The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-03-24
~ I'fe8ef better than Iook o,e.s old ohu,,

beard, and his great saucer-lke eyes, he con.
tinued:
" You've been keeping me on quarter grub
l guess, b. B.? feel as if could swallow
whole mess allowance of salt horse, kit and ALL
Jovel I've such a gnawing and craving
about the region of my hollow drum here that
! am certain l could digest a buck-horn knife
handle. Get me something to eat if you love
me.p ~ ~
"The doctors say you mustn't take ANYTHING
but some thin scupper-washings that they call
beeftea, or sort of billed bread-erumb fxin',
like chowder, all but the fish ana grease, that goes
by the name of peenady-butl think now
though I've no great amount of earning-that
the right thing to set you up would be just
about half a pound of pork, and cup of rum
and water to dip your biscuit in. That's what
I'd take"
Out upon your pork and rumI Have me
young chicken nicely broiled, and a beefsteak
also, as thick as your two fingers and mind, /.
want it rare done. Go order it, and come back
as Soon as you can. Pm tired. Hey, Abdul
lab, come here and give us your hand.' N
Abdullah crossed his arms over his breast,
salaamed with grave courtesy, and then took
his masters hand in his, looked at it awhile
with strange Frightening in his eyes and
men ne said, as he touched it to his forehead
Master, knew it. When the white shark
rubbed by you as you swan and seized the
sailor before you, i saw sixty years written
down tor you on his fin. Kismet it is destiny,
and who can alter that which is ordered ? /
am glad, oh my master. May thy chiIdren's
children pull at thy beard in childish play, and
honor thee"
linen, with another salaam, he turned away,
knelt down on the floor with face towards the
East, and said his quiet prayers in simple one
ness OF thanksgiving. Jasper felt wonderfully
affected by the sound of the savage's low guttu-
rails, and tears came into hiseyes; buth was very
weak, and, even while trying to think, he sank
into profound yet peaceful slumber. Nothing
perhaps shows more strongly the inter-depend-
ence OF mind and body, than the attempt at
thought OF one overcome by prolonged and Sc
we're illness. The mind refuses to work, or does
SO with as great cost to the physical powers
as would result from the most violent and long
continued exertion. There is as much effort
required in the invalid to carry on a connected
train of reflective ideas, as there is for him to
put on his clothes and move his weak and
staggering limbs across the floor. Here, then,
some unreasoning ones might. say, is an argu-
ment against the souls immortal being. If
the soul, or its index, the mind, weakens and
grows feeble with the weakening and enfeebled
body, why should it not entirely perish with
the entirely pershing body? See whittier anal
ogies may lead us! But suppose thou vert
one of two in a chain-gang, and that thy COM
rade, coupled ruthlessly to thy wrist, were to
grow sick and faint, and lag behind, and thus
thou wouldst not only have to drag him after
thee, but also to do double work, thine and his
weuldst thou not also grow sick and faint, and
lag behind, under the pain of the double bur-
den? But when he died, and the letters that
bound thee to his wrist were unlocked, to let
the corse lie, and thee pass on, freed, whether
wouldst thou roll into the road also and die,
or wouldst thou move on with lightened step
and jaunty air? AS the galley slave to his
fellow, sharer Of his fortunes in life, and un-
locked from him in death, so is the soul to the
body reader. But the galley slave is forthwith
wrist-locked to another conirade, sayest thou =?
Wen, is metempsychosis such an incredible
ana altogether IMPOSSIBLE alternative Re- Thy
soul, being immortal, was before thee, as it will
be after thee-why not hand-locked to some
other then, as plausibly as to thee no,o ? Can
n9t Boodh be also Guadma? Certainly, some
thing must be done with the ghosts, and strict
c0nstruc.ionists" of the doctrine of causation
might perhaps hold it were waste of material
to create fresh spirits for each new generation
OF bodies, when so many hundreds of genera
tons remain ready.made at hand, II would
seem also far better occupation for them than
that assigned them nowadays, of communica-
ting bad theology and morality; and worse
grammar, through divers deal-board media, to
dunderheads For mine own spirit, / dare
avouch l had rather it should go hence into
the vilest swine, or wood-louse,* than thus
dance attendance upon crazy men and hysteri-
cal women, who, being by their own uginess
refused the consultations of sweet human inter
course, are filled with an insane laundering
after the supernatural, or--the diabolical, flor
too often, perhaps, they are deceived by their
Grass fancies, and, like Rhea Sylvia, take
very material deity to their arms, while the re-
sultant corpus delicti is very seldom able, like
the British knights grandchild, to establish his
supernatural origin by Merlin's magic power)
Besides, to resume, hath not Ovid represented
the sage as saying:
ipse ESQ tnqw nlsnini) Troiari 'emp"re belli,
Panthodes Euphorbus cram cui pee ore Gu lndam
Ssolt IN adverse gravis has'a mino J. a dae.
Cognovi clyptum lac az geslamiha noslrae
Nuper Abanleis temple Ju,sonis III Argisp
Orids Mao'aorph, lib XIV, . 100.
And, if we must believe Edmonds and Hare
We have no reasonable right to set aside or
cover over with an epitaphian He facet the
leading dogma of the sublime Pythagoras. But
all this is palpable DEPRESSION.
r When Jasper walked again, much re-
freshed, he found B. B. at his post, with a pen-
tiful supply of good things ready for him. But
our sick man had overated his powers at the
trencher; he had barely tasted the meal, when
he pushed it away, and laid back again, surfeit-
ed with mouthful,s Then he asked
b. p. Sixteen days, you say, Ell? Any
news? Anything stirring?"
swell, yes-they had all about your speech
soap you very much, and say you are going to
be an amazing great man, some of these fine
days"
Some of these days ah--and we are going
to die, also, some of these fine days, are we
not, chummy? Do you ever think of dying,
old B. B?n
"Well, yes, sometimes Jasper lad"
And what do you think of it, B. B?n
swell, I've thought often should like to be
certain they would double-shot my hammock
when they sew me up, because ! shouldn't want
to some a-bobbing up against the ships hull at
night, as saw dead messmate of mine do
once off the Azores. 'Twasn't pleasant to us
who saw it, and it amt in my idea of things, to
be causing trouble aboard ship or soaring my
after I'm gone"
"Butthat's after you're dead, B. B., and should |
not occupy your thoughts, since yen have moth
ing to do with it. The bother of the whole |
business is the dying part of it; the ante-mortem
experiences, not the post-mortem disposition of |
you; don't that worry you -
"What for? Can / help it? AS yonder
WALLER chap says, Kismet, it's all written down
in the bpak to be 80, and ! say it's no use of
troubling about what's written down in the |
book Night as well fish for whales with an
eel-bob."
Perhaps SO, B. B., good soul at any rate,
It is very fine and comforting doctrine to those
that can honestly hold it,
Here followed pause and period of silence,
vh,1a Tocvar boro,, - Ell tor