Republican Vindicator

A Ball and a Death.

Not many months ago, says the Paris correspondent of the Boston Atlas, a young lady became radiant with unnatural beauty, which to the unthinking increased the charms of her grace, and placed in a better light the gifts of her head and heart; but it was only the omen of the destroyer's presence, as the sequel shows:

The family physician saw the impending danger. He engaged the family to carry her--she was the only child--to some of those southern medical waters which sometimes battle long with death. The waters were powerless in her case. She desired to return to Paris--to die. She asked that a ball might be given in her house the last day of the year; she wrote invitations; all her friends sent her costly presents, which were placed on the table before her bed: the guests came to the ball she received them in the bed and made them hasten to open the dance: the music seemed to excite her; she became more and more animated as the evening wore on, when the clock knelled the passing hour of the old year. "Mother, mother, come here," said she, "let me embrace you, and wish you a merry New Year, and many re"--the last word expired on her lips; she was a corpse---the mother's screams of agony stopped the dance--the ball room was the hall of the death-bed.

Such is Paris life; full of life, more full of death, and all in such immediate contact, one can scarcely tell which is the life and which is the death; you woo a beauty and clasp a corpse!