Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1877-12-28
From the Syracuse Standard
SATURDAY NIGHT.

which were offered for sale. He f.
nally purchased them, and opening
the door of the cage, took one Of them
ont and set ii free; he watched its
flight as with glad, free wing, through
the clear air it mounted cloudward.
When the first had passed out of
sight, he liberated another, and so on
one after another until the last one
had disappeared and the cage was
empty. The reason which he gave
for thus giving his money to the air
was this: 81 to have been a prisoner. :"
He had known the weary irksome-
ness of bondage, and when he saw
the Gagged birds beating their wings
against the bars, he remembered how
he captive in a foreign land had
beaten his heart almost to breaking
against the bonds which confined
him, and with true sympathy reioi,,-
ed in his power to set the little cap
tives free.
1t is probably true that there is no
real and perfect sympathy with any
condition of circumstances in which
one has not been one's-self. You
may be sorry for the sufferings of a
person enduring the pain and weari-
ness of sickness: you may be kind
and patient, and full of all helpful
ness: but if, through all your years,
your pulses have throbbed with the
full bound of health, and you have
never known, in your own life, what
1t is to be for weary weeks and
months upon what the Old-time
preachers used to. call "bed of ian
gushing" yea can not know what
depths of pain, what lOng-drawn
WEAKNESS, what endless nights, s,what
dark and gloomy days, are enfolded
in that one word "sick." You who
have always been in outward ease
and comfort, DO you think you know
anything of what it means to be
eramped and pinched, and poor?
Think of the bitter bread which
many a poor soul is compelled to eat
or to 60 hungry; you may think oft,
but unless You have dined at that ta-
BILE yourself you have no real Idea
how hard the viands are to swallow.
If we could know the history and
the motive of many of the apparent
ly causeless and motiveless crimes
which are so frequent-the incendi
arisms which do nobody any good,
the ''unprovoked assaults, 'the "mys-
terions murders, "the nun.berless qui-
eJer and less violent mischiefs which
come about no one knows how, we
should find the motive in some intan-
gible but none the less painful wrong
OF humiliation. Many people are
ready to thank God that they know
nothing of the life or mode ofthougbt
of a thief or an evil woman, they
know that the thief will injure them
TO the amount of a hundred dollars
for the sake of one dollars benefit to
himself; they know that the woman
may be and often is false and cruel
in every part and portion of her ma
ture and that 1t is at his personal per-
II that any one seeks to help man OF
woman struggling in the dark,poison-
Gus waters of crime or impurity.
Indeed many people thank God that
they have no sympathy with SUCH
that they can not even comprehend
that state of existebce,a any more than
the thoroughly healthy man can com,
prehend that state, mental and bodl-
ly. of the invalid.
There has been an amusing story
in the newspapers lately of clergy
man dignifed and stately, but good
hearted and,sympathetic for all that,
who was travelling in railroad coach
where there was an intoxicated indi-
vidual, who was inclined to make
himself a nuisance to bis fellow pas
sengers; nobody could reduce him TO
an orderly condition, and the poten-
tates of the train were about to eject
him, when the clergyman took his
seat beside the refractory individual
and by engaging him in quiet and re-
spectfuI conversation; kept him IN
order until he reached his destiGa-
tion. The intoxicated man on part
ing with him said, ''You're a good
fellow, you understand how it is,you
have been there YOURSELF . This was
not perhaps complimentary 10 the
clergyman, but it showed a knowl-
edge of human nature on the part OF
the layman.
Some good man or woman will ask
must doctor have the small poX
aud the measles, typhoid, and diph,
liberia before he can know how to
cure them? Perhaps not, if he be
careful and lucky ;but heis not much
of doctor who shrinks from expos
ing himself TO the risk, and he IS
much better doctor who has In his
bodily frame the seen or unseen scars
of these battles with disease who has
in his own mental treasury the re-
membrance of a.man's feelings when
be Is fighting with some devil of dis
order. Ifyou were lying to-day IS
80 many around us are, famed by the
wing of that intangible, deadly, low
and slow fever, would you not ike
to have some one come to your bed
side to help you who could say eight
1t out old fellow l have been through
it myself" There is life and hope,
strength and help in the very arr
and look of such a man. Many an
ancient crone and crippled old "dad-
DIV" is worth more to help sick wo-
man or man than the most fine spun
doctor. You feel that if one person
has lived through it you may get
through yourself.
One of the privileges which a man
who ''went through the rebellionn
has, is that of occasionally ''fghting
his battles o'er again" and this pres
ent writer will never forget how at
Fredericksburg battalion composed
half of raw and half of veteran
troops, stood steady under the heav-
lest fire only because the new men
saw standing by their side the mems
who had fought at Malvern I'M, at
Antietam. and on many an other
field. The unuttered feeling was,
g basa bovs have lived through it,
Ubv not IY'' So on many battle field