Ay, what other indeed, Alice? If you would have Wayland's love, there could not be a stronger proof that 'tis yours, than this apparent neglect and forgetfulness. Love joys in mystery,
"Shows most like hate e'en when 'tis most in love,
And when you think 'tis countless miles away,
Is lurking close at hand."
So, be not too sad, Ally, dear, when the brave steamboat bears you up the majestic Mississippi, and far onward over the beautiful Ohio, amid her wild, enchanting scenery, and the dashing railroad cars at length set you down on a quiet summer evening at your mother's rural threshold. Try hard to say, "I have forgotten Wayland Morris;" but your heart will rebel; and try harder to say, "I shall never behold his face again;" still "hope will tell a flattering tale;" and try hardest of all to exclaim, "I'll fly his presence forever." But yet, away down low in your beating bosom, a little voice will love to tantalize and whisper—"Will you, though?"
CHAPTER VIII.
"Come, clear the stage and give us something new,
For we are tired to death with these old scenes."
Night after night, high up in the sky, the stars shone wildly bright, but the heaven refused its grateful showers and the earth lay parched to a cinder beneath the blazing sunbeams. The mighty Mississippi shrunk within its banks to the size of a mere wayside rivulet, and the long lines of boats lay lazily along the levees. No exchange of produce or merchandise could be effected between the upper and lower regions of the great Mississippi valley, and the consequence was universal depression in trade and heavy failures. Esquire Camford went among the first in the general crash, and his fair consort's nerves went also. The nerve-reviver failed to produce the least soothing effect in this dreadful emergency, and she sank into a bed-ridden ghost of hysteria, with Thisbe for her constant attendant, to minister to her numerous wants, and feed her with lobsters' claws and Graham crackers, which constituted her sole food and nourishment.
As for the "belle and beauty," she, on a day, married Mr. Gilbert, in pearl-colored satin, and that gentleman chancing to overturn a sherry-cobbler on the fair bride's robe, the delicate creature went into a nervous paroxysm, which so alarmed and terrified the happy bridegroom, that, when he recovered his senses, he found himself on the far, blue ocean, with the adorable Celestina's marriage-portion, consisting of the snug sum of fifty thousand dollars, wrapped up in a blue netting-purse in his coat pocket. How the great bank-bills grinned at him, as if to charge him with the wanton robbery and desertion! He gazed around in a bewildered manner, and the first face that met his eye was that of his brother-in-law, Jack Camford, who advanced with a woeful smile distorting his fine features, and exclaimed,