d look at the passengers thus suddenly
checked in their gay career. Omnibuses are laden with pleasure seekers
on their way to the Crystal Palace. Look, there is "affliction sore"
displayed on many a countenance and felt in many a heart. Mary Anne, who
knows she is undeniably late, and deserves to be left behind, thinks that
her young man won't wait for her. Little Mrs. B. sits trembling with a
dark cloud upon her brow, for she knows Mr. B. has been at the station
since one, and it is now past two. Look at the pale, wan girl in the
corner, asking if they will be in time to catch the train for Hastings.
You may well ask, poor girl. Haste is vain now. Your hours are
numbered--the sands of your little life are just run--your bloodless lip,
your sunken eye, with its light not of this world--your hectic cheek,
from which the soft bloom of youth has been rudely driven, make one feel
emphatically in your case that "no medicine, though it oft' can cure, can
always balk the tomb." What have you been--a dressmaker, stitching
fashionable silks for beauty, and at the same time a plain shroud for
yourself? What have you been--a governess, rearing young lives at the
sacrifice of your own? What have you been--a daughter of sin and shame?
Ah, well, it is not for me to cast a stone at you. Hasten on, every
moment now is worth a king's ransom, and may He who never turned a
daughter away soften your pillow and sustain your heart in the dark hour
I see too plainly about to come. What is this, a chaise and four greys.
So young Jones has done it at last. Is he happy, or has he already found
his Laura slow, and has she already begun to suspect that her Jones may
turn out "a wretch" after all. I know not yet has the sound of his
slightly vinous and foggy eloquence died away; still ring in his ears the
applause which greeted his announcement that "the present is the proudest
of my life," and his resolution, in all time to come, in sunshine and in
storm, to cherish in his heart of hearts the lovely being whom he now
calls his bride; but as he leans back there think you that already he
sees another face--for Jones has been a man-about-town, and sometimes
such as he get touched. This I know--

"Feebly must they have felt
Who in old time attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful furies."

And even Jones may regret he married Laura and quarrelled with Rose,

"A rosebud set with little wilful thorns
And sweet