Your were brave, but eyes your cheek grew white, The cheek I should have pillowed that night Where it never now may lie. Little Nannie, you are at rest, The buttercups growing over your breast, Close by the grave-yard gate; God tempted my steps from love away, For I'd give the rest of my life to-night, The sun on your locks of gold, And carve once more, as I carved them then, NEBUCHADNEZZAR. YOU, Nebuchadnezzah, whoa, sah! Whar is you tryin' to go, sah? I'd hab you for to know, sah, Dat I'll cure you ob your shines. Look heah, mule! Better min' out- You needn't try to steal up Dar, dat's de way to do it! Some folks dey would 'a' beat him ; He minds me like a nigger. He would, I tell you! Yes, sah! See how he keeps a clickin'! Is dis heah me, or not me? Was dat a cannon shot me? Hab I laid heah mor'n a week? Dat mule do kick amazin'! De beast was sp’iled in raisin'-- But now I 'spect he's grazin, On de oder side de creek. IRWIN RUSSELL. SOM THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. OME men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little minds, weak women, and weaker men. On the contrary, I regard it as second only to one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, and for this reason: every race has its peculiar temptation; every clime has its specific sin. The tropics and tropical races are tempted to one form of sensuality; the colder and temperate regions, and our Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus of drink and food. In old times our heaven was a drunken revel. We relieve ourselves from the over-weariness of constant and exhausting toil by intoxication. Science has brought a cheap means of drunkenness within the reach of every individual. National prosperity and free institutions have put into the hands of almost every workman the means of being drunk for a week on the labor of two or three hours. With that blood and that temptation, we have adopted democratic institutions, where the law has no sanctions but the purpose and virtue of the masses. The statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on the hearts of the people. A drunken people can never be the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, therefore, the title-deeds of whose estates and the safety of whose lives depend upon the tranquillity of the streets, upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice which brutalizes the average mass of mankind, and tends to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation. Against such a vice is marshaled the Temperance Reformation. That my sketch is no fancy picture every one of you knows. Every one of you can glance back over your own path, and count many and many a one among those who started from the goal at your side, with equal energy and perhaps greater promise, who has found a drunkard's grave long before this. The brightness of the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope, and blessing, and stay of many a family-you know, every one of you who has reached middle life, how often on your path you set up the warning, "Fallen before the temptations of the street!" Hardly one house in this city, whether it be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest economy; no matter which— hardly a house that does not count among sons or nephews some victim of this vice. The skeleton of this warning sits at every board. The whole world is kindred in this suffering. The country mother launches her boy with trembling upon the temptations of city life; the father trusts his daughter anxiously to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up. Alas! how often are their worst forebodings more than fulfilled! I have known a case-probably many of you recall some almost equal to it—where one worthy woman could count father, brother, husband, and son-in-law all drunkards—no man among her near kindred, except her son, who was not a victim of this vice. Like all other appetites, this finds resolution weak when set against the constant presence of temptation. WENDELL PHILLIPS. 66 BETTER IN THE MORNING. "You OU can't help the baby, Parson, Down an' look in upon her, An' read an' pray, you know. Only last week she was skippin' 'round, Into her little high chair. "The first night that she took it, Be better in mornin'-bye!' An' somethin' in how she said it Jest made me want to cry. "But the mornin' brought the fever, And her little hande hot, An' the pretty red uv her little cheeks Grew into a crimson spot. But she laid there just as patient Ez ever a woman could, Takin' whatever we give her Better'n a grown woman would. The days are terrible long 'an slow, An' now she's jest a slippin' Clear away out uv our reach. |