e was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all
the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named
Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.
They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,
and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to, be
characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of
humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became
infect with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered
from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his
comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at
first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the
marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.

The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge,
while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well
and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee.
Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love
triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to
reform.

And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the
premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months
he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was
almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply
grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she
did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of
reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her
tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose,
that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an
alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she
resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little
longer.

Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed
it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of
his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering
that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected
of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken
off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did
her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not
disco