Ih The neighbors round, who both of us
I believed - she was the better of the two.
the light of seventeen's no longer in her
is gone - that loss the coiffeur's art sup-
n and angular; she slightly forward bends;
ice so shapely, now are stumpy at tlhe ends.
very little, and in little are we one ;
re, that more than hid that great defect, is
lations now deride my homely wife,
sat I am tied, to such a clod, for life.
s a difference: at reception and levee,
witties.t, and most famed of women smile
ere I hold my place among the greatest
es sigh, with Whittier's judge, "Alas! it
e been."
crowd around me, stately dames and bril-
5.
ie the homage that all great success corn-
and state-craft, and literature as well,
down to Thackeray, and Swedenborg on

can't forget that from these streams my wife has never
quaffed,
Has never with Ophelia wept, nor with Jack Falstaff
laughed;
Of authors, actors, artists-why, she hardly knows the
names;
She slept while I was speaking on the AZabama claims.
I can't forget-  just at this point another form ap.
pears -
The wife I wedded as she was before my prosperous
years;
I travel o'er the dreary road we traveled side by side,
And wonder what my share would be, if Justice should

r hundred dollars left her from the old estate ;
married, and, thus poorly armored, faced our
vith my books ; her task was harder far than
to make two hundred dollars do the work of

score ;
She had her beauty and her youth, and some housew:iely
skill,
And love for me and faith in me, and back of that a will.
I had no friends behind me -no influence to aid ;
I worked and fought for every little inch of ground I
made.
And how she fought beside me! never woman lived on
less:
In two long years she never spent a single cent for dress.
Ali! how she cried for joy when my first legal fight was
won,
When our eclipse passed partly by, and we stood in the
sun!
The fee was fifty dollars -'t was the work of half a year-
First captive, lean and scraggy, of my legal bow and
spear.
I well remember, when my coat (the only one I had)
Was seedy grown and threadbare, and, in fact, most
"shocking bad,"
The tailor's stern remark when I a modest order made:
Cash is the basis, sir, on which we tailors do our trade."
Her winter cloak was in his shop by noon that very day;
She wrought on hickory shirts at night that tailor's skill
to pay ;
I got a coat, and wore it ; but alas poor Hannah Jane
Ne'er went to church or lecture till warm weather came
again.
Our second season she refused a cloak of any sort,
That I might have a decent suit in which t' appear in
court ;
She made her last year's bonnet do, that I might have a hat:
Talk of the old-time, flame-enveloped martyrs after that!
No negro ever worked so hard: a servant's pay to save,
She made herself most willingly a household drudge and
slave.
What wonder that she never read a magazine or book,
Combining as she did in one, nurse, house-maid, seam-
stress, cook !
What wonder that the beauty fled that I once so adored!
Her beautiful complexion my fierce kitchen fire devoured;
Her plump, soft, rounded arm was once too fair to be
concealed ;
Hard work for me that softness,into sinewy strength con-
gealed.
I was her altar, and her love the sacrificial flame:
Ah! with what pure devotion she to that altar came,
And, tearful, flung thereon-alas! I did not know it
then-
All that she was, and more than that, all that she might
have been!