Spirit of the age. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1849-1865, 1855-08-22
For the Spirit of the Age.
Luxury even in Sorrow.
BY L. C. RIGGS.

b L. C. RIGGS.
Sorrow has it's luxuries. The man who
has struggled for years with the adverse eur
rent of human life, who has breasted the BIZ
lows of misfortune, and met the stormlest
times which life's navigator IS fated to en-
counter, knows, as we know, that even mis-
cry itself has its store-house of comforts.
Let his fortune do her worst if she brings
not the consciousness of crime or dlshonor to
hand, her victim may defy her. Who has
ever looked into himself during the season
Of deep depression, studied the cause OF 1t,
and studying them, been able to absolve HIM
self from blame that they have com upon
him. without finding a feeling worth all the
self-complacency OF the fortunate, the proud,
the rich Who, in such a scene, buries him
self in the contemplation of those he loves,
: and Of the unremitted e~xertions be has made
; to deserve that love, but finds a loftier and
holier feeling than wealth, or pride, or pros
perity ever yet could bring him
He whose struggles have finally succumbed
. to the resistlessness Of i'll fortune, can
bear US witness that there is luxury left to
dependency. There is enjoyment even in
+ retiring into the concentration of the hearts
last and lowest abyss of bitterness! When
+ a man can no longer remain cheerful upon
i his bright prospects, 1t is a blessed portion
al il liz dColiII1 tlioU III may SoNASA
- from the mere intensity Of those that are
blighted. lie may retire into himself, and
10 luxuriate upon the miseries. which being I'M
possible to become worse, ought, by all means
y to become better if it be true, as we believe
~ it is, that fate is always locomotive, and never
- stands still. He who has satisfied himsel
that his fortune is at zero, may nationally
. enough make up his mind that there is Int
i tie use in caring for it when it goes below
After freezing to death amid the SHOWS an
frosts of life, who would care much abou
the posthumous freaks Of Fahrenheit? VIII
will give himself much trouble as to the ten
p%erature after it had made an icicle of him
cir A frozen heart is precisely upon a par wit
a frozen potato, and one is worth just abou
as much as the other.
But, we repeat, that there is a point in HI
is man feeling-and the heart reaches it beiol
I thf til tie tR aB8thiF q4fff 9 qpit fnf e8 ! 4s5.ta T anS
pre- itself, and while the demon OF destructic
hey seems to revel in the belief that he has ute
~ Frustrated his victim, the victim rises S
and perior to his infections, and gathers consol
ton from them The fate of the unfort
the nate man Is inevitable. He has the ass
we rance within himself that he has done all
lie a ms power to deserve a better one he know
s. also, that in that lies the secret of the luxul
in which even grief cannot take away. The
ion, IS the heart furnished with rays of sunshi
rom from the sombre atmosphere with which
cost own mlsfortunes have surrounded it. The
i'm raises the rainbow hope over the horizon
despair, and there are dispensed the min
the ~trations of consolation which the good ange
ings of mans destiny throw through the gloc
vine with which the bad have overshadowered
rom Bridgeport, Conn.