The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-10-13

them they were put away for the last
slumber. Hear it, mothers and fathers
of sailor boys whose ship went down
in our last hurricane! There are no
Greenwoods or Laural Hills or Mount
Auburns SO beautiful on the land as
there are banked and terraced and
scooped and hung in the depths of the
sea. The bodies of our foundered and
sunken friends are girdled and cam
opted and housed with such glories as
attend no other Metropolis
They were swamped in life-boats or
they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal
beach or the Skerries and were never
heard of, or disappeared with the City
of Boston or the Vile de Havre or the
Cymbria, or were run down in fish
ing smack that put out from New
foundland. But dismiss your previous
gloom about the horrors of ocean en-
tombment.
When Sebastopol was besieged in the
Anglo-French war Prince Mentschikoff,
commanding the Russian navy, saw
that the only way to keep the English
out of the harbor was to sink all of the
Russian ships of war in the roadstead,
and so one hundred vessels sank.
When, after the war was over, our
American engineer, Gowan, descended
to the depths in diving-bell it was an
impressive spectacle. One hundred
buried shipsl But it is that way near
ly all across the Atlantic ocean. Ships
sunk not by command of admirals, but
by command of cyclones. But they all
had sublime burial, and the surround
ings amid which they sleep the last
sleep are more imposing than the
Tai Mahal, the mausoleum with
walls encrusted with precious
stones, and built by the great mogul
of India over his empress. Your de-
parted ones were buried in the gar
of coraline. The greatest obsequies
ever known on the land were those of
Moses, where no one but God was pres
emit The sublime report of that en-
tombment is the Book of Deuterono-
my, which says that the Lord buried
him, and of those who have gone down
to slumber in the deep the same may
be said: ''The Lord buried them" As
Christ was buried in garden, so your
shipwrecked friends, and those who
could not survive till they reached port,
were put down amid iridescence-
I'm the midst of the garden there
was a sepulchre. 1t has always
been a mystery what was the particu-
lar mode by which George G. Goodman,
the pulpit orator of the Methodist
church and the chaplain of the Ameri-
can congress, left this life after en-
I,s.,. - L
President, March II, 1s41. That ship
never arrived in port. No one ever sig
nailed her, and on both sides of the
ocean it has for fifty years been ques-
toned what became of her. But this I
know about Goodman, that whether it
was iceberg, or confagration midsea,
or collision, he had more garlands on
his ocean tomb than if, expiring on
land, each of his million friends had
put bouquet on his casket. In the
midst of the garden was his sepulcher.
But that brings me to notice the mis-
homer in this Jonahitic expression of
the text. The prophet not only made
a mistake by trying to go to Tarshish
when God told him to go to Nineveh,
but he made a mistake when he styled
as weeds these growths that enwrapped
him on the day he sank. A weed is
you throw out from the gar
den- 1t is something that chol1es the
wheat. 1t is something to be grubbed
out from among the cotton. 1t is
unsightly to the eye 1t is
an invader of the vegetable or
floral world. But this growth
that sprang up from the depths
of the Mediterranean, or floated
on its surface. was among the
most beautiful things that God ever
makes. 1t was water plant known
as the red-colored Alga, and no weed at
all. 1t comes from the loom of infinite
beauty. 1t is planted by heavenly
love. 1t is the star of sunlxen firma-
ment. 1t is lamp which the Lord
kindled. 1t is cord by which to bind
whole sheaves of practical suggestion.
Ii is poem all whose contos are rung
by Divine goodness. Yet we all make
the mistake that Jonah made in regard
to it, and call it a weed. 1.-THE
weeds are wrapped about my head
Ali that is the trouble on the
land as on the sea. We call those |
weeds that are flowers Pitched up on |
the beach of society are children with |
put home, without opportunity for
but sin, seemingly without |
God. They are washed up helpless. |
They are called ragamuffins. They are |
spoken of as the rakings of the world |
They are waits. They are street |
Arabs. The are f1otsam and ietsam of |
The sodial sea. They are something to
be left alone, or something to be trod |
IN, or something to give up to decay.
but weeds They are up the |
.ickety stairs of the garnet. They are
Down in the cellar of that tenement |
house. They swelter in summers when
hey see not one blade of green grass.
Ind SILVER in winters that allow them
not one warm coat or shawl or shoe.
Such the city missionary found in one
If our city rookeries, and when the poor
was asked if she had sent her
children to school, she replied. mo,
'ir, / never did send 'em to school.
know it, they ought to learn, but /
couldn't. / try to shame him some
lines lit is my husbund, sir), but he
thinks and then beats me. Look at
hat bruise on my face), and tell hiEssi
% see what is comm to his children.
There's Peggy, goes sellin' fruit every
light in those cellars in Water street,
md they're hells, sir. She's learning
III sorts of bad words there, and don't
ret back till twelve o'clock at night.
it wasn't for her earnin' shillin' or
wo in them places, / should starve.
)h, wish they was out of the city.
- J. |