The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-03-03


earth in possession and Heaven in reversion
viii you go sorrowing and dOwncast because
here and there pearl or ruby fails you? Nay,
rather, forgetting those things which are behind
and reaching forth unto those which are before,
press forward. Discomfort and murmuring are
i1sidious foes; trample them under your feet.
Utter no complaint, whatever betide; for COM
planning is sign Of weakness. If your trouble
can be helped, help it; if not, bear it. You can
be whatever you will TO be. Therefore, form
and accomplish worthy purposes. If you walk
alone, let it be with no faltering tread. Show
10 an incredulous world,
How grand may be Iife's might,
Without Loves circling crown"
Or if the golden thread of love shine athwart
the dusky warp of duty, if other hearts depend
on yours for sustenance and strength, give to
them from your fulness no stinted measure.
Let the dew of your kindness fall on the evil
and the good, on the Just and on the unjust.
Compass happiness, since happiness alone is
victory. On the fragments of your shattered
plans, and hopes, and love-on the heaped-up
ruins of your past-rear a stately palace, whose
top shall reach unto heaven; whose beauty
shall gladden. the eyes of all beholders whose
doors shall stand wide open TO receive the way
worn and weary.
Life is a burden, but it is imposed by God
II,
a milestone about your neck, or a diadem upon
your brow. Take it up bravely, bear it on Joy
fully, lay it down triumphantly.
APPENDIX
To all those known and unknown friends
who, during the publication of these articles,
have sent nae words of greeting, approval, or
suggestion, beg 10 return my grateful acknowl-
edgments; and while | humbly crave pardon
L IL 1 4 4
by my remarks on the " light infantry" they
win allow me TO say, that did not mean their
babies, not in the least-since have no doubt
they are the prettiest latest, pinkest, charm
INCEST, little bundles of coral and cambria in
the world but only certain abstract, imper-
sonal, metaphysics enJdRt terrible, who shall
be the scape-goat for all the sins of babylon.
To the young mother, whose feelings are out
ragged by my comparing her pet to a pig, only
reply, that the fault is not as she suggests, MY
ignorance Of babies, but her ignorance of pigs.
In the words of the ballad,
IS . mother, mother, what's pig.
That thou shOuldsi weep and wall 30
1 believe she must be thinking Of the rusty,
musty, dusty denominations driven in hocks and
herds along our streets but | assure her that
whoever forms has opinion on such grounds has
a very er payte view Of the case. The pig q in
my minds eye, Horatio, is in far less adj
vsnced stage of natural history, pig whose
tender age is reckoned by days, whose young
feet have not yet wandered from the paternal
root whose purity is untarnished, whose infant
voice has only the faintest suggestion Of
squeal, whose soft skin and silky
20, cali ii hai,, not brisaes,7
are family flushed with the hues Of a winter
sunset, the pure tint Of inOther-of pearl, or
the bloom in the heart of peach blossom when
= ,s.r oles snff Ia. lie Rol.
mammas, / have spoken with zeal" but ac-
cOrding to knowledge; :" and if the pigs do not
protest, the babies need not for there are few of
The latter who would not be fattered by the
comparison.
The bravery with which women have come
up To the defence of their darlings. and the sly
satisfaction with which men have Informed me
conhdentially, in corners, that they thought
Just so affords another illustration of the add
mrable manner in which nature balances sup
ply and demand.
AU revpr 4, III