The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1862-08-13
MISCELLANY.


Shrouds have no pockets; rather queer
caption for an article, but one that expresses
In itself a world of meaning We may spend
our days in toll; we may Join in the turmoil
and busy strife of life; we may get together
heaps of yellow gold; we may possess broad
acres, princely mansions furnished with all the
comforts, yea, all the luxuries of life; our ships
may sail on every sea, bringing to us the cost
ly fabrics and the rich gems of other lands;
yet soon the brief years of life flee by on Times
unresting wheel-the hour arrives when we
must bid adieu to all the baubles of earth, and
as we came into the world so do we depart
from 1t. Shrouds have no pockets What
avails all our yellow gold and costly gems p
We can bear naught of it with us to that sun
known shore" DER the river of death.
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toll not, neither do they spin. And
yet l say unto you, that even Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed as one of these"
What lesson to rebuke human vanity is
this. The flowers that grow wild and untend-
ed In the fields, far outvie in gorgeousness all
the costly apparel wealth can procure And
yet, how many pass their whole life, their eve
ry thought centered in, and confirmed to the
empty baubles of earth. Dress monopolizes
the every thought of some. Others wealth.
And what avails it all in the end, when the
ftful dream of life is over, and the mortal part,
arrayed in the livery of the tomb, and con-
signed to its eternal resting place, the grave.
Shrouds have no pockets
How many have sought the "golden shore"
washed by the waves of the blue Pacific, where
gold lies shining on rivers sands--their hearts
beating high with hope, and their souls fired
with dreams OF wealth. They have left behind
them the joys and comforts of home, the kind
smiles of friends and loved ones. They tread
for time that golden Shore" and by toll, per-
chance by other means, win store of wealth.
Then the blight.ng hand of death falls on them
what then avails their wealth of yellow gold
Were they the possessors of the wealth of Col
condas mines it would not purchase them a
moments respite from the blighting hand of
the king of terrors. They sink into the arms
of death-the wealth they have struggled so
hard to gain is left behind them
The miser who has led parsimonious life
whose every thought and every act has been
to collect together the glttering dross of
earth; whose only pleasure in life has been to
gloat over his heaps of yellow gold; who has
wrung the last penny from the widow and the
orphan, and as by alchemy turned the sweat
and tears of unrequited poverty to drops of
gold, to swell still larger his store of wealth.
At last he falls sick, and dies, wanting, suffer-
ing for the commonest necessaries of life! Up
on his squalid pallet, or heap of straw, he still
looks upon his gold for which he has sold all
the pleasures of life, happiness and heaven as
his god He dies his hand which has never
been extended to aid his suffering brother, is
closed with vice-like grasp, as though he
would still clutch, and as though he would
still gather and carry with him to the realm
beyond the tomb, the dross for which he has
sold his soul. But vain-he dies Shrouds
have no pockets. His gold is left behind for
Others TO enjoy-or, to abuse!
Why should we weak beings of day spend
our years and days of life striving after gold?
Lies years, to make the most Of them, are
brief enough; soon they fee away, and we
return again to the dust from which we sprung.
Gold and broad acres avail us not, when the
short span of years allotted to our earthly life
is over. We may be the possessors of bound
less wealth, and broad lands--a ring upon our
finger of the former, perhaps, and six feet of
the latter Is all the best of us can claim. The
rest we leave behind us for others.
Far better for us TO use it while we live, for
the amelioration Of our race, and to aid the
poor and needy.