The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1862-07-26

Reprieved, but only for Day.
Reader, have you ever experienced the emo
tons of one, who, on retiring for the night,
makes his will, kisses his wife and baby, bids
farewell to all sublunary things, wraps around
himself ''the drapery of his couch" and lies
down,-not ''to pleasant Dreams" but-in ex-
pectation of awakening in the morning, to find
himself head shorter, and his body in the
hands of the undertaken but who actually
finds himself anharmed?
Then you know precisely the feelings of
this unhappy indiyieJ when, yesterday morn
ing, an hour past day-break, instead of finding
himself asnuffed out" he read a gracious re-
prieve, though only for brief twenty-four
hours. The giant who wields the glittering
blade of the Advertiser, after reading our
death-warrant, whetting his knife, arranging
his apparatus, rolling up his sleeves, and max
ing all needful arrangements to prevent deflle-
ment from the blood of his vietim-after sus-
pense and torture extended through two full
columns, couches a brief reprieve as follows
"want of room obiges to postpone the remain
ing half of this article till tomorrow.
Did we ever before feel the full force of the
couplet-
.The cat doth play,
And after slayi"
When we awoke in the grey of the morning,
having had frightful visions ofthat fatal instru-
ment with French name, used in the early
dawn to shorten the French population, and
finding it already past six o'clock, we were at
a loss to know whetherwe were in the body or
fha
it world. We looked in the glass, and 10 it was
our own face, with all its blemishes and home
ly features and our head was in its customary
place. The bed revealed no stains of blood, as
though murder most foul" had been commit
ted. Respiration was not difficult; but then,
didn't we know the keenness of the blade that
was TO stop the life-current, and how many
heads it had severed without leaving Grim
son stain upon its lustrous surface? Indeed
we did; and not till we had spit, coughed,
sneezed, and performed divers other similar
cachinnations could we feel fully assured that
the glittering steel had not separated the
"joints and marrow" or that our head would
not roll from the shoulders which had long
upheld it? We had read in story and in fable,
of the headsman SO expert that his work was
never appreciated by his victim, until, in at
tempting some ordinary movement of the head,
he would find it severed at the neck, and done
so scientifically as not to interrupt either the
circulation of the blood, or the operations of
the mind. Is it strange, then, that we doubt
ed our consciousness, or that we refused to be
satisfied in the absence of the most feeling
proofs?
But we had been preserved; preserved, it is
true, only for sacrifice; but still preserved in
the best of spirits, equal to the best Catawba
and we have improved the briefrespite in max
ing preparation for the fate that brooks no
longer delay. At six this morning the curtain
falls, and the half hour that the Press is read
before the Advertiser is "up and dressed" is
all that enables us to tell the story of our de-
ferred though certain doom.
We hope no friend of ours-if we leave
friend behind, will allow his "angry passions"
to rise against our executioner. As we said
yesterday, he acts only in fulilment of great
public duty. "The "chronic complaints" to
which he has feelingly alluded, allow him no
rest while that duty remains unperformed. We
deeply sympathize with him. His most "chron-
ic complaint" is, doubtless, a disease of the
heart 1t drove him from the Argus in days
Of yore, as we learn from his own pen; it drove
him to seek rest amid the vine-clad hills of the
Hoosier prdiries; it drove him into the Gin
cinnati Enquirer; it drove him from the west
ern Porkopolis; it drove him to prefer Breck-
inrdge because of the excellence of his plat
form, and it has driven him to Portland 1t is
compelling him to remove mountains, to build
railroads, and to give such matchless exhibit
tons of JOURNALISM as the world had new
er seen. 1t imposes upon him mighty works
requiring a giants energies. Under its infiu-
ence he has slain his hecatombs of victims,
and done it with all the zeal, and fervor, and
sense of conscious duty that ever animated
the old crusaders in their efforts to rescue the
holy sepulchre from the hands of the turbaned
Mussulman. Profane annals furnish no exact
counterpart of his "chronic complaint" The
only fitting parallel is found in sacred story i'm
the case of the spirit that "walked through dry
places seeking rest and finding none" How
terrible is his mission! How sad and hopeless
the fate of those who stand in the way of
his kindled wrath! With the breath of his lips
he Stays his enemies! With the hash of
goosequill he blots them out forever, and
but stop! The cracked bell on the First Parish
announces the hour of six; that our time has
come! The door opens. The executioner en-
ters,-in his hand blade of FURNISHED steel
from his nostrils proceeding jets of fire and
yapor That right hand is raised: il descends
with crash; a caved head a cloven trunk,
struggle, gasp, and all is over! Beautiful
world, adieu!