Newspaper Page Text
The following beautiful lines fornTno idle
E icture ol'tBfc faftcy. How many a female,
red up in ease, in affluence and refine
ment, and afterwards made happy in the
husband of her choice, has been doomed at
length to realize the sad reverse here de
scribed.
SOLILOQUY OF A DRUNKARD'S
WIFE.
***Time was, when-much he lov’d me:
When we wallt’J out at close of day t’in-
hale
The vernal breeze—ah,' well do I remem
ber,
How then with careful hand, he drew my
mantle v
Around me; fearful lest the evening dews
Should mar my fragile health. Yes, then
his eye
Look’d kindly on me; when my heart was
sad,
How tenderly he wiped my tears away,
While from his lip<t the words of gentle
Soothing
In soft accents fell.
How blest my evenings, too; when wintry
blasts
Were howling round our peaceful, happy
dwelling*
O, it was sweet, the daily task perform'd,
By the swept hearth, and cheerful tire, to
sit
With him I lov’d: to view with glistening
eye.
And all a parent’s fondness, the budding
graces
Of our little ones.
"••Then ye had a father,
My lovely babes, now more than helpless
orphans!
Thy mother more than widow’s grief has
, known;
Yes, sharper pangs than those who mourn
the dead, •
Seiz’d on my breaking heart, when first I
knew,
Mv lover, husbnnd-*-0, my earthly all,
Was dead to virtue! When I saw th p man
My soul too fondly lov’d transform’d to
brute,
O, it was then I tasted gall and wormwood 1
Then, then the world look’d dreary! fear
ful clouds
Quick gather’d round me; dark forebod
ings came.
'I'll? grave before was terror: now it smil’d;
1 long’d to lay me down in peaceful rest,
Thereto forget my sorrows. But I liv’d:
And O, my God! what years of wo have
follow’d!
I feel my heart is broken. He who vow’d
To cherish me—before God’s altar vow’d—
Has done the deed. And shall I then up
braid hinv—
The husband of my youthful days—the
man
For whom I gave my' virgin heart away ?
Patient 1 Ml bear it all.
••"Peace, peace, my heart!
’Tis almost o’er. A few more stormy blasts,
And then this shatter’d, Sickly frame will
fall,
And sweetly slumber—where the weary
rest,
The wicked cease from troubling!
Christian Jour.
MISCELLANEOUS,
From the United States Gazette.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WOMAN’S
RELIGION.
He who salutes every passenger,
may sometimes receive an uncivil an
swer: he who returns no salutation,
or intimates an unwillingness to ex
change civ.lities, might incur the risk
of being marked down for a churl. In
the way of error, it is better to he pas
sive than active; so I find a kindly look
for all who pass me, beyond the pre
cincts'of the city. It costs, indeed,
an occasional penny extraordinary for
a mendicant; but the ‘God blcs3 you’
of a human being, must surely lrave
lost, its value, if it will not pass in ex
change for so small a sum.
Enjoying the prime of the day in
September last, about two miles
f rom the city, I chanced to meet the
‘good morning’ of a man with a cordial
ity that evidently gave me a favora
ble estimation with him; and as his
occupation was before him, and mine
was unknown, I put ceremony aside
at once, by asking information upon
subjects connected with a farm which
it sefined he was cultivating. While
he was enlarging upon a topic that was
evidently pleasing to him, though I
must confess, it had little interest for
me, beyond the pleasure of witnessing
his animation, his wife came to the
door with an infant in her arms. I
may have dune luff wrong in neglect;
but the child possessed attractions su
perior to its parents at that moment;
and as if conscious of my feelings, the
nursling stretched out its hands and
evinced a desire to approach ine. I
learned that Hv was an only'son—the
last of five, affections that had expan
ded ov’er all others, had settled with
intensity upon this—it was worth all a 1
parent’s love. 1 gazed long upon its
perfect features, the soft blue eyes
and full dark lashes; and as I pressed
my lips upon its face, the paliny fra
grance of its breath was redolent of
health. I had won upon tho mother’s
Qsteem, by my attention to her boy
but a tear that fell front my eye,
warm upon the infant’s breast, show
ed her that while 1 joyed with her in
the living I could iu atHiction sympa
thize with her for the dead.
I know not how it was, but for
sometime there was scarcely a morn
ing that 1 did not pass the house it]
iny ride, and the boy/ though not a
year old, had learned (o expec t me.
Let those who have no fondness for
children, pass on the other side of the
way—thei'o is enough in life with
which to amuse themselves; I neither
envy them their capacities for other
enjoyments, nor would give one of that
infant’s smiles of recognition for all
their fancied pleasure.
The equinoctial rains made sad
work with my calculation of riding
and it was not until the weather be,
came settled that I was enabled to
renew my wonted excursions. It was
aboutjlhree o’clock, P. M. when I ap
proached the dwelling of my new ac
quaintance; and as its low roof met
my sight,, the thought occurred whe
ther my little blue eyeo friend would
after a lapse of two weeks recognise
his former acquaintance I confess
that as I moved towards him, some
little anxiety was experienced that
he should give evidence of pleasure
at iny return. I had furnished my
pockets with some trifles for him, and
anticipated his pleasure at the recep
tion—the delight with which he would
reach forward to catch them, and the
pleasure that would dance in his eye
or play around his mouth, as he re
ceived the tokens of my affection.
His mother too, had ever shown so
much gratification at my fondness for
her little boy, that I promised myself
pleasure in her delight.
Pursuing these anticipations, I arriv
ed by a short turn in the road, directly
in front ot the dwelling without discov
ering a member of the family. The
stopping of the horse in front of tho
house, I thought would soon bring some
one to the door. I waited several
minutes—no one appeared. The
family might be absent, or perhaps !
sick; the last thought determined me;
so dismounting I opened the wicket
gate and proceeded under an arbor of
grape vines to the house. The front 1
door was open, and 1 entered. The |
parlor was vacant; and as I crossed it
I saw the door of a side room opened.
I turned towards it—and tlie’cause of
the unwonted silence of the habitation
lay before me. On a table against
the wall of the room rested a coffin.
With a single step I was at its side;
I looked in it; it contained the inani
mate form of my little favorite. For
a moment I tuyied away in the agony
of disappointr/ielit: I looked again—it
was too true; and my hopes, childish
almost as those I had excited in him,
lav blighted. As I gazed upon the cold
jjffeains before me, my feelings sub
sided, and 1 recovered that tone which
the well regulated mind never loses.
It was hut to divest myself of those
acquired feelings concerning death,
and the child that lay before me, was
as lovely and as deserving admiration
as when alive. Tho heautifijl glossi
ness of his prominent forehead, was set
off by the fine silky hair that stretched
in a semicircle toward the temples.
There was a transparency in the skin
through which the blue veins showed
with wonderful distinctness; and the
budding whiteness of the teeth was
discernible between the slightly open
ed lips; and his little hands were
crosssed below his breast—their beau
ty had not departed, but the eyes, as
I gazed upwards gleamed glassy be
tween the lids, through their long
dark lashes; and as the light trickled
through the veins near the window, I
sometimes thought that life was re
turning to animate the lovely features
on which I gazed. I stooped to press
a kiss upon its face—it was cold, and
the tears that I dropped up»n it, trick
ed off as if they had fell upon polished
marble. As I raised my head from
the coffin, my eyes met those of the
mother.—We gaze upon the dead
with regret for their loss, we look
upon the inanimate corps of an infant,
and mourn that it so is soon snatched
away; we dwell with fondness upon its
features, treasure the memory of its
beauties, and sigh that we can no long
er enjoy them. But when we see
those whom the bereavement-hag left
childless standiug by us in the dignity
of grief, the silent cause of sorrow yet
stretched before them, wc spring al
most with awe from their presence.
Such for a moment wore my feelings.
I wished myself absent from the scene
that was about to ensue; but tho ex
tended hand of the afflicted parent,
satisfied me that retreat would have
been cruelty: or cotvardice. ! pressed
the hand of the mother in tire ardor
of sympathy, and our tears fell fast
upon the snowy shroud of the out
stretched infant. She leaned forward
and buried her face with his in the
narrow coflin.—Fearing the effects of
this paroxysm of grief upon the mo
ther, 1 would have withdrawn her.
‘Let me alone,’ said she; ‘I know by
whom I have been afflicted, and in
my sorrow I will not sin; neither will
I charge God foolishly.’—But in my
darling’s sickness, lie lay night day
upon my knees, until he died; and
the kind ofliciousness of neighbors has
kept me from a solitary indulgence of
grief until now. Let me then, ere
they shut him out of my sight for ev
er—let me once more feel his face
imprinting its features on my cheek;
though it be cold as death. 1 came to
yield up in silence and solitude, my
child, to him who gave it—but not
without the feelings and grief of a
mother. I have bowed to the chas
tisement—I have even kissed the rod
that smote me; but I have not mista
ken stoicism for resignation, nor of
fered the' Lord an unfeeling for a sub
missive mind. Four times has the
hand of Heaven visited me in afflic
tion and I have not murmured; and
now when the last lamb of the (lock
is taken, I have in the hour of prayer
and solitude, exclaimed—‘the Lord
givetii and the Lord taketh away,’
and when the passion of grief shall
have subsided when the cords of af
fection now torn asunder, shall have
ceased to bleed, and mourning shall
have become woven into the tissue
of life, instead of being, as now, its
whole web, then perhaps, I may add,
—‘blessed be the name of the Lord.’
But oh! so lovely, so bright in prom
ise, of all that a parent’s heart can ask,
audio lie now so cold.’
Again the mother threw herself
upon the coffin and nestled her face
with that of her infant. I saw that
was no lime to offer consolation. She
had restrained her grief during the
presence of her neighbours, and now
that she thought herself alone she had
come from her chamber to indulge a
a mother’s grief.
In a'short time the people of the
vicinity where seen gathering towards
the house, with a view of attending
tho funeral. The mother impressed
a new kiss upon the lips of her dead
child; she uttered one more burst of
grief and shrunk to her chamber.
In a little while they screwed down
the coflin lid, and a slight bustle de
noted preparations for procession to
the grave. I followed among the ve
ry few whom the occasion luid called
together; and as we entered the city
of the dead, I saw by the little heap
of fresh turned earth, where the tene
ment of iny little favorite was prepar
ed.
The line of followers assembled
round the little grave, and the coffin
lay at its mouth.—At length the hoarse
rumbling of the cords, and the sup
pressed sounds of clods falling far down
upon the, coffin, told that the dust had
been committed to dust. 1 looked
for the officiating clergyman, and
others appeared to await his service
—there was none. It was now that I
feared for the firmness of the mother;
she had been almost distracted by
grief whep her child lay beforher, in
her own house—what could sustain
her when she looked down into the
deep pit, and saw it there girt in with
the dampness of the grave, lying cold
and stretched out, for ever to be se
parate from her gaze; and to become
the companion and prey of worms.
The lather stepped forward, and
looking down upon his child, he with
drew with clamorous grief. The mo
ther advanced, and standing upon a
little eminence of fresh earth, she
gazed silently down. I could not see
her face; but when she raised her
head to retire, an expression of agony
was passing from her features; her
lips remained firmly closed, and her
eyes were inflamed. As she stepped
from the grave, she uttered in scarce
ly an audible voice, “I shall go unto
him, but lie shall return no more to
me. 1 ’
If there is one who reads this sketch,
and feels that it is sometimes good to
share in the sorrows of others, let him
go forth as I have dom;; he will find
abundant food for sympathy, number
less scenes in nature, that will move
and instruct more than the wildest
bodiugs forth of fancy.
•
From the Scotsman.
HEIGHT OF THE AFRICAN
CONTINENT.
This subject is worthy of more
consideration than we were able to
' bestow upon it in our review of Cap
tain Chappcrton’s last Expedition;
& we have now to offer a few further
observations upon it. It is an inter
esting fact, that the barometer has
now been carried quite across the
African continent, and that we are
thus supplied with more correct ideas
of the elevation of the soil in that re
gion than in some others which are
much more accessible. In the first
expedition the party eenveyed a bar
ometer with them from Tripoli to
Kouka, in latitude 12 3-4; and the
last journey presents us with an un
broken series of observations from the
coast of Guinea north, to Kane in lat.
12. All these, however, are not of
equal value. As the atmosphere has
its fluctuations within the tropics,
though not so great as in our climate,
dependence can be placed only on
suites of observations continued for sev
eral days; & evenjthcse are not free of
anomalies. We think we can dis
cern clerical errors, too, in the jour
nal, and this furnishes an additional
reason for distrusting isolatedjobserva-
tions.
The interioro f the African continent
at its broadest part, thus appears to
present a surface, varying Iroin 1000
to 1700 feet in height, and averaging
about 1300—a degree of elevation
surprisingly small considering the
great extent of the country. Even
in our own narrow isle, the plain
which coimecls the basins of the Forth
and Clyde, along which the road pass
es from Edinburgh to Glasgow, is a-
bout 800 feet in height. The lchv
part of Switzerland has an elevation
of 1700 or 1800 feet, and Bavaria
nearly as much. On tljp <*her hand,
the table land of Mexico is about
6000 or 7000 feet in height, and the
central plateau of Asia, the great
plain of Thibet, is believed to rise
12,000 feet above the sea.
In the desert, rain sometimes does
not fall once in three, four or six
years, and even in Bonrnou and IIou-
sa, we find from the Journal, there is
rarely a shower, except in August,
when it rains almost daily. The
small size of the river Yeou, which is
not larger than the Tweed, though it
draws its waters from a country of
greater extent than all Scotland, is a
proof of the general dryness of the
climate. The prevailing winds are
from the North-east and South-west.
During the rainy season, and imme
diately alter it the country is exceed
ingly unhealthy, and swarms of in
sects leave the traveller no rest.—
There is a species of ant so vora
cious, that in a single night they will
eat tho clothes of a man’s body, and
leave him naked. Soudan is, in short,
one of the least attractive countries
on the face of the globe.
It is probable that this low eleva
tion, and the general want of interior
mountains,is the chief cause of the stc-
rillity of N. Africa. The Sahara, or
Grat Desert, is in fact surrounded with
a fence of mountains, so placed as to
intercept all the adqneous vapor ex
haled from the ocean on its two sides.
Within the tropics rain most general
ly comes from the east; and here it is
caught on its passage by the Abyssin
ian chain, which rises above the line
of perpetual snow. The western
prolongation of this chain- arrests the
vapor brought by the oceanal south
west winds from the Gulf of Guinea;
while the moisture which comes from
the Atlantic with the west and north
west is precipitated upon Mount At
las. The lands on tho sides and at
the foot of all these mountains is well
watered and fruitful, and at every is
olated spot in the Desert where
springs rise or rain frequently falls,
productive soil is often found. If a
lofty chain like the Andes or Himala
ya, had traversed Africa about the
northern tropic; or if the country,
without having great chains, had con
sisted of table land 6000 or 7000 feet
high like Mexico, it would in all prob
ability have had as large a propor
tion of good soil as Europe or Amer
ica, and the Sahara would not have
existed. It is a curious question,
whether the march of civilization
will at any future time supply man
with power to conquer the sterility
of the Great Desert? Without pre
tending to solve this problem, we
rnay -observe, that if M. Cordier’s
statement is to he trusted, a very sin
gular fate is preparing for this most
useless portion of the inhabited globe.
He informs us, that according to ob
servations made by the French Savans
at the ruins of Tanis, the northern
continent of Africa appears to be sub
siding into the ocean at the rate of
one foot in a Century. As tfie menV
height is only about 1800 feet, it ioF
lows that if this subsidence is really
in progress, tho Desert will be nearly
covered in. 130,000 and entirely
submerged in 200,000 years. When
this lakes place, the Mediterneau u-
nited with the Indian ocean through
the Red Sea, will reach to the moun
tains of Gibbel Kumra in the 10th
parallel; Mount Atlas will assume the
form of a long elevated island like Su
matra; fishes will play in the gardens
of the Hesperides, and glide round the •
pyramids; and perhaps some new con
tinent rising from the besom of the
southern ocean, will open an equally
large and a far happier theatre for
for the industry of civilized man.—
We do not mean to affirm the certain
ty of Africa having sunk in time past,
as M. Cordier infers, and still less to
maintain that, supposing his state
ment to be correct, the subsidence'
will go on for the long period men
tioned; but this we would, that if the
country alluded to is in its progress
ive annihilation, it is the region of the
world which could best be spared.
EFFECTS OF GAMING.
A friend upon whom we plac# the
most perfect reliance, has communi
cated the following facts, which are
said to have created considerable
sensation among the friends of
the parties. Their publication
may be productive of good ef
fects, and may lead many a thought
less mind to profitable reflection.
A young gentleman of this city,
living with his widowed mother in
Broadway, above Canal-street, had
been for several months in the hab
it of coming home at late hours in
the night, often keeping his mother
waiting until one or two o’clock.'—
Her advice, given in the mildest man
ner, had no effect upon him, and his
restoration to regular and virtuous
habits was only effected by the fol
lowing singular occurrence. One
night, rather earlier than his hour of
returning home, his mother heard the
footsteps of a person running up the
stairs, whom she supposed to he her
son. As usual she went to meet him,
but instead of meeting her son, she
was seized by a genteel dressed young
man, who snatched an elegant gold
watch from her side, and made his
escape before the screams of tho la
dy brought lier servant to her assist
ance. Shortly after the son caino
home, and found his mother in a most
distressing state of fear and indispos
ition. During a subsequent conver
sation, she remarked that the robber
resembled in his general appearance
a young companion of her son, who
had often called to see him. The
son was much surprised, and admitted “
that he had that evening been in com-*
pany with the individual alluded to,
who had lost all his money at play,
and had left the house at which they
usually met, at ail early hour, much
dejected. lie could not however be
lieve that a person whom he consid
ered of unimpeachable honor and in
tegrity would commit such an act*
But the conviction of his mother that
she was not mistaken, and her de
sire that he should take measures to
discover whether her suspicions were
unjustly founded, induced him to en
deavor to ascertain their correctness.
The next night they met again at the
gaming table. The son took his
friend aside and mentioned the Recur
rence. The young man burst into
tears and confessed that lie was the
robber. He declared that he had'
pawned the watch, and that the mon
ey lie was venturing at play was the
proceeds. He solemnly abjured gam
ing from that time, begging his friend
to save him from disgrace and de
struction, by keeping the secret, and
promising in a week to redeem and
return the watch to its owner. He
w'as as good as his word. The tu’o
young men are now correct in their
habits, and often meet at the lady’s
house. They enjoy each other’s so*
ciety and friendship, and endeavor to
find pleasure in the paths of virtue and
respectability.
This statement is vouched for by
our friend, who informs us that it
was given him by the lady from w'liom
the watch was taken.
N. Y. Statesman.
LETTERS
R EMAINING in the Post Office at
New Echota, July 1, 1829.
Walter S. Adair, Pleasant ( Coinbs, Ar
chibald R. S. Hunter, Esq. Richard Rush..
S. A. WORCESTER, P. M.
July 8, 1829. ' H 3.