Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1863-06-05
The Miners Bride.
FROM THE GERMAN,

FROM THE GERMAN.
In Falun, mining town in Sweden, a hun
bred years or more ago, young miner kissed
his fair bride, and said to her,
'On St. Lucien's day our love will be blest
by the priests hand. Then We shall be hus.
band aud wife, and we will build US little
nest of our own"
"And peace and love shall dwell in it"
said the beautiful bride, with a sweet smile,
''for thou 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 be.
fore 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 NOR
ming in his black mining garb, already wore
his shroud. He raped upon her window,
and said good morning, but he never returned
20 bid her good evening. He never came
back from the mine, and all in vain she EN-.
broidered for him on that very morning a
black cravat with q red border, for the we'd
ding 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 begun Napol.
con subdued Prussia, and the English.bom-
barded Copenhagen. The husbandman SOW
ed and reaped, the miller ground, and the
smith hammered, and the miners dug after
their veins of metal in the subterrapean work.
shops. As the miners of Falun, in the year
eighteen hundred and nine, little before or
after St. Johns day, were excavating an OPEN
ing between two shafts, full three hundred ellis
below the ground, they dug from the robbish
and vitriol water the body of young man,
entirely saturated with iron-vltriol, but other
wise undecayed and unaltered-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 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 any
thing of his misfortune till she came who was
once the betrothed Of that miner who bad
one day gone to the mine and never returned.
Gray and shrivelled, she came to the place
hobbling upon . 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
sit is nay betrothed whom have mourned
for fifty years, and whom God now permits me
to see once more before die. A week before
the weddng-tim he went under the earth,
and never returned"
All the bystanders were moved to tears as
they beheld the former bride, wasted and
feeble old woman, and the bridegroom still in
the beauty of youth; and how after the lapse
Of fifty years, her youthful love awoke again.
But he never opened his mouth to smile, nor
his eyes to recognize; and she, finally, as the
only one belonging to him, and having right
to him, had him carried to her own little room
till grave could be prepared in the church
yard. The next day, when all was ready, and
the miners came to take him away, she open.
ed little drawer and taking out the black
silk cravat, tied it around bis neck, and then
accompanied him in her Sunday gsrb, as if It
were their wedding-day and not the day of
his burial. As they laid him in the grave in
the churchyard, 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 second
time withhold"