Among the hundreds of passengers that roam the decks and guards, we recognize two familiar faces; and our eyes love to linger on them, for they are redolent with happiness. One of them is that of the dreamy, abstracted girl we noticed years ago, leaning over the balustrades of this same queenly boat as she approached New Orleans. But she was alone then. Now; a manly form is bending over her, and whispering words we cannot hear; nor do we need to hear them to know they carry joy to the listening ear, for her dark eye glows with happiness, as she looks confidingly in the face of the speaker, and utters something which brings the same joy-light over his fine, intellectual features.
Now you do not wish us to tell you, reader, that Wayland Morris and Alice Orville are man and wife; and that they, in company with Fred. Milder and wife, and Susette and husband, are bound for New Orleans, to surprise Winnie Lester in her regal home. Your intuition has revealed all this to you e'er now, and you have pictured in your minds how blank with amazement young Mrs. Lester's pretty face will be when she beholds this "family-group" in her elegant drawing-room, all eager to welcome and be welcomed, and overflowing with exuberant life and gladness, as people ordinarily are when they get safely off one of those beautiful, but treacherous western steam-palaces.
All this your vivid imaginations will easily portray in far more glowing and picturesque colors than our poor pencil can paint. So we leave you to conjure up all the bright visions you choose with which to deck the futures of our young debutants in the great drama of wedded life. And some of you young writers, who thirst for fame's thorny laurels, may touch your inspired pens to paper, and give us a sequel to this hasty, ill-finished tale, a true production of our "fast" age.
In conclusion, let us say, that years after these events transpired, as the "Eclipse" passed up and down the Mississippi, on her trips to and from New Orleans, the jocular clerk was wont to call the attention of his passengers to a beautiful English cottage, surrounded by vines and shrubbery, which stood on the Tennessee shore, and exclaim, "The dwellers in that cottage learned their first lesson of love on the guards of the Eclipse."
[COME TO ME WHEN I'M DYING.
A SONG.]
Come to me when I'm dying;
Gaze on my wasted form,
Tired with so long defying
Life's ever-rushing storm.