the
power of the Invisible demands and the Angel of Death removes her from
his side. Age meets them hand in hand, and still imbued with a
reciprocity of affection, her children are taught a lesson from
herself which makes the Wife, from generation to generation, the same
medium of admiration for the world, the same object of our adoration
and homage. We write these lines with homage and respect for the Wife,
and with an undefined emotion in our hearts, which tells us they are
correct, and that the value of a Wife is all the imagination can
depict and the pen indite.

And to lose one! Oh! what sorrow it must awaken--how the fountains of
grief must fill to overflowing, when the companion of your life is
torn from you by the hand of Death! No wonder, then, that the heart of
Alfred Wentworth bled with woe, and he became a changed man. What
cared he longer for this world? Almost nothing! But one thing urged
him to rally his energies and meet the blow with fortitude whenever it
should come. It was the knowledge that his little boy would need a
father's care. This made him not quite oblivious to this world, for
though his life would be in the front, so soon as he returned to the
battle-field, there were chances for his escaping death, and his
desire was to live, so that the child might grow up and remind him of
his wife. No, not remind! As fresh as the hour when love first entered
his heart for her--as plain as the day he led her to the altar and
registered his vows to Heaven--and as pure as herself, would his
memory ever be for her. Time can soothe woes, obliterate the scars
left by grief, but the memory of a dead wife can never be extinguished
in the mind of a husband, even though her place in his heart may be
filled by another. She must ever be recollected by him, and each hour
he thinks of her, so will her virtues shine brighter and more
transparent, and her faults, if any, become forgotten, as they were
forgiven. But we weary the reader with these digressions, and will
proceed to close our narrative.

Three additional weeks passed, and still Mrs. Wentworth remained
insane, but her insanity being of a gentle character, Dr. Humphries
would not permit her to be sent to the lunatic asylum, as her husband
advised. It is true, he desired it more for the purpose of avoiding
being the recipient of any further favors, than because he thought it
necessary. This morbid sensitiveness shrank from being obligated to a
comparative st