at one year as most
folks has in a lifetime. It ain't often a man loves a woman so much
that he can't live without her, but that's the way Hamilton Schuyler
loved Miss Amaryllis, and that's the main reason why I ricollect her
so well after all these years. Her hair and her eyes would keep me
from forgittin' her outright, and when I think of how she looked and
how Hamilton Schuyler loved her, it seems like she was different from
all the other women that ever I've known."

"Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes!" sings the poet; but "Love and
beauty! Love and beauty!" answers the soul. And thus, doubly
immortalized, and radiant as when she played with the hearts of men in
her golden youth, this maiden more beautiful than her name shall live
in the tale I tell as it was told to me.

"You ricollect the Bible says 'Love is strong as death,'" said Aunt
Jane, "but that ain't always so. You'll see a husband or a wife die,
and you'll think the one that's left never will git over grievin' for
the one that's gone, and the first thing you know there's a second
marriage, and that shows that death is stronger than love, and I
reckon it's well that it's so. If one's taken and the other's left,
it's because the livin' has got a work to do in this world. They
can't spend their lives grievin' after the dead, and they oughtn't to
try to foller the dead. But once in a while, honey, it's a good thing
to find a love that's stronger than death. 'Many waters cannot quench
love, neither can the floods drown it.'"

The tremulous old voice ceased again and there was a long silence. At
last, "What became of Hamilton Schuyler?" I asked softly.

Aunt Jane roused herself with a start. She also had known a love that
was stronger than death, and her thoughts were not with Hamilton and
Miss Amaryllis.

"Hamilton?" she said dreamily. "Oh, yes! Poor man! Poor man! It was
all they could do to make him come away from the grave, and when they
got him home and tried to persuade him to go to bed and take some
rest, he'd throw out his arms and push 'em away and say, 'There's no
more rest for me on this earth. How can a man get into his bed and
sleep, when his wife and child are lyin' out in the frozen ground?'
And for weeks he'd go out to the graveyard in the dead o' the night
and wander up and down the house like a ghost. He stayed around the
place till spring come, and when the flowers begun to bloom he got
worse instead o' better. It looked like every flower