THE RUINED MERCHANT. 501 



used as an apology for buying these articles. A penny or twopence 

 a-week, they said, they could afford ; and although there was little 

 of any thing useful in thes<? sheets, as they were filled with accounts 

 of matters that did not interest them, they bought them because they 

 were cheap, and the pictures served to amuse their children, till they 

 began to quarrel about them, when they threw them into the fire to 

 put them out of the way. I did not find that these works rendered 

 them any reasons for being satisfied with their condition, at least I 

 never heard them quoted as doing this. They were sufficient to fill up 

 their few leisure minutes; and the " book of life," which, in former 

 times, had been laid at hand for family and solitary consolation, and 

 meditation, was neglected. 



THE RUINED MERCHANT. 



A TRUE STORY. 



CHAPTER I. 



** If I had thought thou. couldst have died, 



I might not weep for thee ; 

 But I forgot when by thy side, 

 That thou couldst mortal be. 

 It never through my mind had pass'd, 



The time would e'er be o'er, 

 And I on thee should look my last, 

 And thou shouldst smile no more." 



WOLFE. 



THERE are perhaps no periods in the chequered life of man, 

 during which he suffers such intense sorrow, as when some beloved 

 and cherished being is snatched away without those premonitory 

 warnings, which generally pave the way and prepare the aftections 

 to receive the shock destined to be inflicted upon them. The un- 

 endurable anguish that for a time bears down the spirit, shuts out all 

 the consolatory reflections, that under ordinary circumstances spring 

 up to soften the desolation of grief. The mourner weeps as one 

 without hope, and in the idolatry of his sorrow is ready to exclaim, 



" Oh ! had I died for thee or with thee might have died !" 



No language can describe the agonies that harrow up the very soul, 

 nor tell the utter misery of the dreadful hour, when the whole world 

 is considered as a wide and dreary waste robbed of its life, light, and 

 beauty, and despoiled of the one oasis which had been the chosen 

 resting-place of the heart, and which man's most sacred aftections 

 had converted into a mortal paradise. 



Such was the whirlwind of passionate grief that was sweeping 



M.M. No. 5. 3 T 



