ALICE VERNON.
A pleasant company were assembled around the breakfast-table, and discussing their plans for the day. In some casual conversation, I heard a careless mention of a name very familiar and very dear—“Mrs. Vernon.” I reflected a moment,—it was a name closely associated in my mind with the past, yet how, I could not immediately recall. Suddenly it came like a lightning flash—Alice Vernon, once Alice Maitland. I inquired of the individual who had spoken, and learnt that my early friend had indeed been the subject of conversation. I obtained her address, and sallied forth to find her, sure of a welcome, though we had not met for years.
A great military and civic procession was passing through the streets, and it was with some difficulty that I made my way into a retired street in a distant part of the city. There, in a modest dwelling, I found my old friend Alice. Herself and a widowed mother were the only occupants. It was scantily furnished, but bore the impress of that exquisite taste which a truly refined woman can throw over the meanest abode, giving to poverty attractions which wealth does not always bestow upon its palaces. Alice had, in our school-days, been a favourite,—not that she was beautiful, but her simplicity of character, her upright and truthful mind, her sincere and strong affections, had won friends, lasting and true, such as she well knew how to value. On leaving school we had been separated, and had since rarely met—nevertheless, with that interest which those who have been educated together often continue to feel for each other through life, we had not failed to make inquiries which kept us informed of the after-fate of those most dear to us. That of Alice had been so unlike the even and calm lot which we had planned for her, as to have excited the surprise and wonder of us all.
I found her busily at work, though the street was full of the gathering multitude, and a branch of the procession was forming
