And now, courteous reader, perchance thou art weary with thy wanderings, and the flowers we have gathered may appear withered to thee, and devoid of beauty or fragrance, and the peep into memory’s inner chambers may not have afforded thee the pleasure that I have derived from the survey. If so, farewell, I will intrude no more upon thy time or patience. The curtain has fallen, the dim, misty curtain, and memory has turned her golden key, closed her portfolio, and sat down with folded hands, to brood over her hoarded treasures, placing each in its proper place, to be brought forward again at her mandate, to beguile, perchance, other weary midnight hours with their magic spell. The past cannot be redeemed, and the future is hid in uncertainty; but the present, the golden present is ours, and while our little bark is floating upon the stream of time, let us improve the precious moments as they fly, and spend them in a cultivation of the best affections of the human mind. The mind, that boundless ocean of human thought that is placed within each individual, stretching on throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity. But there must come a solemn time to all who live. Death is upon our track, and will surely soon overtake us, and our decaying bodies must be hid forever from sight beneath the clods of the valley: but these minds shall then live, and happy they who, by a cultivation of the best principles of our nature, have an antepast of heaven while upon earth.

May this be our happy case, gentle reader, if we meet not again on earth, we shall meet in heaven, “for we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” I have spread out before you the secret musings of many a midnight hour, and I feel that I am responsible for what I have written. May God grant forgivness for the wrong. And thus we part, gentle reader, to toss yet a little longer upon the stream of time, ere its waves and its billows pass over us forever.

“When midnight o’er the moonless skies,
Her shades of mimic death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise;
And nought is wakeful but the dead.
No bloodless shape my path pursues;
No shiv’ring ghost my couch annoys,
Visions more sad my fancy views,
Visions of dear departed joys,
The shade of youthful hope is there.”