Smyrna times., 1856-07-09
o riginal Artitlt.
Written for The Smyrna Times.
Musings on the Deck of a Missouri
Steamer.
BY EX pom MT.

1t Is evening; the supper table has been re.
moved, and band is performing choice music
IN the saloon of the boat, and forms of angelic
beauty are floating in the dance to the measure
OF celestial harmonies. Pleasure and festivitv
ls the order of the evening, and the passenyers
seem to be enjoying themselves admirably
But for me the music and the dance have no
charms, but they rather cast melancholy over
my heart. For when / gaze upon those smi-
ing beauties, they remind me of the fair ones
whom | have left behind to see perlaps no
more; and the thought comes like pail over
my spirit that there is not female in one thou
sand miles of me whose name know. or with
whose face | am familiar; and at such times
mIrth and festivity have no charms for us.
Therefore, have | left the CAV saloon and
stand here musing upon the deck. Here can
view the works Of Nature, and they are suited
to every state of my mind =
" For my gayer hours
She has voice of gladness, and a smile,
And eloquence of beauty; and she glidcs
Into my darker musings with q mild
And gentle sympathy, which steals away
Their sharpness ere am aware"
1t is clear and beautiful evening, and roll
ing through the azure dome of heaven, ! see
those brightly shining orbs, the stars, on which,
from childhood's earliest hours, have ever
loved to gaze and though all things else
around me are changed. yet yonder in the ceru-
lean armament roll the self-same stars on which
have so often gazed when on the far-off At
lantic shore. Everything else is changed
The trees of the forest are not those saw up-
on the peninsula of my birth; the familiar pine
is gone-the cypress, the gum and the chesnut
are not here. The buildings are not the same
constructed of different materials and on diff.
ferent plans. The hills are not the undulatins.
herbage covered, heaps of sand Of the East
but gigantic piles of rock-rough, Jagged and
irregular. This river is not like the clear. lin.
pid, transparent streams of my native State
bOrdered with pleasant meadows and smiling
farm-house-but, wide, turbulent, muddy, rock
bound, endless river-it rolls its angry, swift,
resistless, never-changing current in the same
dlrectlon-dashing its heaps of mud and slime
on this side, and undermining and swallowing
up the town, the farm and the forest on the
other. The men, too, are not the companions
of my past life, but now, far away from the
companions of my boyhood, and the friends rem
dered dear by past associations, am stranger
in a strange land. And when I look around
me, and can see no other object with which
am familar-nothing else around which clings
the memory of past associations, and then ga
ing upon the glorious orbs which decorate the
great cerulean concave above, fUd myself able
to recognize among them the same stars, and
the same constitutions on which gazcd with
so much delight when | sat a barefoot boy IN
my fathers door, it sends a thrill of joy to my
heart. Yes, yonder is ltegulas just sinking in
the western horizon, aud yonder is the stately
Ursa Major majcstically treading his oft-trod
path around the pole, and yonder in the south
is seen the huge scorpion with his wide-extend-
ed claws, and in the east scars Aquila mount
ing eagle-like toward the zenith of heaven.
And this mighty river what source of re-
fiection does it exhibit! display ing the mystic
rous wisdom aud providence of the great Crea-
tor such as must astonish every rejecting mind