A year and a day brought results with which the reader is already acquainted, and a few weeks witnessed the happy union of Florence and young Abel May.
Under the roof of her benefactor and his lovely wife, the unfortunate Effie Day found a home and kind friends. Of Crayford nothing more was ever heard. It was supposed he had left the country for a field less obnoxious to the display of his peculiar attributes.
Fairest! Nature now is smiling, serene, lovely and beguiling, Let us to the sea shore stray, Where are billows ever filing—wiling there our hours away Listening to the ocean’s thunder, Gazing on the skies with wonder, wonder as each world we number Poised in space above. Lo! Diana in her glory rising o’er yon promontory, Trace to earth the moon-beam’s flight, Beauty to our planet lending, blending while they are descending With the sombre shades of night. Tune thy lute, love, touch it idly, that the tones may echo wildly And sighs of softest passion move.
Major Anspach was an old gentleman who was as thin as he was long, nay, even thinner than he was long.
Forty years before the epoch when occurred, oh reader, the events we shall take the liberty to recount to you, the worthy major was the finest looking musqueteer in the regiment of Monsieur d’Artois. He possessed some fortune, belonged to one of the best families in Lorraine, could fence to admiration, and had a heart at the service of the fair sex. The ladies of the court and city, to whom a son of Mars is always irresistible, of course were not insensible to the attractions of a musqueteer of five feet eleven, and the major, on his part, was so gallant in his attentions to them, that his captain gave him the title of the Turenne of boudoirs.
But forty years leave some traces of their flight; Major Anspach in 1827 was the mere shadow of his former self, and retained of his vanished splendors only a scanty income of 800 livres, a pair of black plush pantaloons, a long snuff-colored overcoat, and a garret for which he paid forty crowns a year.
Notwithstanding this serious diminution of the means of happiness, the major, who was a widower, contrived to enjoy himself perfectly for at least six months in the year. How few persons do we see who can boast of being satisfied with their destiny one day out of two?