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THE LADY'S

12

LUCY WYNNE; OR, RUSTIC FELICITY AND FASHIONABLE MISERY.

BY J. AUSTIN SPERRY.

CHAPTER I.

THE term fashion is merely the elite synonyma of display, and near a city every object is indelibly and universally stamped with it. What in its original beauty the Great Author sealed Nature, the art of man contorts into a second edition marked Fashion. Modesty is not the germ of a court, and if by accident it blooms among the weeds of fashion, it becomes by the contrast an eccentricity-it is turned into ridicule by the congregation of arrogance around it, in which vanity struggles to out-brazen vanity. Devoid of modesty, the fashionable man of the city is only happy when prominent : and like the man are his works. If you would seek his mansion, you must raise your eyes to where it frowns upon the hill-top, or towers up from the lowland to a height that is immoderately disproportioned to its base, as if its aspiring chimneys were endeavoring to overreach the more elevated situation of its neighbors. And strange, that the monuments of his pride should so reflect upon his silly vanity, that where by his works he has most labored to show his superiority his insignificance should become most apparent. For amidst all his gaudy grandeur, is not the plotting denizen of the city less noble than the rustic who dwells and meditates honestly with nature in her plainest garb : or can the one, who revels in the artificial haunts of luxury and vice, enjoy a tithe of the happiness of the other, who sits at feasts of the Omnipotent's preparation, and pledges Heaven in the pure nectar of the forest fountain ? Ere he interrogation is answered, permit us to make a narration.

It was near the midnight hour of a still November night, that a light still glimmered from the windows of cottage, whose plain walls were modestly half concealed in a locust grove, at the extremity of a romantic vale in Western Virginia. A lone female, and handsome, though rather beyond the meridian of life, kept vigil by the fire-side, within a small and rudely, but comfortably furnished room. The Holy Book was open upon her knee, and she was poring over the sacred pages like one engaged in seeking provision for her spiritual necessities ; but as at intervals a stirring of the air without would awake the midnight stillness to a whisper, she would start-erect her bowed form and lean her head in a listening attitude, which betrayed there was something of earth not wholly banished her bosom.

She was a mother; and closely enshrouded in a bed that graced the room, slumbered her charge, a light-haired boy. The child stirred, and, as if the day's sport lingered in his dreams, dashed the bed-clothes from his slender form, and laughed aloud. The mother approached the bed, re-composed the disturbed covering about the boy's frame, kissed his unconscious cheek, and then, startled by the sound of horses' feet without, turned, with an eager smile, to the door. In another moment she was clasped in a husband's arms. After the mutual congratulations and endearments of the meeting were over, the wife spread a slight, not inelegant repast, and while the travel-wearied man refreshed himself he rehearsed what he had seen in his absence.

He had been in New York some weeks endeavoring to secure a small claim of which some heartless worlding had attempted to defraud him. Tardy justice had awarded him his due, and that was a source of gratification to both-not that they needed or prized the "lucre," for their little farm afforded them an easy living, and they were not of a discontented disposition: but they possessed no little moiety of parental pride: they had formed large plans to educate and start their boy in the world. And as the father spoke of his success, he glanced toward the bed as if he would fain have embraced the child.

"He sleeps," said the mother in a suppressed tone, as if she feared to disturb the little slumberer ; and the father resumed his narration. The few weeks he had spent in the North had been peculiarly marked by the boisterous spirit of political excitement. He described the nocturnal meetings and the torch light processions; the endless arrays of mottoed transparencies, and the thousands of voices that shouted response to the words of impassioned orators.

The child roused by the familiar voice, slipped from the bed and crouched his slight form, silently and unobserved, by the father's side. With an eager ear did he drink in the glowing descriptions, which, although he scarcely comprehended them, conveyed to his delighted imagination an idea of something greatly wonderfulsomething that made his little heart leap wild, with an indistinct anticipation of sometime mingling in these glorious scenes himself-glorious, because novelty and pageantry constitute the Eden of a childish fancy. At length as he became more excited by the picture, he laid his hand upon his fathers arm, who, for the first time conscious of his presence, regarded a moment in mute surprise the tiny wonder-wrapped features that were upturned to his, and then clasped the little one fondly to his heart in an embrace of parental love. He little imagined, however, that his words had made an impression upon that young mind which would only be dissipated by the sad reality of future experience. But it was so ! The slightest circumstance in childhood has often fixed the colors of an after life, and from that moment, a dream of ambition filled the boy's breast at first only manifested in a longing for the empty