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SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE: An SUustratcli U'ctkln .Journal of Bclks-Cettrcs, Stitnrc anti the Arts. A M, c. RICHARDS, EDITOR. ©riginal JJoctrn. For the Southern Literary Gazette. THE TOCSIN. by ROBERT M . CHARLTON. [ During the Temperance Convention at Atlanta, one of •he Vice-Presidents declared, in his speech, that, “We do <lo t belong to the venders of liquorwe belong to our wives!” Another of the speakers took occasion to com bat this last branch of the proposition, and to affirm, that <• We belong to nobody : we are freemen. It is to us that ur wives have promised to love, honor and obey.” This brought up the President of the Convention, who is also a judge of the Supreme Court, and he announced that we nm belong to our wives—that theirs was the best and wisest rule—that he had, in his marriage ceremony, prom ised to obey, and that, hereafter, when in his judicial ca pacity he tied the silken cords of matrimony, he would insist that the men should vow obedience. The following iines are founded upon these incidents, and also upon the prior decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia, that the Legislature had transcended their constitutional power in allowing divorces, and that hereafter there should be none'] Ye Freemen of Georgia! Ye bold and Married Men ! Arouse ye, for there’s danger stalking fiercely thro’ your land; Ye have often fought for freedom !—Ye must battle now again, Not with a foreign foeman, but your own domestic band. Ye are struggling for a dearer right than even for your lives, For the contest is for liberty !—the enemy, your wives ! Alas, the fiat has gone forth, —ye have no more the power— Ye are wedlock’s helpless victims —ye are woman’s luckless prey — The golden rule of olden time has vanish’d from this hour— ’Tis ye that henceforth now must swear “ to honor and obey.” Alas! alas ! my comrades, that we’ve taken so much pains To be clasp’d in Hymen’s fetters —to be bound by Beauty’s chains ! A has the Court of Errors ! Down with the tyrants, down! ’T is they who’ve brought such danger to our free and peaceful State, Tis they, clothed in the panoply of ermine and of gown, Who’ve sworn that “ no man henceforth shall be parted from his mate And now, to cap the climax of their most unright eous sway, Their chief has said “ The ivomen rule, —the men shall now obey ! ” Ah me ! when first I knelt me down at Beauty’s lovely shrine,. And swore that there forever I would offer up my heart— That her eyes should be the only suns that on my path should shine — That 1 would do with joy whate’er her sweet lips should impart, Fid 1 think, oh wretched mortal! oh unsuspecting youth! 1 ‘id I deem but for a moment 1 was telling her the truth ! ‘’h Turkey ! thou bright region of the myrtle and the vine, 1 hey may talk about your despot’s rule, but thou alone art free — i hy turban’d men disdain beneath a woman’s yoke to pine, And though each may have a hundred wives, he keeps them under key ! dark, benighted Judges, cease your desolating work; wisdom from the Mussulmen, —learn prudence from the Turk! 1 surrender: there’s no kind of use in fighting against fate; ■ H make no farther struggle,—l’ll waste no more my breath ; A hat Bulwer says is true, I guess, “ When one has got a mate, Fe s nothing else to do on earth, but calmly wait for death!” 1 surrender, Freedom’s flag is down, —the drapeau blanc unfurls! Th, Bho shall stand the battery of “forty miles of girls !” THE FOUNTAIN, AT THE MADISON SPRINGS. Os all the watering places which are presenting their rival claims to the public in our State, this summer, commend us to the “Madison.” Situated at the very threshold of our sublime mountain-region it possesses natural attractions peculiar to itself. It is but a day’s ride from the beautiful and majestic “Currahee,” beyond and about which, are clustered scenes on which the eye may well delight to linger. The Springs are at this time crowded with visiters —and mirth and music add wings to the hours and days which the young, the gay, and the beautiful of our land, are passing amid their charms. Haply, these paragraphs may meet the eye of some who are dragging out the weary sum mer days in the city or in the “dull town,” and if so, let us prevail with them to make a visit to Clarkesville and its noble “lions”—Tallulah, Toccoa, Nacoochee, Currahee and Yonah! And, furthermore, let them not fail to spend, at least, a week at the Madison Springs, both going and returning —and if, when they get fairly under the sumptuous administration of our friend Morrison, they feel any great degree of impatience to change their quarters, we shall marvel greatly, and exclaim “De gustibus!” &c. Gentle readers—one and all of you, who are sighing for fresh air, innocent pastimes and charming society—let us woo you in verse— AWAY TO THE S r UINGS! i. Oh say, would you drink of the cup, That Health and true pleasure fill up To the brim, with life’s nectar 1 Would you revel awhile in delight, Give earth’s petty troubles a slight— And show Care you neglect her ‘l Away to the springs—where joy ever flings A halo of light, from her rose-colored wings ; Where Nature and Art have each done their part, To ravish the eye, and enrapture the heart: Oh, away to the Springs! Popular (talcs. 808 RACKET’S SEARCH FOR SHOES. BY EDWARD YOUL. In the year—well the year doesn’t matter — in the depth of the winter season, a very hard frost set in, which lasted a very long time. Not such a frost as is common to ordinary winters. Nothing like it. But much more servere than England has known for the last quarter of a century. The earth bit men’s toes as they trod upon it; and some of those unfortunates who, perforce, went shoeless, never, it was said, found their feet again, but had them withered up, long before the great thaw came. Oh, it was a hard time for the poor, that; if indeed any time can be said to be easy with those, upon whose shoulders the yoke of pov erty is doomed to sit. If it only galled the flesh! but it galls the soul. Os course—for amid our selfishness, we have much real feel ing for the ills of others—there were all sorts of Charities set a-foot, Blanket and Flannel Charities —Soup Charities —Bread Charities— Coal Charities! But no one thought of shoes. If they had, feet would not have withered off, and as Bob Racket would have been shod by the Shoe Charity, I should have had 110 tale to tell. Bob had no shoes, and his mother (his fa ther was dead) could not afford to buy him any. After paying her rent she had just three and sixpence a week left to furnish seven mouths \vi h food. Sixpence a mouth, less than a penny a day, and provisions were dear, as they ever are, when it is the interest of the poor to have them cheap. Therefore, as there were no Shoe Charities, Bob was like to go barefooted. ATHENS, GEORGIA, SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1848. 11. Oh, there doth the mountain-breezo come, Still cool with the cataract’s foam, And with fresh odors laden! It sendeth the blood with a rush, And a tinge like the rose’s young blush— To the cheek of the maiden ! Away to the springs, where the mountain-breezo Beauty and health on its musical wings; [brings Which murmur sweet tales of the hills and the vales Where the sunlight of Joy, forever prevails: Oh, away to the Springs! Poor Bob! The soles of his feet, from long practice in walking upon them unshod, had got hard, almost horny indeed, in sub stance, but the frost found them out, and pinched them, as if it paid him off a grudge long owing, and did it with a spite, as dunned exquisites, of intemperate disposition, dis charge their debts. The worst of it was that a quotidian threepence was of Bob’s earning, and there was consequently no staying at home. Forth he must go, and tread the in clement ground, when the morning clock struck eight; and if he would find his feet after half an hour’s exposure to the frost he must look for them, for feel them he could not. Well-booted gentlemen glancing at his shoeless extremities, were shocked. Eyesores to gentility are naked feet. Oh, if there had but been Shoe Charities ! The mortification was that urchins more diminutive than himself noted the unshod ex tremities, and jeered him. There were boys and men begging who had shoes. The very horses, as Bob thought had them : and in cordwainers’ shops there were hundreds and hundreds of pairs unappropriated, asking to be worn, longing to escape from the shelves, and see the world outside, with iron tips that fretted themselves to rust because the roads were slippery, with ice, and they were never taken out to slide. Hundreds and hundreds, aye, thousands and thousands of pairs and Bob’s feet smarted, and Bob’s feelings winced for lack of one pair. Oh, if there had but been Shoe Charities! Bob stopped before a shoe shop in llolborn one day, and went the length of handling a pair that dangled with many others at the door. It was a presumption that they were submitted for public touch and general inspec tion, and Bob thought that he underwent no risk But a boy seeing his fingers close up on them, rushed out. VOLUME I.— PM BEK 12. “Oh, you would, would you?” cried the boy. “Would what?” asked Bob Racket. “ Steal them shoes?” “ No,” said Bob, quietly, and he went on handling them. Stout, serviceable shoes they were to look at. “Now, Tom,” cried a voice inside, “what are you dawdling at the door for ? There’s the three pair of Wellingtons to go to Great Ormond Street.” “Eye upon the fives, father,” replied the boy. The jives meaning Bob’s fingers. “I'll attend to them,” replied the parent. — “You make a conveyance of the Welling tons.” “Eye upon the fives,” shouted Tom again. “I’m stiff if he ain’t got’em off the nail.” Bob had indeed ventured so far—to inspect them more closely. “ What is this here, that’s interfering with them Wellingtons a-going to Great Ormond Street?” cried the cordwainer, approaching the door. “Them shoes,” addressing Bob, “are five and sixpence.” “ Please, Sir.” said Bob Racket, looking im ploringly in the man’s face, “ would you take it by the week, sixpence a week ?” and he pointed to his red and raw feet. “ Cold weather, Sir.” “ Yes, 1 take weekly payments,” said the man. “Pay the first sixpence now, and I’ll stow them safely away for you.” “ But please, ain’t I to have them at once ?” stammered Bob. “We don’t do business on that principle It wouldn’t stand, eh, father?” cried Tom interposing. “ Times is hard.” “ Not, exactly, Tom,” answered the shoe maker, laughing. “Come take those Wel lingtons—and you, (to Bob) pay sixpence on the nail; bring another sixpence every week, and in ten weeks the shoes are yours.” * “In ten weeks the spring will be here* sighed Bob, and walked away. When days went by, and weeks and Janu ary was nearly out, and no signs of the break ing up of the weather had been hinted to the sagacious in such matters, Bob Racket limp ed, nay, went very lame. Chilblains had scarred his poor feet until their shape was nearly lost. He suffered excruciating pain* and got no sleep o’nights. And though thou sands upon thousands of unappropriated pairs of shoes burdened the cordwainer’s shelves, filled their windows, hung temptingly at theii doors; though skins stripped reeking from the fat sides of animals were transferred from abattoirs to tanpits, and thence to the curri er’s, and thence to shoemaker’s workshops, where awls pierced and hammers rang on lasts and lapstones from morning till night, yet Bob Racket got no shoes. Still the frost became more severe than ever. For his quotidian threepence Bob did er rands for a lawyer. Park, dingy rooms that lawyer had, full of musty law hooks and cob webs,; windows that were never cleaned look ed out upon dead blank walls; severer than in the streets, where the atmosphere came hir ing from the sky, was the frost in those* chambers, where the warm soul of humanity was turned to chilling ice. Bob’s master was of a taciturn disposition, and seldom addressed his clerks except t > give instructions. If Bob had been an auto maton, a piece of machinery, doing errands by virtue of some ingenious mechanism war ranted never to get out of order, and entailing no other expense than three-penn’orth of oil per diem for the lubrication of its springs and wheels, and no more trouble than the appli cation of it, he could not have been more a cypher in the estimation of both clerks and master. Bob cleaned and dusted the desks and shelves, (he could not reach the cobwebs which clouded the angels of the ceiling like sable drapery) he fetched and carried, he was active and servile—like the poor drudge he was, in numerous capacities. Every one in the office found him the handiest fellow liv ing,—yet human, warm breathing, endowed with life from God, and made akin to high angelic beings, he was of less account than a bird or beast, brought from a foreign land would have been. A sheet of parchment covered with the hieroglyphs of a dead man’s will, bequeathing an hundred acres, would have out-valued ten thousand of such items in the social scale, though every pair of nu ked feet had been ascending to Heaven, hy the ladder which Jacob witnessed in his dream The lawyer was not a proud man, but he had a becoming pride,, that gloss by which.