The Illinois free trader. (Ottawa, Ill.) 1840-1841, 1841-04-30

My hearerS-were | to go on, III long
winded strain, in attempting TO analyze or
define wind. | should at last arrive at no
other conclusion than that wind is Wind.-
Ii is the breath of Omnipotence-an i'm
material, invisible, mysterious something;
and yet it is nothing. Like the Deity
himself, it is never seen, but its influence
is felt, and its effects are witnessed, every
where. You have doubtless all heard of
the four winds of heaven and it might ap-
pear like arrogant presumption on my
part to suppose that you are not acquaint-
ed with their respective names never
theless | will mention them. They are
Boreas, Eolius, Euroclydon, and Zephyr.
Boreas, bitter, clustering son of bully,
was born, bred and brought up in the
northermost corner of the north. With
iccles hanging upon his chin, and nose
as cold as a Holsters liver, he comes bel
lowing upon the blast; and deathchill
shoots through the veins Of vegetation at
his unwelcome approach. He OCCASION
ally tries to light up a smile on his satur-
nine features, and at times succeeds in
shedding few hall-frozen tears of pcni-
tencc over the grave of martyred Nature;
but take him for all in all, as my friend
Shakespeare says, he is about as hard a
character as was ever allowed to run at
large, and riot upon the bounties of Pro-
violence. HEolius, my friends, resides in
a windy cave, somewhere upon the shore
of the equatorial ocean. His home is in
the sunny south: with his aerial bellows
he sometimes blows us some gladdenng
gales, highly scented with the pure odor
Of paradise, and at others he dampens our
coats and our spirits with a continuation
of drizzling rains. Euroclydon's home
is in the east. He is the king of storms
-partaking partly of the cold, disagreca-
bic nature of his northern neighbor Bore
as. and partly of the damp disposition of
his southern friend Eolus. His spunk
is the most conspicuous at the time of our
vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Zephyr
that mild, bland, cheerful, spanged
winged angel of my hearts delight-lives
and luxuriates in the halmy bowers of the
west, where the gods and goddesses are
forever wooing but never qucnch their
loves in the cold baths Of wedlock. Oh,
my friends! do love a zephyr as dog
does his dinner. could die with one in
my bosom in the hottest of dog-days
without murmur Of complaint. When
| wander over the western hills, in rosy
summer, and brush the mosquitoes from
my fevcrcd prohoscts-and the gay little
sylphs shake from their butterfly pnions
the grateful fragrance of howers-it seems
as though heaven, in an excitement of
bliss, was about to break loose, and bury
me in a flood of rapturous Joy
My frends--the winds are mysterious
spirits tina, roam round the earth, seeking
for rest and finding none. Their home is
everywhere, anywhere and nowhere, like
the wild ocean bird, that now reposes
upon the calm wave-now beats its flight
through the tempest--and now losses to
and fro upon the rolling billow. They
are peaceable enough at times, and again
as uproarous as an earthquake afflicted
with the delirium tremens. | have seen
them gently draw their fairy fingers
through the light locks of the child, and
lightly lift the green leaf to get buss at
the lilly; and | have seen them, too, take
a back hug with the giant oaks of the
mountain, and come off victors over some
of the strongest Notifications of man.
When their mad propensities arc once
aroused, all the hemp halters of Halifax
can't hold them; and when they are once
fairly asleep upon their ethereal pillows,
you might as well try to preach peiy into
a pack Of cards as try to awake them from
their slumbers. They will have their
own way.
There is melancholy music in the
winds. 1t creates lonely sensation
about the heart to hear them hum their
solemn psalms amid the hollow pines of
the mountain in the dead hour of night:
or to listen to their howlings through the
apertures Of old, ivied towers, ruined
castles, and deserted monasteries.- Their
wild and unearthly tones fill the soul with
romance - cause Fancy to fall in love
with the marvellous and supernatural, and
soften down the most callous hearts to the
consisience of new made putty. What
is there more solemn, my friends, than to
90 into that sacred enclosure-thc garden
of the dead, where bodies are planted
like potatoes, in rows - where silence
reigns supreme-where marble stones are
reared to tell that the dust below has