Morning journal and courier., 1891-01-24
THE FLEETING SHOW.

Sunday morning. The sympathies of the
audience were with the daughter"
THE FLEETING SHOW.
Some of Its Facts and Fancies.
Written for the JOURNAL IND CouRIER.l
AN ANNIVERSARY.
The twenty fifth day of this month brings
again date yearly COMMUNICATED in
thousands of towns and hamlets-the
birthday of a peasant who lived and died
in humble condition, yet who has been
called by far the greatest poet that ever
sprung from the bosom of the people,"
GLORIOUS representative of the genius of
his country
Wherever a company of Scotchmep can
be gathered together will be heard song
and speech and laughter, the skirling of
the pipes, readings of "Tam O'Shanter" or
"The Cotter's Saturday Night" and rich
voices joining in the sweetly plaintive
strains of "Bonnie Doom" and 'Afton Wa
ter" or in the stately martial measure of
''Scots wha hae."
Says Professor Wilson: t'With what
strong and steady enthusiasm is the ami
versary of Burns birthday celebrated, not
only over all his native land, but in every
has carried her sons! On such occasions
nationality is virtue. For what else is
the memory of Burns but the memory of
all that dignifes and adorrs the region that
gave him birth? Not till that region is
shorn of all its beams, its honesty, its in
dependence, its moral worth, its genius
and it's piety, will the name of Burns
Die on her ear, a faint, unheeded sound
but it has an immortal life in the hearts of
young and old"
Most of us know something of his his
tory. We have read of his humble home
where his happy childhood was
secure in the guardianship of re-
ligious parental love. of his promising
youth, bright though the days were toll
some and of tho early-bestowed, wonder
full gift of song. We remember his strug-
Cling manhood, his perils and triumphs,
and the shadows that strike darkly
across the white light of his genius, his
early death in poverty and anxiety, and
we have fancied we could see the still fig
ure surrounded by weeping neighbors who
covered it with the field-fowers he loved
and which he has made to bloom forever
in his songs. We have heard him praised
extravagantly or condemned remorsely,
A. That" or 80, Stay, Sweet Warbling
Wood Lark, !" OF Highland Mary" or with
dimmed eyes, ITO Mary in Heaven" So
it is not necessary here to sketch the
events of life 30 well known; this note Is
but to mark the day and to offer for COM
mon enjoyment some of the noble lines
written in Friars-Carse Hermitage when
"Rob" was an excise man.
''Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost;
Hope not sunshine every hour;
Fear not clouds will always lower.
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease.
There ruminate with sober thought
On AZ hGu and
Saws of experience, sage and sound.
Say, man s true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not, Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Did many talents gild thy span,
Or frugal nature grudge thee one!
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thysef must shortly find
To virtue or to vice is given
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways
Lead to the wretched, vile and base.
TnsR e, ssd 1.ssneq saS qsst creep
Sleep whence thou shalt ne'er awake
Night where dawn shall never break,
Till future life, future no more.
ghs ght AMID icy icy shs soSa
THE SKELETON IN ARMoR.
Mrs. Hannah Cook, who died recently at
Fall River, when a child playing with 9th
er children in that delightful, oftentimes
dangerous play-spot, sand bank, un-
earthed startling and mysterious relic.
The bank, to the digging of the childish
| hands, yielding up its long-guarded secret
"a skeleton strapped about with bands of
brass, the remnants of broken and cor
roded armor.
Afterward, poet, riding along the sea-
shore at Newport and gazing at the old
Ground Tower" concerning the origin and
purpose of which there has been SO much
conjecture and dispute, remembered the
skeleton in armor and linked the two in
his thought until the well known ballad
was shaped into form and phrase.
= The skeleton became the Viking, that
"fearful guest" who, with his "hollow
breast still in rude armor drest," tells to
the poet the story of his wild youthful e1-
ploits: of his bearing away his bride from
her fathers hall; of the pursuit, the bat
tie, and the storm, and of reaching the
cloud-like shore at last, where
a,,,,. ,.fpF ! I'm my yos,s lsdy,s tsIsr bower
Which to this very hour
| stands looking seward
There they lived many years, and then
| "death closed her mild blue eyes," he
made her grave under the tower, and then,
hating the sunlight, he sought the depths
of the forest, where, clad in all his war
like armor, he fell upon his spear, and his
soul assembled to its native stars.
Who shall say that the poets insight il
not truea The Round Tower, or old Wind
mill, of Newport, is claimed by the Danes
as being the work of their early ancestors,
and its round arches indicate that it waf
erected before the close of the twelfth cen
tury. It was in the beginning of the elev
enth century that those. dauntless sea
rovers, the Norsemen, skirted our New
England coast landing, exploring, ever
settling for time, and sailing away tx
spread the report of their discoveries
which long after, perhaps, fell upon tn
ears of other adventurous men eagerl,
looking westward for wealth and eonques
in a new world.
The theory givenNs in Longfellow's bal
lad may be as well based as the tower il
sell, and though itcould hardly be proved
we are much to sbe pitied If we must prov