took them away-she drew my ear close to her parched lips and I faintly distinguished, "I was wrong. This was my sin, this is my punishment."

The whole city now knew of Madge's return, and you may imagine the fuss and the talk and the lies. Some hours after she had seen her sons, came her father and Julia, and her two brothers. Her other sister was dead. I think the old gentleman would have been very kind and consoling to his wandering lamb, but he lived under terror of Julia's dove-like eyes. She was now a portly, handsome married woman, and of course not more loveable nor better than fourteen years before. Age improves nothing but wine and cheese, dears, and even those can have too much of it.

I think Madge meant to be calm and kind only-but the feelings of her youth, the impetuous love she had borne for these relatives, rushed

back on seeing them, with redoubled force. She stretched out her weak arms, folded her sister to her breast and sobbed aloud. Julia disengaged herself gently from the embrace, and while smoothing her ruff, said, "don't agitate yourself, Madge; we are very glad to see you, and we forgive you all the pain and anxiety you have cost us. Tell Madge so, Papa. I am sure she will be gratified to hear you say it." I bit my tongue hard to keep from speaking when Julia said this. She noticed me with a little condescending nod, and vouchsafed presently to give me her majestic paw. She installed herself now as headnurse, bullied Paget, over-awed the Doctor, snubbed Mr. Strong, lectured her nephews, directed her children, and let the hotel know that things were in different hands at present, and Madge as her sister was something quite distinct from an obscure Mrs. Smith. And all the world of our good city raised their voices in admiration of this most exemplary woman! Truly had that misguided Madge found her relations as ever, “the best of friends." Mrs. Grundy n'en tarissait pas. You see, I have not forgotten the French, my good Papa had me taught in Paris.

Poor Madge now sank rapidlyit was a mere question of time, of hours. Her sons scarcely left her bed side. Julia said to me one morning, "I hope people will understand that Madge's decline is not hereditary. It is a bad thing to have consumption in one's family. It might hurt my girls' prospects."

"I don't think your girls will inherit anything from their Aunt." I said this maliciously I own, for I knew that they knew that Madge had made money, and Julia loved money.

"Probably not," she answered composedly," and in fact, we must

ever rejoice that poor Madge has brought nothing more upon us than a possible report of hereditary weak lungs. With her dreadful temper, and her utter want of self-control, I have long lived in fear of murder or worse." Without waiting for my answer, she got up, and went to offer her sister some nourishment.

Madge died on the 14th day of March-a cold, bleak wintry day. The rain pattered upon the window panes, the wind howled down the chimneys. Her last sigh mingled with the sobbing of the blast: her end was stormy as her life had been, but, she died a penitent and a chris tian. I weep still, children, to think of her. It is thirty years since she died. There was in her the making of a noble woman: but she fell into hands that would not or could not guide her. May she rest in peace, poor troubled, tempest-tost heart! She is no model for you-but her's was a sad lot, and mysterious are God's ways.

She suffered much-how well I remember her repeating to me, one day, before her flight, these verses of the 55th psalm: "For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me-then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, my equal, my guide and mine acquaintance. Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." "Milly," she said, “can't I get "the wings of a dove?" indeed I am "weary of the windy storm and tempest."

Poor, poor Madge!

Her will was produced by Mr. Strong. She left very pretty for

tunes to her sons: a legacy to her husband, (they say that legally he could have claimed everything, but he did not.) To me she gave her god-father's gift of six hundred per annum during my life-time, with her dearest love! she said, after me, to her sons: mourning rings to her father, brothers and sister. You should have seen the avalanches of bombazine, and rivulets of crape that Julia wore. If grief can be shown by millinery work, Julia was inconsolable!

Minute directions for her tomb. stone were also in her will. In a church-yard not far from here, I will show you some day, my dears, a very singular grave. There is a pedestal of black marble, and upon it a shaft of the purest white. But the shaft is shivered from peak to base as if by lightning-not artistically, but roughly. It was done by a blow from the workman's hammer, and such were her orders. Upon the pedestal is a verse from the psalms: "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?"

This is my story, children: a sad one, but only too true."

"But, Aunt Milly," cried Mary, the eldest girl, "who was Madge? What name is there on her tomb? Tell us-please?"

Aunt Milly took the pleader's hand in hers and said very gently, Margaret Lennox.”

It is wonderful what an amount of common-place, gentlemen of the corps Editorial contrive to manufacture periodically upon the suggestive topic of the NEW YEAR. There is no accounting for the mass of dullness which loads our newspapers and magazines, about the first of January, upon any other supposition than that which points to the reactionary effect of the Christmas festivities. Punches compounded of ancient Glenvilat, and egg-nogg beaten to the lightness of foam on the summer's sea, are so truly delicious that they might have been, and with regard to the punch, (we rely on the authority of an Irish wit and scholar,) probably were handed round by Hebe to the Deities on Olympus, whenever those jovial old fellows determined to make a night of it, but, alas! a crafty and evil influence lurks somewhere in the cup, and unless we partake much more moderately of our nectar than seems in the nature of things possible, we are constrained to pay a most exorbitant price for our indulgence. Thus, the interval between Christmas and the New Year being brief, many of us (Editors, we mean,) find ourselves, at the latter period, still under the influence of some form of that dreadful punishment, which always follows excess in the use of what Festus Baily calls "creatural gifts." Hence, the lugubrious nature of most New Year addresses. Clothed in the sack-cloth and ashes of repentance, the poor Editor runs unconsciously into woful Jeremiads upon the past and the future, in which thankfulness to Providence for the favours of the departed season, is oddly mixed up with desperate reminiscences of Christmas puddings, (which did not agree with him,) ghastly forebodings of "hard times" to come, set off by an occasional dash of merriment, which sounds hollow and hysterical, and a not unfrequent allusion to the virtues of "hock and soda water" early in the morning.

Now, good reader, we shall strive to be neither dull nor dismal. We shall not bid you look back upon the wreck of your hopes in the past, nor, resuscitating your faults and follies, sermonize on the deceitfulness of human aims, and the vanity of human wishes. We design rather to dwell upon the brightest phase of our subject, to uncover the founts of hope

and joy which sparkle faintly through the shadows of the coming days, so that Faith may be vivified by Anticipation, and Labour grow enthusiastic in the thought of its reward. Let us consider the opening of a New Year, not so much as a season in which to count the sum total of disappointments, regrets and evil fortunes, as the dawn of an epoch of fresh exertions, locked in whose keeping there may rest for us a store of untold good. Cheerfulness and confidence are the Pioneers of successful enterprise. They blaze, as it were, a clear pathway through the wildernesses, which so often beset the road of duty, and let in through the river foliage the light of the guiding stars. But who can be cheerful and confident if he permits his memory to brood amidst the "clouds and darkness" of the melancholy, irrevocable past? We should linger upon those deeds which cannot be recalled or cancelled, only long enough to master the lessons of warning and experience, and then girding our armour about us, and only the stronger from defeat, "press forward for the prize of that high calling," wherewith, could we only hear and understand aright, God has vouchsafed to summon the humblest as the grandest of mankind.

"Let the dead Past bury its dead,"

embodies the quintessence of philosophy and wisdom, and surely when we arrive at some cardinal division of time, some period that lies as a neutral territory between that which was and is to be, the eye of the mind should be more earnestly fixed on the possible grandeurs and triumphs of the future, than on the mementoes of a "tale that is told," the dry bones which glimmer in the depths of that receding "valley of vision," through the cool pastures or dangerous quicksands of which we shall never wander more.

At the advent of every new year we are enabled in a measure to begin our life afresh, to renew our youth with its glad aspirations, unsordid delights and blessed promises. Not until we are stricken with age, until the silver cord is almost loosened, and the golden bowl totters to its fall, can we regard these epochs as other than breathing spells