As she looked at Letty, so handsome and so helpless, and thought of Julius, who had turned from the door in one of his sad sullen fits, painful and yet pathetic as those of a naughty child, Edna felt her courage give way, and her heart sink with that strange foreboding of evil which comes sometimes, we know not how or why. Without saying a word to Letty-it would have been neither delicate nor wise-she pondered over the whole question, till at last, utterly bewildered, it settled itself into her one grand refuge for all distresses-"I will tell it to William next Sunday." And, comforting as this thought was, it brought also a vague longing for the time when their life would be all Sundays, when they would be continually together. With it came a fear-the fear that will come with deep love-lest something should come between them. Only, to their faith and constancy, nothing could come but death; and that she did not fear, for it would only be falling, as David wished to fall, into the hands of God-the same God who had already made them so happy.

"Yes, we have been happy-very happy, and I am very, very thankful!" thought poor Edna, and her serenity returned-the unchangeable peace of those who have the blessedness of being able to recognize their blessings.

Tired as she was she took out her work and was sitting-let us boldly confess it-mending a large basketful of stockings, when there came a knock at the front-door.

Letty started up from the sofa.

ported. His salary was to be £300, and, byand-by, £400 a year-a solid foundation of annual income; while the work could not interfere with his practice, but would rather give him opportunities for that continual study of his profession which a doctor so much needs, and which, at the beginning of his career, he finds so difficult to obtain. Thus the lady, a far-sighted and generous woman, in securing his services, benefited both sides, and in doing a prudent did also a kindly deed.

"I wish she knew all the happiness she has given us!" said Edna, trembling and agitated; while Letty, as was her wont under all novel and exciting circumstances, began to cry. In fact, they all shed an honest tear or two, and then they sat down together-Edna close by William, holding Letty's hand on the other side-to try and realize the sudden bliss-this unexpected change in all their affairs.

"Does Julius know?" asked Edna, anxiously. "No-the letter came after he had gone out. You know he almost always does go out of evenings. But it will be a brighter home for him to come to when you are there-and Letty."

William said this in all simplicity, as Edna at once perceived; and his evident unconsciousness of the idea which had lately entered her mind shook Edna's faith in her own quickness of perception. If William were quite at ease concerning his brother, why should she perplex herself or perplex him by speaking of this matter of Julius and Letty? So, for the present,

"That's William's knock-I know it is. Oh, she let it slip by; and when Letty benevolently what can have happened!"

"Nothing to be frightened at," said William, who was in the room almost as soon as she spoke. Good news not ill, were written on his face. "I beg your pardon. I could not help coming." He shut the door behind him, and then, regardless of her sister's presence, clasped Edna tight in his arms. "It has come at last-come at last, thank God!" And in an ecstasy of joy which betrayed how sharp had been the unacknowledged suffering he kissed again and again his betrothed wife-then went over and kissed Letty, and bade her wish him joy.

quitted the room and left her alone with her lover she forgot every thing, as lovers do.

Forgive them, if so be there is any need of forgiveness. Life is so short, so changeful, so full of infinite chances of grief and loss, who would grudge to any body a little love, a little happiness? These two were ready to take both the sweet and the bitter, the evil and the good, believing that both come alike by the Father's will. Yet who can wonder that, as they sat together, knowing they were going to be married-not exactly "to-morrow,' as Dr. Stedman had ingeniously suggested, but within a few weeks-and that, come weal or woe, they would never more be parted, it was surely pardonable if, for a while, they forgot every body but themselves.

Presently, when he was sufficiently calm for a consecutive statement to be got out of him, Dr. Stedman told the great news-strangely little it would seem to some people, yet to "And you are not afraid to begin life with these two was enough to uplift them into per-me-to be a poor man's wife? for it will be fect felicity. that; Edna. I can't dress you any better than It was one of those bits of "good luck"-he this"-touching tenderly her gray merino gown; called it nothing more, and always protested" and the carriage Letty wants, it may be years he had done nothing to win it-which occa- before I can give it you, if ever. Oh, my love, sionally turn the tide of a man's fortune by am I harming you? In marrying you now, at giving him, at the outset of his career, that once, while I have still only just enough for us slight impetus of help without which a fair to live upon, am I doing you any wrong?" start is nearly impracticable. A great lady, and good as great, who had been interested in Dr. Stedman's incessant labors among the poor, had offered him a permanent appointment as physician to a charitable institution which she had founded and principally sup

"Wrong!" she cried, as she clung round his neck for a minute, and then drew back, looking at him with the brightest face-the most radiant, and yet half-indignant eyes. "Wrong! you are showing me the utmost love, and paying me the chiefest honor that a man can give

to a woman. You are taking me at your life's | few days' delay, an affectionate congratulatory beginning that we may begin it together. That letter, and asked her to seek out for him bach

is the right thing. Don't be afraid, William. I'll help you I know I can, for I am not a coward, and I have you. Oh! if men were more like you, had your courage, your faith, there would not be so many broken-hearted women in the world."

"And there would not be so many bad, ruined men, I think, if women were more like my Edna."

So talked these two—foolishly, no doubt, and with a vicarious self-laudation which is very much the habit of lovers. And yet there was truth at the bottom of it; a truth which, day by day, as she and Letty busied themselves every spare hour in those innocent wedding preparations which every honest heart, either of friend or stranger, can not help taking pleasure in, forced itself deeper and deeper upon Edna's heart. No worldly show was there-no hiding with splendid outside formalities the hollowness within she was going to be as William saida poor man's wife; and expensive clothes and extravagant outlay of any sort would be merely ridiculous; but Edna prepared herself for her great change with all the happy-heartedness that a bride should have, a bride who knows that down to the lowest depth of her soul is not a feeling that need be hidden, not a thought that God and her husband may not

see.

One little thing made her sorry. Julius did not come to see her; indeed, he had taken himself off on an artistic tour in Wales, to be "out of the way," he alleged; but he wrote, after a

ON

elor lodgings, as close as possible to their own house, where he meant to be exceedingly jolly, and inflict himself upon them several times a week. And he sent her as a wedding present a lovely portrait of Letty, composed out of the many studies he had made of her face, which he said, briefly, "he knew by heart." At which remark Letty blushed a little, and pouted a little, saying it was "impertinent;" but was exceedingly gratified to look at her own exquisite portrait, and hear every body admire it and say how very like it was.

So fled the time, long and yet how short; dwindling first into weeks and then into days, until the last breaking-up day came, and the two young schoolmistresses, not without a few sincere tears, sent away their little pupils forever. After that there was only one more Sunday left for the Stedmans to come to tea in the old way, which for nearly a year had gone on now, and brought with it so much of peace and pleasure. No more now of those "courting days," which are said by some to be the happiest, by others the most miserable of their lives. Probably the real truth lies between both these facts, and that the happiness or misery is according as the lovers create it for themselves. Life is not all joy; neither God nor man can make it so: but it may be made all love. And love, that infinite and endless blessing, had been held out from heaven to these two, Edna and William; they had had eyes to see it, strength to grasp it, faith to cling to it. They had cause to be glad and thankful, and so they were.

DRAWING BUREAU RATIONS.
By J. W. DE FOREST.

I. THE APPLICANTS.

N the 2d of October, 1866, I assumed command, as Acting Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau, for the Sub-District of Greenville, South Carolina.

He alluded more particularly, in his praise, to the inhabitants. He went on to say that they were orderly, respectful to Bureau regulations, disposed to treat the negroes considerately, and, in short, praiseworthily reconstructed. "The worst social feature," he added, "is the poverty. There are multitudes of old negroes who are living on their broken-down former masters. There are four hundred soldiers' widows in Greenville District, and six hundred in Pickens. You can make a guess at the orphans."

In population, wealth, and culture Greenville is the third town in the State. It contains an old and a new Court House, four Churches and several Chapels, a University (not the largest in the world), a Female College (also not unparalleled), two or three blocks of Stores, one of the best country Hotels in the South, quite a number of fairish Houses, fifteen hundred Whites, and a thousand Freedmen. It is two hundred and seventy miles from Charleston, one thousand feet above the level of the sea, and within sight of the lower extension of the Alleghanies. Knowing Southern Europe and Western Asia, I highly recommend the climate of Greenville. The scenery is varied, and pret-were two tall, lank, ungainly women, one twenty enough to satisfy ordinary cravings, and it is within easy reach of mountain picturesqueness. The officer whom I relieved said to me, with some good-natured regret and envy, "You have the best station in the State."

Although October, it was beautiful summerlike weather when I commenced my duties in Greenville. My office, a vaulted room on the ground-floor of the old Court House, was so warm that I had opened both door and window and sat in the draught, when my first visitors of the impoverished classes entered. They

ty-three, the other twenty-seven, dressed in dirty, grayish homespun, with tallow complexions, straight, light, dead hair, broad cheekbones, and singularly narrow foreheads.

"Mornin," they said, sat down, stared a

while, and then asked, “Any thin' for the lone before I chanced to fulfill my promise. The wimmen ?"

"He's a powerful bad boy," she said, twistThe mother slackened her speed and opened ing Johnnie's flaxen curls with a smile, and conversation with me. looking kindly into his sunny face. "I don't know how I can keep him. I've been all over the village, and can't git no work. I can put him in the poor-house," she added, after a brief silence of desperation.

finding the jail more disagreeable than the whip. The planter, being reduced to his last crust, had, of course, nothing to spare for the Simmonses; and, furthermore, the male low downer has roved away to a land whence he will never return, not even with his faculty for migration. Conscripted, much against his will, he was sent to the front, did a respectable amount of fighting, deserted, or died. If a morsel of him survives, it will be pretty sure to tell a Yankee what a Union man it was, and how opposed it was to the war before it was "fo'ced in."

"low down people." It is the dull, unlettered, | were far less addicted to stealing, having achopeless English farm-laborer grown wild, indo- | quired some self-respect with their freedom, and lent, and nomadic on new land and under the discouraging competition of slavery. The breed, however, is not all Anglo-Saxon. Among the low down people you will find names of Irish, Scotch, French, and German origin. Whatsoever stock of feeble or untamed moral nature settles in the South descends rapidly into this deposit of idleness and savagery. The Celtic race seems to possess a special alacrity at sinking; and Irish families left on the track of Southern railroads become vagrant poor whites in a single generation. The class, in short, is composed of that tenth of humanity which the severe law of natural selection is perpetually punishing for the sin of shiftlessness.

It seems probable that once the poor whites were small farmers. The great planter bought them out and turned them into "trash," just as the Roman patrician turned the plebeians into a populace. When Colonel Gresham sold 27,000 acres to a German colony at Walhalla, South Carolina, he delivered one hundred and fifty titles as proofs of ownership, showing the extraordinary fact that something like one hundred and fifty families, or a population of from six to nine hundred souls, had given place to one large landholder. Thus it seems to have been every where throughout the domain of slavery. The men who had few negroes or none parted with their lots and cabins to those who had many; and, once cut loose, they went altogether adrift. They might have bought other lands in their old neighborhoods, but they did not. In the vigorous language of Sut Lovengood, "they sot in to rovin round."

His death, although no great loss to him nor to his country, has been a more serious matter to his family than one would naturally suppose. "Triflin creetur" as Bill Simmons was, he was better to his wife than no husband, and better to his children than no father. It is a beggarly fate to be a poor widow or orphan, under any circumstances; but to be one of 600 soldiers' widows, or one of 1800 soldiers' orphans, in a region so lean and so sparsely settled as Pickens District, is a cruel excess of poverty which even a pauper in New England might shrink from.

How to deal with this mass of destitution? Even before hostilities closed it had so far exacted public attention that the Confederacy had been forced to feed the families of its dead or unpaid soldiers. The first Monday of the month, generally known in the South as "sale day" on account of its customary public auction, acquired the additional title of "draw day," because it was used for the issue of rations. Thus, when the Union resumed domin

tion already habituated to corn distributions. "Draw day" disappeared under the first shock of conquest; but it revived as soon as our troops went into garrison; in fact, there came a saturnalia of "draw days." To some extent these monstrous public charities were necessary. There were not only the Simmonses to be fed, but many families, once wealthy, who had been stripped by the war or the emancipation, and multitudes of old or infirm or juvenile negroes who had been set adrift from their homes by the same causes.

Before emancipation the negro supported nearly all Southerners. His daily labor pro-ion over the revolted States, it found a populaduced the great staples which seemed to enrich the planter, and mainly enriched the factor, merchant, hotel-keeper, lawyer, and doctor. After nightfall he stole the chickens, pigs, and corn which he sold to Bill Simmons and his tribe for whisky, or for some trivial product of a gipsy-like industry. The planter, aware of this contraband traffic, sometimes quarreled with Bill and drove him out of the neighborhood, but more frequently tried to bribe him into honesty by gifts and favors. Moreover, Bill had a vote, and must be endured and even coaxed for that reason. On the whole, the Simmonses were treated by the landholders much as the old Roman populace were treated by the patricians. They got no gladiatorial shows, but in one way or other they got hog and hominy. It was a life of rare day's works, some begging, some stealing, much small, illicit bargaining, and frequent migrations.

I must be permitted to sketch two or three of the colored patriarchs of Greenville. Most curious on the list was Uncle Peter, otherwise known as Kangaboonga, a native African. As there was only one other aboriginal Congo in Greenville or its. neighborhood, and as almost any distinction is matter of vanity to its human possessor, Kangaboonga was very conecited over the fact that he was "bohn in Africa,

When the "black uns went up," or, in more universal English, when the negroes were trans-Sar." A withered little fellow, cramped and figured into freedmen, the "low downers" were about as thoroughly bankrupted as the planters. No more trading with slaves, and no more begging from masters. Not only was there far less than formerly for the negroes to steal, but they

dislocated with rheumatism, his legs twisted in a style not suitable for traveling, he got himself about with the aid of two sticks, his wrinkled, old face grimacing with the effort, and perhaps with pain. When I heard two sticks and a

It was a complicated and delicate case. According to the laws of South Carolina the first marriage was binding, precisely as if the parties had been white, while Bureau orders deHe had a delusion that his, former master clared that such persons as were living in lawful owed him five dollars, or some other similarly wedlock at the date of emancipation were husincredible sum, 66 for services rendered 'sence band and wife, to the exclusion of all other de freedom." I, who knew that the decrepit claimants. But looking at the hale, middlecreature could not earn his salt, and that he aged man before me, and remembering the had been allowed to remain on the old place blind senility of his rival, I ventured to make out of pure charity, sought to argue him out this a special case, and decided according to of his absurd complaint, or, when fatigued with the civil statute. the useless labor, sent him to roar his grievances "You can have your wife," said I. "If you to my neighbor, the civil magistrate. In the have worked your way back from Alabama for memory of Kangaboonga I probably live as a her sake, you deserve her. I'll write an order "triflin sort o' Booro man," although in course to put you in possession." of time I issued him both corn and clothing.

"But she's got another husband, and things wants now is to pick 'em all up, an git 'em tois powerful mixed up." gether, an look after 'em, an give 'em a little schoolin."

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