The Woodstock age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1844-1845, 1845-04-24

JeWelled peer Look at him in his robes
behold 'lawmaker' written on the broat
tablet ofhis comprehensive brow. He il
in the House Officers; the born protecto
of his felow-man. How the conscious.
ness Of high function sublimates his ma
ture! He looks, and speaks, and lay,
his hand upon his breast, the invncible
champion Of all human suflering-al
human truth. Turn a moment from the
peer, and look at yonder biped There
is az old age of cunning cut and lined in
the face Of mere youth. He has count
ed some nineteen summers, yet is his SOU
wrinkled with deceit. And wherefore .
Poor wretch His very birth brought
upon her who bore him abuse and inlamy
his first wall was to his mothers car
the worlds audible reproach lie was
shutllcd of into the world, thing any
way to be forgotten, lost, got rid Of, In
his very babyhood, he was no more
to men than the young lizard that
crawls upon bank, and owes its nurture
to the bounty Of the elements. And so
this hapless piece of human ofal-this
human ostrich deserted in its very shell
was Matched by wrong and accident
into thief, and there he stands, charged
with the in!amy ofpcking pockets. The
world taught him nothing wise or virtu-
Gus, and now, most properly, will the
world scourge him for his ignorance.
And thus, because man, and man alone
can with icy heart neglect his little ones
can leave them in worlds sandy desert
to crawl into life as best they maybe
cause Lord de BowclIess can suffer his
natural baby to be swaddlcd in work.
house, to cat the pap of pauper laws
to learn as it grows nothing but the rcad-
est means of satisfying its physical in
stncts-because his lordship can let his
own boy sneak, and wind, and fitch
through life, ending the life the peer did
him the deep wrong to bestow upon him,
in deepest ignominy, because, forsooth,
his lordship is capable of all this, he must
in the consciousness of his own dcpraycd
nature, libel the parental feelings of the
aflectionatc ostrich! Oh, that the SLAM
der could perish and for ever! Oh, that
| could pierce the lie to the hc0rt; with
feather pierce it, though cascd in the ar
mour ofiorty ccnluresl
Again, the ostrich is libelcd for his
gluttony. Believe wha, is said of him,
and You would not trust him even in the
royal stables, lest he should dcvour the
very shoes from the feet of the horses
Why, the ostrich ought to be taken as the
one emblem OF temperance. lie lives
and lourishes in the desert; his choicest
food bitter, spikcy shrub, with a few
stones-how rarely can he find iron, how
few the white days in which the poor os-
trch can, in Arabia Pctrna, have the
luxury of a ten.penny nal-to season, as
with salt, his vegetable diet! And yet
common councilman Prawns, with face
purple as the purple grape, will call the
ostrich glut,on!
For how many centuries die the stately
rajah, the elephant, move aboutl the
earth, mankind all the while resolutely
denying to him the natural joints of his
legs! Poor fellow! although thousands
and thousands oftimes he must have knelt
before men-going upon his knees that
his rider might tell the truth ofhm-thcy
nevertheless refused to him the power Of
bending. But the elephant has become
a traveler-has condcscended to eat
cakes at fair-has shown the combined
magnanimity ofhs nature, by
going on his marrowbones on the boards
of playhouse and the world has at
length passed truthful sentence upon
him-at length the elephant has joints!
have endeavoured, fccbly enough
know, to vndicate the character of the
malgned ostrich. Let that pass--my
purpose in the following chapters is to tell
what have seen in my eventlul, ever
shifting existence, as Il feather among
men. An Ostrich feather! Consider
my mutations; and give courteous ear to
my history,