wide white forehead
and delicately fashioned ear. He had a beautifully arched brow, heavily
pencilled, within which a glittering black eye, too deep set, gleamed
forth with unaccountable attraction. His nose was straight, small, but
full of nerve. You would never guess from that handsome, firm-set mouth
of his, where decision and resolution played about the cherry lips and
dimpled chin, that he would have proved the coward and run from duty and
from danger. No; but then Thornton Rush was made up of contradictions.

His mental and moral, like his physical organization, was full of
angularities, discrepancies, and unharmonious combinations.

He could be gentle as the dove, but fierce as the tiger; kind and
confiding as any child, but cruel and deceitful as Lucifer transformed.

So opposite qualities are seldom found combined.

The most brave men are often the most gentle; the most trustful are
frank and open-hearted. To parody Byron's eulogy on "The wondrous
three,"

Nature has formed but one such--hush!
She broke the die in moulding Thornton Rush.

What do you say? Althea and Thornton married and not one word about the
courtship, that most interesting of all portions of a love-history!

It was the tragedy of "the spider and the fly" enacted over again. We
would but shudder to watch that wicked, sly, patient tarantula, coaxing,
flattering, urging the poor little fly, whose bright wings are singed
with his hot breath, and whose wonderful eyes are held fast by the
fascination of his scintillant, unrelenting gaze.

It is to be hoped, dear reader, that you are not of that kind who love
to gloat over horrors. If you are, you must turn to some modern journal
of civilization which is able to satisfy you completely. But Althea and
Thornton are not married yet, they are only going to be.

After the lapse of a quarter of a century Duncan Lisle, for the second
time, attended commencement exercises at Troy Female Seminary.
Twenty-five years is but a dot upon Time's voluminous scroll, yet in
that brief space has been crowded infinite change. Madame X---- having
retired from the school of education and from the stage of life, has
been succeeded first by Madame Y----, and again by Mademoiselle de
V----. More than half the young ladies who had graduated with Della and
Ellice, who had looked like angels in simple white and blue, had lain
down the burthens of life, and were sleeping peacefully here and there.

Duncan Lisl