The Ring of the Ship Powhattan

On the 1st of March, 1854, the ship Powhattan sailed from Havre for New-York, with two hundred and fifty passengers. Not far from Barnegat Inlet she became a wreck, so complete that not a vestige of her reached land. The passengers were seen to cling to the bulwarks and, then, drop off by fifties; her captain, through his trumpet, could be heard to implore attention to them; while the sea crushed and dashed all to death on the fretted beach. The clothing of one of the victims, who was not more than twenty years of age, showed her to have belonged to the wealthy class of Germans. She was beautiful even as she lay in death dabbled with sea-weed and scum. Upon her fingers were two rings; one, plain and the other had a heart attached to it. They were marked P. S. and B. S. 1854. This we gather from a fleeting newspaper. While the mind sighs as it leaves the corpse to its shallow, seaside, foreign and premature grave, a curiosity is awakened by the rings and the attendant emblem. The date shows them to be very late gifts. Were these tokens of affection from brother and sister--for one heart might well do for both--and who placed them upon that now cold hand, then glowing with an affection that throbbed from under those rings? Or, was this young creature on her way to her youthful husband, who had come before and built up a home and whose betrothal was shown in the heart, while the plain ring had made them one before God and the church and who was watching for her and, in fancy, had, through day dreams and in night watching, fancied the vessel sweep into port and the hand, that lovingly wore his gifts, wave a recognition? It may be that father and mother were the donors, with a blessing and a prayer and the added almost certainty of thought that she who received with a last kiss, would long survive parents to reverence the tokens, hallow their memory and think of Fatherland! Oh, how much of fact, of poetry, of sadness may crowd around a little ring!!