“I have been in the convent of * * * for these two months past, where I intend to remain for some weeks at least, unless you take me hence.——We have a fine estate in Flanders; they say it is a charming country. Speak but a word, and I am ready to go with you, to live with you, to die with you.”
(To be continued.)
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.
THE DEAD INFANT; or, the AGONIZING MOTHER.
“She snatch’d the hope of youth, the pride of age
From the dark cerements of the shrouding sheet!”
——“Speak, Menander, let thy mother once more hear the Voice that was her last comfort—” She begged in vain, for Menander had closed his eyes in death, and with him had fled the only happiness that his widowed mother possessed. She had but a little while since bade farewell to another child, who had gone to that bourne from whence there is no return. And now must she lose the other—the thought was too much.—No one should part her from him.—“I will still keep him,” said she, in the height of maniac rage, “if he will not speak to me I shall still behold him—I will still have my child.”
A friend who willingly would have been the means of allaying her extreme sorrow, had taken the liberty, while the mother slept, of arraying the corpse in the dress suitable for interment, and removed it to the appointed place. The mother awoke—missed her child, and hastened to the church-yard.—It was not yet deposited in the earth.—In agony she tore the lid from the coffin—pressed him to her heart, and returned home.—She kissed him---kept him continually encircled in her arms---nor would she again be parted from him.
She offered part of the necessaries that were set before her to the insensate clay, nor did she eat because her son could not.---But nature could not long bear up against this torrent of grief.---She once more pressed him with redoubled force to her breast, again kissed his putrid cheek—and slept her final sleep.