, 1863-05-02
The Miners Bride.
A SWEDISH STORY.

SWEDISH STORY.
In Falun, mining town in Sweden,
hundred years or more ago, young miner
kissed his fair bride and said to her:
"On St. Lucians Day our love will be
blessed by the priests hand. Then we
shall be husband and wife, and we will
build us little nest of our own"
"And peace and love shall dwell in it, y
said the beautiful bride, with sweet smile,
''for those art my all in all, and without
thee, would choose to be in my grave
But when the priest, in proclaiming their
banns in the church for the second time
before St. Lucien's Day, pronounced the
words, ''If, now, any one can show reason
why these persons should not be united in
the bonds of matrimony,' death was at
hand. The young man, as he passed her
house the next morning in his black min
ing garb already wore his shroud. He
raped upon her window and said good
morning; but he never returned to
bid her good evening. He never came
back from the mine, and after all in vain
she embroidered for him on that very morn
ing black cravat with red border, for
the wedding day. This she laid carefully
away, and never ceased to mourn or weep
for him.
Meanwhile, time passed on the Seven
Years war was fought; the partition of
Poland took place America became free
the French revolution and the long war be-
gun Napoleon subdued Prussia, and the
English bombarded Copenhagen. The
husbandman sowed and reaped, the miller
ground, and the smith hammered and the
miners dug after their veins of metal in
their subterranean workshops. As the mi
ners of Falun, in the year eighteen hun
dred and nine, a little before or after St.
Johns Day, we're exoavating an opening
betN cen two shafts, full three hundred ellis
below the ground, they dug from the rub
bish and vilriol water the body of young
man, entirely saturated with iron vitriol,
but otherwise undecayed and unatered-
so that one could distinguish his features
and age as we'll as if he had died only an
hour before, or had fallen asleep for a little
while at his work.
But when they had brought him out to
the light of day, father and mother, friends
and acquaintance, had been long dead no
one could identify the sleeping youth, or
| tell anything of his misfoi tune, till she
came, who was once the betrothed of that
miner who had one day gone to the mine
and never returned. Gray and shriveled,
she came to the place hobbling upon a
crutch, and recognized her bridegroom,
when, more in joyful ecstacy than pain, she
sank down upon the beloved form AS
soon as she had recovered her composure,
she exclaimed, 1T is my betrothed whom
have mourned for fifty years, and whom
God now permits me to see once before
die. A week before the wedding time he
went under the earth, and never returned. d."
A the bystanders were moved to tears,
as they beheld the former bride, a wasted
and feeble old woman, and the bridegroom
still in the beauty of youth; and how, af-
ter the lapse of fifty years, her youthful
love awoke again. But he never opened
his mouth to smile, nor his eyes to recog-
nize and she, finally, as the only one be-
longing to him, and having a right to him,
had him carried to her own little room till
grave could be prepa ed in the church
yard The next day, when all was ready,
and the miners came to take him away, she
opened little drawer, and taking ont the
black silk cravat, tied it around his neck,
and then accompanied him in her Sunday
| garb, as if it were their wedding day and
not the day of his burial. AS they laid
him in the grave in the church-yard she
said: "Sleep well now, for few days, in
thy cold burial bed, and let not the time
seem long to thee. have now but little
more to do, and will come soon, and then
it will be day again" AS she was going
away, she looked back once more and said,
''What the earth has once restored, it will
! not a second time withhold"