Languages & literature > Aurus clavus, or, The adventures of a gold trinket, supposed to have been written by itself

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night after night, saw the ruthless destroyer
making rapid advances upon his destined
victim—alas, too truly indeed.
Crushed like a young and tender flower in
early spring, just putting forth its beauties,
she died withered, and was consigned to the cold
bosom of her mother earth.
The father hung over the remains of his child,
as something that to part with was to lay down
his own existence, and cried in this moment of
bereavment and agony, “ Art thou indeed gone,
my child! I am now left like a naked tree
in the far wilderness, and the tempest has not
even spared my last hough.”
Grief had chocked further utterance, and
dropping a big tear upon the pale and ema¬
ciated form, kissed its death-sealed lips; and
throwing himself over it, poured forth his sor¬
rows in silence. He was indeed a broken¬
hearted man, and instead of being surrounded
by a young and beauteous family, he was now
a solitary being, roaming, he cared not where,
in a foreign land. He wandered about like
another Cain with the mark upon his brow,
although his was sorrow, not crime. “ Alas,
alas,” he would cry in the agony of reflection,