when the partner of life is taken away, and children know not the
meaning of Death, that has done so awful a thing upon the inoffensive
one; but above all is shining, Meshach said, the star of motherhood,
faintly lighting our way, mellowing our souls, and basking on the
waters.

As he continued, and she could not see him, but only hear the
plaintiveness of his voice, it became comfortable to hear him speak, and
she grew more passive, a sense of resignation fell upon her heart, and
of gratitude to him that could divine her loss so touchingly; and, like
a child, she rested upon his side, upon his knee, and in his arms at
last. Not fond nor yet infatuated, but subsiding and consenting,
accepting her destiny like a myriad of women that are neither oppressed
nor tender, but with reluctance, yield, she passed out of grief to
wifedom, like one tired and in a dream.

Visits of consolation were made by a few old friends for a day or two
succeeding. The Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, late president of the college at
Annapolis, came, bringing his handsome boy of twelve, Master Harry
Winter Davis. The attorney-general of Maryland, Mr. Roger Taney, came
with Mr. George Brown, the banker. Commodore Decatur's widow sent a
mourning token, and the Honorable William Wirt brought Mr. Robert
Smith, once the secretary of state at Washington.

These and others, looking at Meshach Milburn a little oddly, found him,
on acquaintance, a man of sense; but the McLanes who called were either
supercilious or studiously avoided the groom.

An invitation came from Arlington House to Vesta, to bring Mr. Milburn
there; and, as they proceeded out the Washington road in a private
carriage, they observed Mr. Ross Winans's friction-wheel car, with
nearly forty people in it, making its trial trip behind a horse at a
gallop. At the Relay House, where the horses on the railroad were
changed, Milburn remarked, gazing up the Patapsco valley:

"My wife, we are here at the birth of this little iron highway. If our
vision was great enough, we might see the mighty things that may happen
upon it: servile insurrection, sectional war, great armies riding to
great battles, thousands of emigrants drawn to the West. We shall die,
but generations after us this road will grow and continue, like a vein
of iron, whose length and uses no man can measure."

The road to Washington was in places good, and often turned in among the
pines. At Riverdale they saw the deer of Mr. Georg