Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1870-12-16

preparing IOE war on q vast SCetlG ana y
rapidly concentrating her forces near
the Turkish frontier.
HOME PAPERS.
written for the Delaware Gazette.l
AROUND THE FIRE.
The night without is bleak and cold.
The stars have yelled their silver light,
and the wind means drearily through
the leafless, shivering branches of the
trees, like some restless, uneasy spirit,
seeking rest, but finding It not. The
sky is gloomy, and black, and the air is
filed with sad forebodings of wild, herce
storms, whose heavy trampings are ev-
en- now sounding dismally among the
hills and echoing through the valleys.
But in pleasant contrast to all this drear-
mess and gloom, are the lights that
twinkle and glow with brighter lustre
than the stars, flashing from the win
dows Of many pleasant ''ingIe-side. $
and lighting up the dull and dusly
streets with their clear and crimson lus-
tire, beautiful tokens of the warmth and
comfort within, would we could say
of the perfect peace and happiness of
each one that comprises the happy
group assembled around the glowing
hearths.
Although there is much that is bliss
full and sweet in the homes of earth, the
boon of perfect happiness finds there no
resting place, nor anywhere IN this
changeful, troubled sphere. Only
among the countless treasures of which
aeye hath not seen, neither ear heard, "
reserved for the just in the Kingdom
above. may we hope one day to behold
And ever 0 'er its brightness tiits,
So dark, so drear, so solemnly-
'sThere isno flock hOwsoe'er watched
and tended,
But one dead lamb is there,
There is no fireside hOwsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair"
And some mother, perchance, as she
sits by the fire tonight, with a merry
troop of little ones about her, baslzing in
its cheerful warmth and glow, thinks
sorrowfully Of the tiny golden head pill
lowed low upon the cold. sods of the
valley.
Or, the bereaved wife gazing up at
the portrait smiling down at her from
the wall directly above the glowing
hearth, thinks with anguish on anguish
that God alone can fathom, of one who
once walked lovingly by her side, in
hfe's troublesome journey, making each |
rough place smooth, and causing each J
wilderness to blossom as the rose to her,
by his beaming smile and words of ten
derness, but whose feet the soonest grow !
ing weary in that long and tiresome
journey, he fain would lave them in the
crystal stream that proceedeth from the
throne of God. and rest his weary form
beneath the spreading branches of the
Tree of Life and so, to that promised
peaceful rest above, he fed away, and
left her to weep, to suffer. and to strug-
gle on alone, in a world fraught enough
with shadows at best, but darker now
since he is gone.
Or, father longs, perhaps, for the
beaming eye, and the bounding feet of
some beloved son, whom he fondly
hoped would prove his staff and stay
when the blossoms of age should whiten
his hair but whom death claimed for
his own, ere the dew of youth had been
exhaled by the radiant morn of man
hood.
A sister mourns a brother, and a
brother sister, the playmate of their
childhood. and the companion of riper
years, whose going away to the Spirit
Land, has left here a void that never
can be filed. Thus.
Within each home Deaths shadow sits,
And ever o'er its brightness fits,
So dark so dreaT, so sOlemnly.
But as some writer has expressed it,
there are worse woes IN this life, than
the wall above the bier. and there is
many a home in our midst tonight
II
which wife, or a mother, or Perchance
a sister, directs many a sorrowful glance,
thinking with anguish of the absent
one, but not as safely housed and secure
from temptation and sin, in "the bliss
beyond the blue" but as rioting and
carousing within the walls of some vile
saloon, or filthy doggery, with which our
town, to our shame be it said, abOunds,
blighting their manhood, corrupting
their bodies, and staining the whiteness
of their souls, and, more terrible than
all, paving their way to an early grave,
and fearful hereafter; for has it not
been said that mo drunkard shall in
herit the Kingdom of God.
0, for the strength of a Hercules, that
we might rend from their foundations
those foul habitations, and hurl them
from our midst o, for the voice of an
archangel, that we might sound contin-
ually into the ears of you, We poor, mis-
guided ones, the sorrows, the wretched-
ness, and the tears of which ye are the
cause, as well as the fearful results of so
sinful an indulgence
Q, by the shadow you bring to your
else beautiful and happy homes by the |
tears and prayers of tender mother, |
and the anguish of a loving wife and
oh, by the sweet and innocent faces of
your little ones, looking to their father
for counsel and guidance, who may one
day turn from you with loathing and
contempt, when the world shall taunt
them, as soon it will, with bearing the
curse of an Incorporate father by all
the rich blessings that spring from a
pure and well-spent life, as well as the
promise of blissful reward in the life
beyond, and the memory Of the just, |
that
"only grows sweet and blossoms in the
by all these precious and priceless con-
siderations, we beseech you to turn away |
from these sinful haunts, and find a safe /
and sweet shelter in the arms of your
family and your home. Fly from the
wiles ofthose who would stay your feetin
those foul abodes, as you would from
the knife of an assassin. Better for you,
that the murderer's steel should find its
way to your throat than that you should
meet the death of a suicide, as you must
needs do. if. continuing the deadly prac-
tlee Of quafing from the poisonous bowl.
Throw off the loathsome charms that
are dragging you down to infamy and
death. Let the old year that is now 81
Iently speeding on to its final close, and
will soon vanish into the great Eternity,