named Houp; Peter Houp, that was
his name. He was a very steady, upright, and honest man, married, had a
small, comfortable family, and to all intents and purposes, settled down
for life. How deceptive, how unstable, how uncertain is man, to say
nothing of the more frail portion of the creation--woman! Peter Houp one
fair morning took his basket on his arm, and off he went to get a leg of
mutton and trimmings for his next Sunday's dinner. Beyond the object of
research, Peter never dreamed of extending his travels for that day,
certain. A leg of mutton is not an indifferent article, well cooked, a
matter somewhat different to amateur cooks; and as good legs of mutton
as can be found on this side of the big pond, can be found almost any
Saturday morning in the Pennsylvania market wagons, which congregate
along Second street, for a mile or two in a string. Peter could have
secured his leg and brought it home in an hour or two at most.

But hours passed, noon came, and night followed it, and in the course of
time, the morrow, the joyous Sunday, for which the _leg of mutton_ was
to be brought and prepared, and offered up, a sacrifice to the household
gods and grateful appetites, came, but neither the leg of mutton, nor
the man Peter, husband and father Houp, darkened the doors of the
carpenter's humble domicil, that day, the next or the next! I cannot, of
course, realize half the agony or tortures of suspense that must have
preyed upon that wife's heart and brain, that must have haunted her
feverish dreams at night, and her aching mind by day. When grim death
strikes a blow, whenever so near and dear a friend is levelled, cold,
breathless, dead--we see, we know there is the end! Grief has its
season, the bitterest of woe then calms, subsides, or ceases; but
_lost_--which hope prevents mourning as dead, and whose death-like
absence almost precludes the idea that they live, engenders in the soul
of true affection, a gloomy, torturing and desponding sorrow, more
agonizing than the sting actual death leaves behind. I have endeavored
to depict what must have been, what were the feelings of Peter Houp's
wife. She mourned and grieved, and still hoped on, though months and
years passed away without imparting the slightest clue to the
unfortunate fate of her husband. Her three children, two boys and a
girl, grew up; ten, eleven, twelve years passed away, with no tidings of
the lost man having reached his family; but they still lived