The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-03-09

is dying within her at the vanishing of a
pair of whiske from an opposit box,-
which whiskers the poor fool has credited
| with resume drawn from her own mag
inings Of all that is grandest and most he
roic, most worshipful in man. By-and-
| by, when Mrs. I. finds the glamour has
fallen on her daughter, she wonders; she
has ''tried to keep novels out Of che girls
way,"-where did she get these notions
All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchant-
ed people talk as IF poets aud novelists
made romance. They do,-just as much
as craters make volcanoes, no more.
What is romance whence comes Il /? Plato
spoke to the subject wisely, in his quaint
way, some two thousand years ago, when
he said, ''Man's soul, in former state.
was winged and scared among the gods;
and SOFT comes to pass, that,in this life
when the soul by the power of music or
poetry, or the sight Of beauty, hath her
remembrance quickened, forthwith there
is struggling and a pricking pain as of
wings trying to come forth, even as
children in teething." And if an old
heather, two thousand years ago, dis
coursed thus gravely of the romantic part
of nature, whence comes it that in
Christian land wethink in so pagan way
oft, and turn the whole care of it to bal
lad-nakers, romancers, and opera sin
gers? II @
Let us look up in fear and reverence
and say GoD is the great maker Of ro-
nance. He, from whose hand came
man and woman,-HE, who strung the
great harp of Existence with all its wild
and wonderful and manifold chords. and
attuned them to one another,-HE is the
great Poet Of life. Every impulse Of
beauty, Of heroism, and every craving
for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler
type and style Of being than that which,
closes like q prison-house around us in
the dim, daily walk oil life, is Gods breath
Gods impulse, Gods reminder to the
soul that there is something higher,
sweeter, purer, yet to be attained.
Therefore, man or woman, when thy
ideal is shattered, -as shattered q thod-
sand times it must be,-when the vision
fades, the rapture burns out, turn not
away in skepticism and bitterness, say
ing, There is nothing better for a man
than that he should cat or drink but
rather cherish the revelations of those
hours rs prophecies and foreshadowings
of something real and possible, yet to be
attained in the manhood of Immortality
The soothing spirit that laughs at romance
is an apple Of the Devils own handing
from the bitter tree of knowledge; it
opens the eyes only to see eternal naked
ness.
If on ever have had romantic, I'M
calculating friendship boundless wor-
ship and belief in some hero of your soul,
if ever you have so loved, that all cold
prudence. all selfish worldly considera-
tons have gone down like drift-wood be-
fore river flooded with new rain from
heaven, so that you even forgot yourself,
and were ready to cast your whole being
into the chasm of existence, as an offering
before the feet of another, and all for
nothing, -ifyou awoke bitterly betrayed
and deceived, still give thanks to God
that you have had one glimpse of heaven.
The door now shut will open again. Re
joice that the noblest capability of your
eternal inheritance has been made known
to you; treasure it, as the highest honor
of your being, that ever you could so
feel,-that SO divine a guest ever possess
ed your soul.
By such experiences are we taught the
pathos, the sacredness of life; and if we
use them wisely, our eyes will ever after
be anointed to see what poems, what ro
mances, what sublime tragedies lie around
us in the daily walk of life, "writuen not
with ink, but in feshly tables of the heart
The dullest street of the most prosaic
town has matter in it for more smiles
more tears, more intense excitement, than
ever were writtenin story or sung in
poem; the reality is there, of which the
romancer is the secondhand recorder.
So much Of a plea we put in boldly be-
cause we foresee grave heads beginning
to shake over our history, and doubts ris-
ING in reverend and discreet minds wheth-
er this history is gong prove anything
bat a love-story, after all.
We do issue you, right reverend Sir,
and, you most discreet Madam, that it is
not going to prove any i no else and you
will find, if you will followed US, that
there is as much romance burning under
the snow-banks of cold Puritan precise
ness as if Dr. II. had been brought up to
attend operas instead of metaphysical
preaching, and Mary had been nourished
on Byron's poetry instead of Edwards
on the Affections"