Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1866-04-25
we May not i've to be old.


The oaks live a thousand years The
yew reaches a much greater age; a church
yard among our Scottish mountains boast
ing one, specially mentioned by Hum
bolt, under whose green canopy We have
sat, which fourished in the days of Sol
omon, and stood white with SHOWS or
hOar frost, mighty tree, that Christmas
eve, on which our Lord was born. In
contrast with the mighty forms and stub
born lives of trees that, yielding slowly
to their doom, look down on the graves
of many generations, are their leaves
Fragile and fading, these are often nip
ped in the bud; they are easily crushed;
their lives does not extend beyond few
months; the cold Of autumn is their
death; and the SHOWS of winter is their
shrOud
For these reasons leaf has been ss-
cred emblem with poets both sacred and
profane, of man, or of his feebleness, of
his mortality. So, when stripped, Of all
his property, his ehil1ren suddenly
whelmed into common grave, these
dead griefs and his wife living one, his
few friends the miserable comfoFters,"
whose unskIllful hands widen the
wounds they sought to close, so spake
Job; turning to God, he plaintiyely ex-
postulates with Him, crying. wilt thou
break leaf driven to and fro!" Phus
also spake the prophet who saw a picture
of man, his sins and sorrows, where the
wind at close of autumn, tearing through
the tinted woods swept off their leaves IN
showers, and scattered them whirtIng
and eddying along the ground-"We all, !"
he exclaimed, ''do fade as a leaf, and our
iniquities like the wind have carried Us
awav." -- INK s.
We fade as a leafl In one sense we
do, in another we do not Most leaves
live out all their days, but not many men
few men, the half of them OF all
our race nearly half die in infancy,
and are torn from mothers bosoms to lie
in the cold arms of death. Another large
proportion drop into the grave ere the
summer Of life IS past. The woods retain
their foliage till days krow short, and
fruits grow mellow. and Fields ripe to the
reaper's sickel, but how small the number
of men who survive its gray hairs and
STOPPING form, slow step and shuH-
ling gait, to wear the marks .ofaage ere
they follow their companions to the
tomb? Ask the hoary old man where
are the boys who sat by him at the desk
in school; where the youth, flushed with
health and full of hope, with whom he
started in the race of life; where the
guests of his board, his competitors or his
partners IN business? ? In the grave
mouldering in the grave: save one and
another who, amid, new faces. now find
themselves to be stangars on this earth;
and remain the last yes sages of their gem
Grafton, clinging to life just as I have
seen a few brown leaves hanging on the
tree, and whirliag in the Finter wind
when the skies were dark with storms,
and fields were white with snow.
To the eye of faith, this survey, these
bills of mortality present nothing melan-
choly. An early death to- those who are
in Christ, is but another expression for
early deliverance, and ifin place of being
long becalmed, or tossed about by storms,
and perhaps driven out once and again
to sea when their ship was in sight of
land, whose Foyagers to make a short
passage count themselves happy, fortu-
nate, are not they rather to be enYied
than pitied who, by7an early death, es-
cape much of the sin and SORROW of this
world2 like birds ofipasssge, they just
light on it, rest for a shttle while; and
then, as if they found nothing to protOng
their stay, take wing again and soar up
to heaven. Viewed in this aspect, but
for the cold, the neruelties, the hunger,
the wants and suferings which springing
to a large exte Mt from parental vices, &C
count for the circumstance, there is p0th-
ing melancholy in the shoFtness of many
lives, and that nearly the half of all born,
die under FIVE years of age; leaving a
small fraction to see three score years and
ten. But what more melancholy, more
marvellous, than to see thousands setting
at nought these we'll ll-established facts;
delaying their salvation, and Yhere in
terests of the highest moment are con
cerned counting on years which not one
in hundred Of them shall ever reach
No wise man acts with such infasuation
in other and far less important matters.
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