The Norfolk post. [volume] (Norfolk, Va.) 1865-1866, 1865-12-05

clleS, Out tney are, anu always nave
been, much more abundant at the North
than anywhere else in our country.
The reasons for this are obvious, and we
shall not state them. Our hero, how
ever, yields all his wealth in learning,
and his spare time to triiles and like
all men of his breath of intellect and
inexperience of the world, contends for
his little notions with minuteness and
persistency that important matters
scarcely merit. There is an end to this
folly, and the season of shame begins.
The roof is lifted from the house, and
the world secs what has happened.
She coIfesses and makes tokens OF
contrition /: he promises to bear the
secret if he can; but man who has
had to do with little things so long
with pipes, fishing rods and flies; who
cannoteat his luncheon without alluding
to his foreign travels and the advantages
ofsettled countries; who makes everybody
nervous with his tigity ways; who,
before he goes to bed in a tavern, turns
down the sheets, peers into cracks, feels
the pillows, casts suspicious eyes upon
his blanket, and after all is unhappy !!
surely such man is not expected to be
equal to an emergency like that which
has so suddenly overtaken him, nor can
he command resources to extricate those
who are looking TO him for help. The
nation was convulsed in war /: there was
no need of the further crime of suicide
he could have gone to the battle field,
and there, unknown to all the world, the
little fine arts man with Ills awful
secret knowledge of the unhappy wife's
fall, could have found common grave.
This would have been chivalrous.
1t would have been something
orthy of large manhood. He does not
do any such thing. A billiard player or
real hOrseman--a person claiming no
relationship whatever with "the old and
highly respectable families" of our
"young country"-would have done it.
To his mind, it was not an artistic way
to dispose Of his burden. A common
clod, and it is worth while to notice
how seldom common clods expose their
soiled linen would have carried his
wife's secret and his hod, too, and would
have whistle,l as he went-and would
have buffettedagainst fate, ifonly for the
sake of the children, living and dead.
The surly critic-whois himself art-mad
this and account for itwith his
fact" that poor people have no sensibil-
tiles; but we have no time to refute that
foolishness, or to prove to the refined,
that an honest heart often beats under
that old patched jacket. The courts of
law are opened wide-the rabble of the
town fill the galleries, and with necks
and criminal faces thrust for.
ward, they search for the new conner to
the shrine of shame. There sits the
wife, surrounded by sad friends, who
have come to listen to the story of her
incest, as recounted by the little fine arts
"an.--the Daniel among epicures, the
Pigmy among men. srhe story itself is
sufficiently appalling in the small type
of the daily papers; but how much more
shocking is it when the elements of it
are seen to be living, moving human
beings, with hearts pulsating, and with
souls which the possessors expect to
save, through the mercy they withhold
from others The rest of the story Is in
the keeping Of the judges and the jurors.
1t is left to them to ascertain and pro-
claim that the mother is all that he,
who above all on earth ought to know
her best, says she is. We leave a tear in
her lap and pass on. We part, too, with
the little fine arts man. He is not of
those we like to know. In his days of
popularity and pomposity it was hard
enough to bear his jargon, his foppery
and his pretence; his art cant was in
as his whole tastes were ami
NAL, selfish and useless. His soul never
rose to an appreciation of art; the divine
had never been revealed to his
giddy pate and petty mind; and the fussy
ways and the old nonsense dis
yuised in new phrases, at which his set
laughed, were only tolerated because of
the venson and wine which accompa-
MED them. Let some stout moralst
AXE ground against this class. Adam
Ion remote evils for time, and see if
we cannot put stop to those horrible
of domestic depravity. If
we cannot get at the root, and by early
and wholesome nurturing of the child
improve the man, IF the blood insists
upon telling even in the distant descend
,nt, why, let us do the next best thing.
What is that? Draw heavy curtain
over the fallen; and insist by force of
healthy public opinion and a morality
that is sound. that u picture, which repre-
,ents husband in the endeavOr to fasten
incest upon his. wife, is not work of art
or those of our day and generation to
,aze upon. t.' q" ioiii
THE EXAMINER. We are requested |
~ Mr.. Pollard to say that unavoidable |
will delay, for day or
wo, the re-appearance of the Richmond
Examiner, the first number of the new |
oriau of which woa exnectad this morn