s. The words of blessing and farewell, spoken to those
near and dear to them, were often interrupted by low wailing and
heart-breaking sobs.

Flora stood apart waiting for her husband, who had been to the ship, and
was in the returning boat now making its way through the water to take
her off. Sad she was, and pale and anxious, for the wide world was all
before her, a world of new scenes and strange faces. A future as
inscrutable and mysterious almost as that from which humanity
instinctively shrinks, which leads so many to cling with expiring energy
to evils with which they have grown familiar, rather than launch alone
into that unknown sea which never bears upon its bosom a returning sail.
Ah! well is it for the poor trembling denizens of earth that--

"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,"

or how could they bear up from day to day against the accumulated
ills which beset them at every turn along the crooked paths of life?

Flora had already experienced that bitterness of grief, far worse than
death, which separates the emigrant from the home of his love, the
friends of his early youth, the land of his birth; and she shed no tear
over the mournful recollection, though the deep sigh which shook her
heart to its inmost depths, told that it was still felt and painfully
present to her memory. She stood alone among that weeping crowd; no
kindred hand was there to press hers for the last, last time, or bid God
speed her on her perilous voyage. What a blessing it would have been at
that moment, to have bent a parting glance on some dear familiar face,
and gathered strength and consolation from eyes full of affection and
sympathy!

The beautiful landscape which had so often cheered and gladdened her
heart, during her brief sojourn, no longer smiled upon her, but was
obscured in storm and gloom. The thunder which had only muttered at a
distance, now roared among the cloud-capped hills, and heavy drops of
rain began to patter slowly upon the earth and sea. These bright
globules in advance of the heavy shower whose approach they announced,
made small dimples in the waters, spreading anon into large circles,
until the surface of the salt brine seemed to boil and dance, which a
few minutes before had lain so glassy and still, beneath the hot breath
of the coming storm. Flora thought how soon those billows would chafe
and roar for ever between her and her native land.

Then the lines of Nature's own bard, th