Hark! an eager knocking at Nurse Ingersoll's door. She starts from her drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and tea-spoon, and lights a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. Rap, rap, rap! again; and she hurries adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at death's door now, since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse Ingersoll's. Again the peal resounds, just as her hand is on the lock. 'Be quick, Nurse Ingersoll!' cries a man on the door-step; 'old Colonel Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach, and has sent for you to watch by his death-bed. Make haste, for there is no time to lose!' 'Fane! Edward Fane! And has he sent for me at last? I am ready! I will get on my cloak and begone. So,' adds the sable-gowned, ashen-visaged, funereal old figure, 'Edward Fane remembers his Rosebud!'
Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss within her. Her long-hoarded constancy--her memory of the bliss that was--remaining amid the gloom of her after life, like a sweet-smelling flower in a coffin, is a symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime, the Rosebud may revive again, with all the dew-drops in its bosom.
'I'VE a long stout bill, like the condor bird, and a cloak of canvass white, And walking sticks, full two or three, that sport a banner bright; I carry an anchor on my bows, and cannon in my sides, And a compass true, that night and day my course unerring guides.
'My way is on the stormy deep, and the tempest as it blows, But rocks my darling sons to sleep, who laugh at human woes; I bear a nation's arms abroad, where nations without me Could never speak in sovereign power--I'm mistress of the sea!
'When night comes on, I light a lamp, when storms, I trim a sail, My hardy boys are e'er alert, with hearts that never fail; I rove in might the dark blue deep--I draw a golden chain, That causes man on man to smile, and rivets main to main.
'Wealth follows where my canvass flies, and power attends my roar, I dance upon the bounding sea, and smile beside the shore; If art and nature both be taxed, they all are found a-lee, Compared, in might and glory, to a noble ship at sea.'
Here ceased the ship to speak, the while she proudly dashed her way, When thus a meek and lowly man took up the broken lay: 'Ah! thus,' he cried, 'shall all be borne, and thus shall all be blest, Who put their trust in Alohim, and in Messiah rest.'