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• ■ . * CkuotcD to literature, Science, anil CArt, % Sons of temperance, ©bir JfcUomsljip, illasonrn, anb ©eneral imteUioencc. ~ - - - ■ ‘ ~ “"” ~ - ■■ - _ . _ VOLUME I. SISiSeWSi®- VOBVBV.’ From the Oxford Edition of Milton’s Works. MILTON ON THE LOSS OF SIGHT. 1 am old and blind! Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown ; Afflicted and deserted of my kind, Yet I am not cast down. I am weak, yet strong ; 1 murmur not that T no longer see ; Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong, Father Supreme ! to Thee. O merciful One ! When men are farthest, then Thou art most near; When friends pass by, my weakness to shun, y Thy chariot I hear. Thy glorious face Is leaning towards me, and its holy light Shines in upon my lonely dwelling place— And there is no more nijrht. On my bended knee, I recognise Thy purpose, clearly shown; My vision Thou hast dimmed, that I may see Thyself, Thyself alone. I have nought to fear ; This darkness is the shadow of thy wing; Beneath it I am almost sacred —here Cun come no evil thins:. o Oh ! I seem to stand Trembling, where foot of mortal ne’er hath been, Wrapped in the radiance from thy sinless land, Which eye hath never seen. * Visions come and go ; Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng; From angel lips I seem to hear the llow Os soft and holy song. It is nothing now, When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes, When airs from Paradise refresh my brow, The earth in darkness lies. In a purer clime, My being fills with rapture—waves of thought Roll in upon my spirit—strains sublime Break over me unsought Give me now my lyre ! I feel the stirrings of a gift divine ; Within my bosom glows unearthly lire Lit by no skill of mine. f 1Mfll&SIl Tr A Is 1. From Ned Buntline’s Own. THE HAUNTED DRAM-DEALER, A SEQUEL TO THF. “COURT OF SIN.” BV THE VEILED AUTHOR. Squire Barker, of liquor-dealing memory, and w ( 10se name lam compelled to connect an mlier picture, sat in his comfortable chair, in his com tort able parlor, in the midst of his comforta f e family, taking a comfortable glance at a com ortable annual, which he had just purchased for his comfortable daughter. I lie dram-dealer was aroused from a wrapt ( ontemplation of the beauty of the illustrated title- P a o e i w a very strange question from the lips of f. U . q ou^o est °f his children. This was a round g^ Ce , plump, and intelligent looking boy, about — a desperate little prattler, with a ■- a g r ain of curiosity and marvelousness. Wh Pra L ller ’ t^lcn ’ Polled in a chair about as tight w* l Y-° Wn ea d> and drumming the air in hU r! 1 * hls feet, suddenly pausing “Fathe ’ T C u Padon ’ an d exclaimed: house?” dtaer ’ * s there a murderer in the looking wS asmJ’k in< l uired . the dram-dealer, “Am i tom& hment at his son. house” ro't erCf ’ at l' er —ls there one in our 1L j rate , (lthe Prattler. Put tint ’ i ‘ nr 30 ’ ■No ! What under Heaven TUe l^ a y° ur m ent# rr m " (iea ier showed the utmost astonish thouah to e 1 first sharply at the boy, as member* meanin g 5 and then at the other they all * us Panr nly lor an explanation. But secme d as much surprised as himself. consQj" 5 ‘ Vcat to the heart of the dram-dealer, as the ho whis pered-“ There is a murderer in Yjj ” * ofa the stove for the period and then continued confidently ; and his words were fearfully in unison with his father’s secret thoughts. O “But then there is a murderer in the house— there is —and I won’t go to sleep till he’s put out!” “What does the child mean V” cried the dram dealer, nervously. “I’m sure I don’t know!” said the mother; “I guess some of the school-children have been try ing to frighten him. Jimmy don’t be foolish— there’s no such man here.” “ But there is tho’, and I know it!” urged the prattler. “"Vou little dunce, who told you so?” cried the father, in much anger” for there was a constant response within him to the child’s words. “Who told me so?—why, ’twas Mrs. P .” “ Mrs. P !” cried the dra m-dealer, rising from his chair, ’twas /cer, eh ? Well—you musn’t talk with her—you musn’t speak to her—she’s an ugly woman!” “ Mrs. P —an ugly woman!” echoed several voices, “why, she’s called one of the best of women by her neighbors, though her husband, people say, don’t provide well at all.” “ I can’t help that, she’s ugly; that is—the fact is, she came asking a favor the other day that ] couldn’t grant; and so she went away cursing me and mine.” “ That’s very strange; you never told us of it before. What favor did she want?” asked the dram-dealer’s daughter—a fair, sprightly maiden of sixteen. “Fudge! how d’ye think I can remember, when I’ve fifty like it every day?” returned the father, confusedly. “I should think, if you have so many, you might remember all the better, was the daughter’s answer. “ Well it’s of no consequence, anyhow. Here’s a book I’ve just bought you. Come here, Jimmy.” And he held out his hands to the boy. “ No I won’t!” said the prattler, “you kill peo ple, father—don’t you kill people?” /kill people? you little saucy fool! If you open your head again—l’ll—l’ll—whip you soundly!” “Jimmy,” interposed the mother, “you talk strangely to your father to-night. You must not ” “ But don’t father poison “people ?—and ain’t that murder?” continued the prattler. “Put that boy to bed!” cried the dram-dealer, as he took his hat from the table, and went out. It was nine o’clock in the evening—l forgot to say so before—but it was moonlight; he took a walk in his garden to cool his brow, which had become suddenly feverish, aAd to stifle the painful reflec tion that arose within him. He strolled along the principal walks, until he hail traversed iheextent of the garden. Then he leaned upon the fence that bounded the spot on one side, and muttered a few strange, harsh words, that seemed to bubble up irresistibly from his writhing mind. If the springs of conscience had ever become rested to inaction within him, the child’s words had touched them with an elec tric thrill, and they performed their office now. The matuyng verdure that arose all around him had a reproachful voice given it, as the night wind crept through its fragrant chambers. The stars above him, vaulted in their serene eternity, wore a changeless glance of displeasure so the bud man thought —as their solemn lustre fell on him. • i • ii . That night he tossed for many hours in Ins bed, half in anger, and bait in repentance and slept very little. . A few evenings afterward, returning latei than usual to his house, after a day spent in his usual “business,” Squire Barker was surprised to find a woman leaning upon his gate, and became in dignant that she did not change her position w en she saw that he desired to enter the yaid. kJie was poorly clad, and the hood she wore was thrown back, far enough to reveal her features by SAVANNAH, GA.. THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1849. the moonlight. Their expression was stern, wild, and fierce, as she turned and confronted the Squire, tho’ without moving from the gate. “ Who are you?—let me pass, won’t you — move aside?” And he advanced and laid his hand on the gate. But the woman did not move. “You know me, I fancy!” she replied. “You have cursed me and mine. You have robbed us, and now you don’t know us? —ha! ha! ha! Yes, I thought you’d know me—you do. The Squire recoiled a step or two, as he recog nized the woman. “Well —yes —I know you, so let me pass — come, come !” “Where would you go?” asked the woman, with a hollow laugh. “Go?—into my house, of course! Stand aside, or I’ll call the watch !” “ I our house !ha! ha !—it is a very nice house —built with corpses, and cemented with blood !” “Here the Squire caught the woman by one arm, and jerked her forcibly from the gate; but she clung to his hands with the gripe ofa lioness; shot her ferocious glances into his face, and shrieked —much louder, the Squire thought, than the state of the case demanded, and certainly much louder than he desired, for he saw men ap proaching from the opposite corner of the street, and felt that his situation was by no means agree able. “Let me go, you infamous hag!” cried the noble Squire, vainly striving to release himself from the woman’s grasp. “Hag!—infamous!” shouted the woman; and she grated her teeth as she spoke. Dare you ap ply those terms to me, when you have taken ad vantage of my husband’s frailty to strip me of all life’s comforts?—even of the Bible my moth er gave me on her death-bed! You call that O your house ; it is more mine than yours, in the sight of the just God —for my money helped to build it. You may say that my husband gave it to you freely; but you lie when you say it. It was appetite that seduced and bound him, and compelled him to rob his family—the appetite that you fed and strengthened by a thousand devilish arts ” Ho ! ho ! Squire !—What means this?” cried two gentleman, who at that moment drew near the spot. “ Why here’s a mad woman or devil, whom i chanced to encounter here,” answered the squire, much confused and much enraged, “and I’ll call the watch this moment, and have her taken care of. Let me go, you vile hag !” “ Tut, Squire how you talk !” said one of the gents, “why, this is poor P ’s wife—the man you turned into the street to-night, because he had no more money to spend. Poor woman !” and he approached near to the drunkard’s wife, “ l pity you —you are a great sufferer!” “A sufferer!” echoed the woman, “yes! and this robber, this murderer, has caused it all, and* then he calls me ‘hag,’ and ‘infamous!” Oh, I will curse him while I live ! and my children shall curse him !—living and dead, we will curse him ! Let him tremble, for I’ve sworn to haunt him with curses as long as the sun shines ! Now go, and may your dreams” —she looked the dram dealer full in the face—“may your dreams be of famine, blood, and death. Think of all that and go!” And with these words, the wronged and infu riated woman walked slowly away. The dram-dealer muttered a few hasty words to the gents, partly byway of apology, and partly to give vent to his swollen anger, and then passed into his own dwelling. No fact is more evident than that punishment always follows wrong-doing ; yet, in some cases, the severest retributions seem to be for a time de layed—as masses of snow accumulate before the avalanche falls —but only that they may fall with more crashing, overwhelming power, when their hour comes. It was so with your present sub ject. His heart had not throbbed without its pangs befoie—it is true ; but yet he had blindly, and partly effectually, too, resisted his conscience hitherto ; but it was impossible to do so longer.— Vengeance came, audit was unmistakable—and it came from sources, too, that were as unlooked for as they were appalling. Vengeance had commenced in his own family ; his prattling boy had accused him of crime, and had shrunk from his arms. An infant’s tongue had smote him as with a sword! A week passed away without the occurrence of anything remarkable in the history of the dram dealer, if we except a continual dread which brooded over him from morning till midnight—a vague, undellnable dread, of which he had only recently become sensible. At the end of that period he had occasion to visit a neighboring town. >lt was near sunset, when, passing along the principal street, he ob served a knot of people fathering around a pros trate form', in the vicinity of the main hotel. Cu riosity, rather than humanity, it is probable, drew him among the crowd. He pressed forward to get a view of the form, when he discovered, to his surprise and horror, that one of his old cus tomers was writhing in the agonies of death. His body was bruised and crushed, his face was blackened, his lips were white with foam, and his eyes were rolling with toiture, and al ready bright with the lustre of death. “Scrantum’s four horse team ran over him, poor wretch ! ” said one in the crowd, in answer to an inquiry how the accident happened. “Hebelongs, it seems, in N . What did he say about his sick wife and lame son ? Some repentance, I fancy —bnt see —he’s dying I— heavens !—what agony !—what a look ? ” And while the lineaments of horror were clear ly traced on each countenance, the dying man writhed in his last earthly struggles. His glazing eyes glanced around on the faces in the crowd, when suddenly he lifted his head from the bloody ground, glared forth one earnest look, with foam ing mouth and dilated nostrils, muttered a terrific sentence, and fell back and expired. There was but one person in the crowd who understood that last look. The dying man had seen the dram.-dealer and the latter felt that he could never forget the last glance of his victim. It would haunt him through life—and it has ! The body was carried away, but most of the crowd still remained to gossip over the tragical event. The dram-dealer tarried, too, for a chain of bitter thoughts bound him to the spot. “He was evidently a miserable wretch,” re turned one of the men, speaking of the dead man, “yet it’s a bad sight to see, I declare.” “Yes, that it is,” was the reply, “and yet to me, the curses he uttered against a certain dram dealer in N were far more terrible. 1 tell you, Jones, I wouldn’t have a dying man’s curse for any amount of money ; you may think it a kind of superstition, but I wouldn’t. It would blister my heart so long as I live. And yet such men as this Squire somebody —this drain dealer, must bear a good many such burning things, or I’m mistaken. Blast it, Jones, it’s a bad business, this liquor-dealing, as some prac tise it.” “ Hem !—well, I’m not a temp’rance man—l never signed the pledge, and I won’t, ’cause [ like a glass now and then, and I won’t sign aw ay my liberty. But still I don’t like the ruin licker makes sometimes, myself, It does a blam’d sight of harm, if men use it too freely, I grant.” “Yes, and then it gives a man a bad conscience to die on, you know. Here’s this man, who said, you know, he wouldn’t hate to die if he had al ways done his duty to his sick wife and la me hoy. But licker seduced him, he said, and made him a brute, and hence he did so anti so. He saw it all clear enough, then. And then he broke out in NUMBER 11.