On the 1st of December, 1857, a funeral wended its slow passage along the crowded Broadway--for a few blocks, at least--challenging a certain share of the attention of the promenaders of that fashionable thoroughfare. There were but two carriages following the hearse, and the hearse itself contained all that remained of a young woman--a girl who had died in her eighteenth year, and whose name on earth had been Mary R----.
Mary R----, was the daughter of a poor couple in the interior of the State of New York. She was a girl of exquisite grace and beauty, but her life had been one of toil until her sixteenth year, when she attracted the attention of the son of a city millionaire, whose country seat was in the neighborhood. He was pleased with her beauty, and she simple and confiding, gave her heart to him without a struggle. She trusted him, and fell a victim to his arts. He took her to New York with him, and placed her in a neat little room in Sixth Avenue.
She was a 'soiled dove,' indeed, but the gentlest and dearest, and most devoted of 'doves,' 'soiled,' not by herself, but by others--soiled externally, but not impure within. There are many such doves as she-- poor creatures to be pitied, not to be commended, not at all to be imitated, but not to be harshly or wholly condemned--more sinned against than sinning.
For a while Mary R----'s life in New York was a paradise--at least it was a paradise to her. She lived all day in her cosy little apartment, did her own little housework, cooked her own little dinner, sung her own little songs, and was as happy as a bird, thinking all the while of him, the man she loved--the man whose smile was all in all to her of earth. At night she would receive her beloved in her best dress and sweetest smile; and if he deigned to walk with her around the block, or take her with him to the Central Park, she would be supremely blessed, and dance around him with delight. She cost nothing, or next to nothing; her wants were simple, her vanity and love of amusement were vastly below the average of her sex, she only needed love, and there is an old saying that 'love is cheap.' But, alas! there is no more expensive luxury than love--for love requires what few men really possess, a heart--and this article of a heart was precisely what the merchant's son did not possess. In time, he wearied of this young girl and her affection; her tenderness became commonplace; besides he had discovered attractions elsewhere. And so he determined 'to end with Mary,' and he ended indeed. Though he knew that she worshipped the very ground that he trod on, though he knew that every unkind word he uttered went through her heart as would a stab though he knew that the very idea of his leaving her would blast her happiness like a lightning stroke; yet he boldly announced to her that their intimacy must cease, that 'he must leave her. True, he would see her comfortably provided for, during a while at least, until she could find another protector,' etc., etc.