Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio) 1856-1865, 1857-07-30
An Interesting 5ketfl).
L e 4 Fl e.
BY E. GU0LD BUFFUM.

acknowledge is sorrow They who know the most
Must mourn the deepest oer the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life"
Forgetfulness and oblivion! 1t is thu
curse of memory, which haunts, like mid
night ghost thousands of Earth's mos
brilliant children. Sleep is ever to them
but a transient release from the gnawins
sorrow which, eating out their hearts, fol
lows them from the Past; and the day
dawn, bright and sunshiny to Others, only
brings them the misery of that Past's mem
ories. Ever their hope, the only one
which with its fitful, flashing glimpses
sometimes brightens up their life's dark
path way, is to bathe in the fabled stream,
who e waters wash forever from the brain
and from the heart the bitter remembrances
that make life all misery. And SO
they hope, and SO they suffer; and life
flows on, and they find their Lethe at last,
only when the green-sward covers them,
and a grassy knoll, or slab of marble,
marks their graves, or when, like one of
whom l am about to writec all traces of
their individual being are washed forever
by the storms and surges of ocean from
among the memories of men.
The life of a reporter upon daily news
paper, is not one particularly conductive TO
development of the finer qualities of
mans nature. II is not probable that Sy-
siphus, when engaged in the interesting
occupation of rolling rock continually up
hill, was at all struck with the beauty Of
the curve described by the stone itself, or
that his eye was gladdened by the purity
of the air that breathed about its summit.
And SO is it with the daily drudge upon a
newspaper.
Flowers are blooming in the spring-time,
but not for him. The scent of the peach
blossom is waited on the breezes of early
June, but he cannot accept the invitation
to ego forth into the fields" and breathe
Gods pure, country air, and listen to Gods
own choir of thousand birds, as they sing
their early mathis, or look upon green and
springing grass, breathe in the breath
which the clover exhales. Sysiphus-like,
he rolls his rock forever up the steep and
stony mountain-side, reaching the summit
only and resting from his labors when he
reaches his grave, and few looking
fellow-travelers on the uphill path stop a
moment to drop a tear upon the earth
which covers him. Sad have been their
lives, and sad the deaths of many of these
industrious, but ill-appreciated laborers.-
Tears will rise even to my eyes when re-
call to memory the dozen good fellows
who, on Saturday evening in years long
gone by, used to meet in the back room of
bar-room near the corner of Fulton and
Nassau streets, in New York, where they
passed few hours in social intercoure and
gayety. They are now all dead but three.
Green graves cover most of them, and on a
sunny day of August, two years past, 1
stood above all that was mortal of two of
them, resting from their labors, among the
lovely labyrinths of Greenwood.
But it was of another sat down to
write; of one whose sad history has never
been written, and whose life went out in
darkness, far away from all ever loved,
and whose maturer years were embittered,
whose fondest hopes were blasted, whose
death finally resulted from one crime Of
youth, whose life for years before its close
was but one constant longing for the Lethe
offorgetfulness.
I had been to the West Point in the
summer of 1s46, engaged in writing q
series Of letters for the Morntag -----,
with which had been connected as repor-
ter for some two years previous. Upon my