Minnesota weekly times. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1859, 1855-11-17
Written for the Daily Times.
FIRE-SIDE MUSINGS.
by r. b. CURTIS.
n.y.

FIRE-SIDE MUSINGS.
ny R.. b. CURTIS.
No. l.
Among the arrangements of kind Providence,
there is none that brings me more of pleasure
than experience from the succession of the sea-
sons.
The bright and joyous spring-time with its
buds and blossoms, its southern breczes and re-
viving showers; the warm glorious summer, when
nature has donned her robe of richest green and
the golden autumn that brings the husbandman
reward for all his toll, have each their beau
ties and their charms; but most of all love the
long cold winter.
Cherries, it is some times called, and SO it may
be to many, yet to me it affords more of real hap
piness than any other portion of the year. am
not sufficiently man of leisure to find the days
hang heavy on nv hands, or to care whether the
atmosphere without be cold or warm, or the day
clear or stormy. 1t is the evening that furnishes
enjoyment and to which look back with pleas
ure, or forward in anticipation. What more de-
lightful than when the shades of night have gath
cred thick around, to draw your easy chair before
the bright and glowing fire which burns within
the open crate and indulge in the pleasures of
memory and Imagination. Summer twilight and
the winter evening when passed in solitude are
generally to the young times of gloom, but when
one has learned what is meant by the sbattle of
life, and has found by bitter experience that this
is indeed world of care, of trial and disappoint-
ed hopes; when death has taken the well-beoved
relative and friend, or adverse circumstances have
removed them far away, then does the mild and
chastened shadow of evening speak different
language to the soul then is the time when the
mind, turning from the present, reverts with sad
dening pleasure to the past or calls up shadowy
images and scenes and reves in the illusions of
the imagination. The strife, the noise and bus
tie of active life are for brief space ended the
glare and brightness of day are gone and all
seems hushed and still. Like that procession
which appeared to and appalled, the guilty Thane
of Cawdor, dim forms move slowly by; you clasp
again the hands of those whose pulses long since
ceased to beat the we'll remembered faces gather
round cndued with life and being and among
them comes perhaps some fairy form-the first
love never forgotten.
Yes AS sit in the dim light which the flick
ering fame casts round me with no companion
but my thoughts,
The forms OF the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved-the hearted
Come to visit me
With slow and noseess footstep
Come those messengers dvine
Take the vacant chairs beside me,
Lay their 1tle hands in mine.'
That person has been remarkably favored of
fortune who has lived without experiencing many
moments Of bitter, heartfelt anguish moments
which no lapse of years can entirely obliterate
from the recollection and there are few however
hard their lot, who have not had their seasons of
JOY which in the hour of dependency appear like
ssunny spots memory's waste.''
and serve to cheer and invigorate. In the retro
spect sorrow loses its po Snancy and like the rug
ged scenery of a mountain district, is mellowed by
distance, or resembles the far-off landscape
shrouded in the soft haze of an Indian summer
while as the pleasures of other days recur to US,
our hearts beat with the pulse of former joy and
the clouds arc driven from the mind.
What fit opportunity is the winter evening
for communicating with distant friends through
the media of pen, ink and paper! 1t is conceit
suggested by momentary interruption, that
letter is the poker with which stir up the Goals
of friendship on which the ashes of Indifference
have begun to gather, the fuel which renews the
fire of affection in the hearts of the loved and the
absent. l am not speaking now of business let
ters, (for business is n word that should find no
place in the vocabulary after meditation has been
entered therc,) but those epistes that constitute
an interchange of thought, feeling and emotion
between the writer and the recipient. Letters
are mile-stones on the road of acquaintanccship.
The frequency with which they occur will furnish
an index by which to note the progress of that
sympathy and interest in the correspondent, which
must exist ere friendship is established, and at
test to its continuance where friendship has been
once profcssed.
But now the fire is burning low and the lamp
is growing dim. Vanish all recollectons of the
past and airy castles, bright structures of my
waking dreams! Come to me when sleep shall
have bound my senses in its chains or when again
sit and call you up to bear me company!