The Nevada Democrat., 1856-11-26
Alone.

Alone Alone! Alone How mournfully II
sounds like bleak wind at midnight in place
Of graves. In the great world, how many move
amid the throng, whose hearts are murmuring
ceaselessly, "Alone!" Alas tits not the crowd
that makes companionshp, and not the desert
solitude.
What pain and misery and long despair this
sense of loneliness this consciousness of living
without hope or love or sympathy, begets and
has begottcn, no subtle chronicler of woe can
meier relate. Ten fold more wretched than his
fellows deems he himself who finds, in all his
earthly walks, no breast responsive to his own.
His expectations faint, ambition dies, and each
experience stings anew his sad and swollen
heart. The grave mold falls each hour upon
his form, and yet he knows no rest
He sometimes dares to hope, to dream; be-
holds, q moment, beauty in his path, the hue of
heaven above his head; but baleful truth darts
out, as lightning from cloud, and shivers the
utopian world his little sun has shown upon. A
tremor passes through his frame; his soul is
stretched upon the rack; he suffers as Prone.
theus did; like him his dream is over. Bleeding
and torn, he looks up from his shattered uni.
verse, and finds himself again alone.
The saddest fate of man is loneliness without
the strength to be dweller in and of himself
But when he owns such strength, he has become
superior TO his kind and liken unto God. II Is
mans duty then to seek and learn how he may
live alone; how in the confines of his own phys
ical sphere, he may find mental food and spirit
raiment how he unto himself may be all things,
If not in reality.
Hard, hard, perchance, this learning is and
painful study requisite to make it good. But
all is hard and painful of accomplishment, that
can advantage mortals, or lessen their capaci-
ties to suffer. He who assumes the philosophc
Qrh of ha 4n ~ snIr
juice, if circumstances demand. The price of
pleasure is the sense of pain; and knowledge
lives on /, attendant toll
To live alone we must not think what reason
does not pr0mpt-we must not bound along the
plain of early life, and only pause to Gull the
flowers and weave them into garlands for our
brow; since, though the blooms may fill fair
days with Sweets they must soon fade and fall,
and there be none to gather like them
Let us walk soberly and slowly on, and strive
to turn our feet from noxious marshes and en-.
venomed thorns So walking toward the vale
where tombs await our coming anxiously. tis
true, we shall not revel in the scenes of beauty
spread before our eyes; have pleasant dreams
while brooks are whispering music to the listen.
ing solitude; nor hearken joyously to birds OF
dulcet song; but then, when night and storm
and winter come, we shall not miss them-O
remember this,--and weep and wall and sink
detected down, because the beauteous scenes
the brooks and birds are seen and heard nc
more.
And so we shall be lifted up to the phlosophic
nights to pinnacles on which the eldest sagcs
trod, and felt that wisdom which came not to
earth. We may not grow in cheerfuness nor
hopefulness while learning how to live alone:
but we shall more and more clearly see how
much of disappointment, grief and torture we've
escaped by turning skeptic of true sympathy
and love.
Dark and devious may be the way Of those
who have the will and power to live alone; but
meath the plain, 1t may be sombre, robes they
wear, an armor is concealed that the conspirinc.
treacherous world, with oil its secret and mali9-
nant stabs can never pierce, nor him who wears
such armor ever wound