The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-02-09

among her young lady acqua1ntances.-
When you were school girl with Miss
Prim You never really loved her, and sue
ceeding years have not developed any
new affection toward her. ri ti,4eaalt
Well, when Mrs. Pussy and Miss Prim
call, you receive them with a smile, you
entertain them to the best of your ability,
you put clean dress ON the boy, and at
tea time you spread your snowiest cloth
on the table, and bring out your best Chi
ma and set on your choicest preserves
and richest pie. When they leave you
bid them hearty adieu and ask them
to call again. Ifyou are lady, you do
all this. &.
Have you been lying? Yes, assured
ly say we, for if you had spoken your
thought you would have said, "Mrs. Fus-
sy, you are disagreeable old creature,
and Miss Prim you are a gossiping, in
quisitive, unwelcome person, and | had
rather you would 10th keep out Of my
house."
Have you been lying? No, assuredly,
for the duty to be courteous was imper-
alive, and in being false to one set of feel
ings, you were true to those which were
nobler and had higher claims upon you.
Thus we say it is necessary to lie some
times, and in our opinion, those people
who are always telling unpleasant truths
to their friends, and seem to delight to
remind them of their failings, have avery
mistaken notion of what duty is.
Shakespeare gives us an illustration of
this point in the character of DEsDEMoNA
the sweetest and most perfect ideal of
woman which the imagination of poet
has ever conceived. t-
(See Othello, Act 5, Scene 2. Et
EiniEu o, who hath done
This deed ? .sr
Des. Nobody Il myself; farewell
Commend me to my kind lord o farewell
Dies
Oth Why, how should she be murderdf
Emil Alas, who knows
OH. You heard her say herself, it was not L
Emil. She said so, must needs report the
truth.
9th. She's like liar, gone TO burning he'll.
Twas that killed her.
Emil o, the more angel she,
And you the blacker devil!
We all agree with Emily 'the more
angel she" and with Hudson, when he
says;-" However casuists may syllogize
this untruth into sin, no right minded
person can help loving her better for it."
1t is customary for business men,
hard, practical men; men with cash
capital, to speak contemptuously of Poets
and Poetry. 1t might be interesting to
seek for the causes of this feeling. Prob
ably it arises from that disposition, not
very complimentary to our natures, which
leads us to affect contempt for what
ever is above and beyond us.
The worldly man affects contempt for
the meek humility of the christian, but
in the case of both poet and christian the
feeling is superficial. All men love the
true poet. He may be neglected while
living, he may be misrepresented and ra-
ted at less than his worth, but when tru-
ly known, his home is in every heart and
every man is his brother and friend.
This fact finds forcible illustration in
the homage recently paid to ScotIand's
greatest singer-RoBERr BURNS.
The 25th day of Jan. last was the hum
dredth anniversary of his birth day.
On that day such a tribute was paid to
BURNS as scarcely ever was given to any
other man. That day was celebrated all
over the civilized world, and Statesmen,
Scholars, Poets and Divines We'd with
each other in doing honor to the PoEr
and the MAN. In New York, Henry
Ward Beecher was the master spirit of
the festive and glorious occasion, and in
Boston, Ralph Waldo Emerson - the
poet-philosopher-the man whose. deep
sea line has fathomed depths of thought
that are rarely stirred by others, said -
The memory of Burns-I am afraid
heaven and earth have taken too good
care of it, to leave us anything to say.
The west winds are murmuring it. O.
pen the windows behind you. and heark-
en- for the incoming tide, what the waves
say of it. The doves perching alway 5
on the caves of the stone chapel opposite
may know something about it. Every
name in broad Scotland keeps his name
bright. The memory of Burns-every
mans and boys and girls head carries
snatches of his songs, and can say them
by heart, and, what is strangest of all,
never learned them from book, but
from mouth to mouth. They are the
property and the solace of mankind.
Never before has poetry had vindi-
cation so complete triumph SO glorious
as in the homage paid to Scotland 5
/ ,,ln-. o-hy,,or bar1 @-t