The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1891-06-25
THE DUTCH PORK.
BY DIR. Q. q. MAYER, ST..
NO. 8.

NO. 8.
at thy command,
Again the crum bled halls shall,rise;
Lo. as on Evans bank we stand,
The past returr;-tae present f!;es.
CADyow CASTLE.
I have come to know, in common
with few others necessarily few D
and such fellowship of knowledge is
really very sweet,-weaning US, as it
does, from attachment to the visible
present and inducing us to look back,
'syearning for infancy" upon the shift
ing road we have travelled from child
hood to old age;-I have come to
know. I say, that much of what has
long been lying almost in forgetfulness,
when it once more gains access to our
recollection, appears with more vivid
ness and exactness than do recent
things lettering in our minds. These,
belonging to the last ten or fifteen years
of old age, are thrust aside under the
intrusion of new thoughts and actions
rapidly recurring, and they drift more
and more out of remembrance during
the short remainder of an old mans
life; but tie events Of long ago, after
having faded during half century into
indistinctness, mysteriously return to
old people, like spirits risen from graves,
make their way through the throng of
circumstances surrounding declining
life, and hold up the claims of child
hood,-nointing to the scripture: Ex-
cept ye be converted, and become as
little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom Of heaven. To illustrate
most beautifully this idea of retracing
our way, in thought, towards the COM
mencement of our lives, invited by the
recovered brightness of our earliest ex-
periences, I quote Paul Haynes en-
trancing lines-the last lines ofhis poem
entitled, 1.-THE Valley of Anostan."
Abiding to one who had thus retraced
the path of bis life to its beginning, the
Poet writes: -...
His soul grew fresh, dew-like and sweet again, |
And through his past, his golden yesterdays, |
He wandered back and back till youth, re- |
gained,
Shone in the candid radiance Of his eyes,
That still waxed larger, holier, crystal-elear,
With resurrection Of life's tepderest dawn
OF child-like faith; by which illumed and |
warned,
He walks. himself dream within dream,
Tearning for infancy. This found at last,
Gently he passes upward unto God,
Not through deaths portal wrapped in storm
and wrath,
But the fair archway Of the gates Of birth.
Though this ailusion to the remark-
s.v7e .as+rzr corralffS6 50 generally eS
.perienced by old persons, reviewing i
freshness the scenes of early life, ma
be somewhat out of place in an IN
dertaking like this, nevertheless it wi
enable me Gan old man, myself to pre-
ceed with greater confidence in th
correctness of the statements have t
present.
In an old lumber house on the prem
lses where 7 was born, and where
passed much of my carly life, fre
quently saw and examined three decay
ing, cast away implements. For NOR
than thirty years they had passed ou
of my thoughts; but now, since I yielt
to the magic by which
The past returns : the present flies,
their shape is so definitely brough
back to my memory, that twith apenci
and piece of paper could make de
lineation of it sufficiently accurate tt
guide IN artizan in reproducing one
They were called fiax-breakers, anc
Were used in the Dutch Fork, before
the cultivation of cotton, to break intc
very short fragments the stalks of the
hax-plant, so that they could be easily
separated from the rough bark after
the process of rotting. It seems like
an Almighty benefcent de2igu, that
the woody part of the fax-plant should
undergo such rapid decay throu~H heat
and moisture, which the tibrc Dark
almost dehes the laws of dt,omposi-
tion. More than four hundred years
ago few nights exposure to dampness
and to the heat Of the sun for as many
days removed the flaX-stalks in rotten
pulp from quantity of fibre which
was woven into fabric that received
from the brush Of Raphael the paint
ing of the TRANSPORTATION, has kept it
fresh to the present DAY, and will last
10 keep it for four hundred years longer.
The same can be said in regard to hun
dreds Of other masterpieces Of painting.
Strange! that stuff of such little dura-
bility as cotton should ever threaten to
become substitute for inen,-cotton,
the very symbol of rottenness and de-
cay, while linen is the symbolic i'm
mortal material for the marriage dress
of the Lambs Bride,-to be arrayed in
fiue linen, clean and white.
The rough mass left by the separa-
ton Of the broken stalks from the bark,
must now be drawn across hackle, to
straighten out the fibers. This hackle
was made by firmly fixing thirty or
: forty sharp steel points four or five
iuches long in 8 thick piece Of wood
, ten inches square. One Of these, no
longer in use, lay for several years in
the loft of an old clubhouse. I saw it
frequently; and my thoughts quickly
turned to it, when I, for the first time,
read Burns Address to the Toothache,
--pausing at the, stanza where be so
cruelty writes: -...--