Fremont weekly freeman. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio) 1850-1853, 1853-01-13
VUATISLTPE9
D. THaH.

What is life? Darkness and formless va
caucy for beginning, or something beyond
all beginning-then next dim lotos of hu-
man conscio usness, finding itself afoat upon
the bosom Of waters without shore-then a
few sunny smiles and many tears-a little
love and infinite strife-whisperings from par
adise and fierce moekeries from the anarchy
of chaos-dust and ashes-and once more
darkness circling round, as if from the begin
ming, and in this way rounding or making an
island of our fantastic existence,-that is hu-
man life that the inevitable amoant of mans
laughter and his tears-of what he suffers and
he does-of his motions this way and that
way-to the right or to the backwards
or forwards-of all his seeming realities and
all his absolute negations-hiss shadowy pomps
and his pompous shadows-of whatsoever he
thinks, finds, makes or mars, creates or ami
mates, loves, hates, or in dread hope antici-
pates;- it is, SO it has been, so it will be,
tor ever and ever.
"Yet, in the lowest deep there still yawns
a lower deep; and in the vast halls of mans
frailty, there are separate and more gloomy
chambers Of frailty more exquisite and con
summatc. We account it fralty that three
score years and ten make the upshot of mans
pleasurable existence, and that far before that
time is reached, his beauty and his power have
fallen upon weeds and forgetfuIness. But
there is frailty, by comparison with which
this ordinary hux Of the human race seems to
have vast duration. Cases there are and
those not rare, in which a single week, day,
an hour sweeps away all vestiges and land
marks of a memorable felicity; in which the
ruin travels faster than the flying showers up
on the mountain-side, faster than musician
scatters sounds in which it was and it is
not are words of the self-same tongue, in the
self-same minute; in which the sun that at
noon beheld all sound and prosperous, long
before its setting hour looks out upon total
wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition
of any fugitive memorial that there ever had
been vessel to be wrecked, or wreck to
be obliterated.
These cases, though here spoken of rhet-
orically, are of daily occurrence; and. though
they may seem few by comparison with the
infinite millions of the species, they are many
indeed, if they be reckoned absolutely for
themselves; and throughout the limits ofa
whole nation, not day passes over US but
many families are robbed of their heads, or
even swallowed up in ruin themselves, or their
course turned out of the sunny beams into a
dark wilderness. Shipwrecks and nightly
conhagrations are sometimes, and especially
among some nations, wholesale calamnities /;
battles yet more SO; earthquakes, the famine,
the pestilence, though rarer. are Vsitations yet
wider in their desolation. Sickness and COM
mercial ill-luck, if narrower, are more frequent
scourges And least of all, or with more
a. fha oe kla
rain--lunacy-which, visiting nearly one
thousand in every million, must, in every pop
ulous nation, make many ruins in each partic-
ular day. Babylon in ruins says great au
thor, Z is not so sad a sight as human soul
overthrow by lnnacy.' But there is a sad
der event than hat,-the sight of family-ru-
in wrought by crime is even more appalling.
Forgery, breaches of trust, embezzlement, of
private or public funds-(a crime sadly on the
increase since the example of Fauntleroy, and
the suggestion ofits great feasibility first mr
by HIM )-these enormities, followed too
and countersigned for their final result
future happiness of families, by the p
catastrophe of suicide, most natural
ry wealthy nation, or wherever r
the modes of property are mu
constitute the vast majority II
under the review of public
these is sufficient to max
peace and comfort for a f
deed, it happens that the
plished within the cour'
often the whole dire
its total consequence
and made known
concerns within Or
mighty JuggerH-
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