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BY H. C. HORN AD Y. VOL. 111. The Banner and Baptist 13 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, • AT ATLANTA, GA. Subscription price—Three Dollars per year, In advance. H. C. HoRIfAKT, Proprietor. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. Weekly, (fifty Nos.,) per annum, invariably in Advance. - - - - - - - fo w Money due the Office, may be sent by mail a our risk—always mail it in presence of a menu (other than the P. M.,) or procure a friend to mail itforyou—never register. Contributors should write only bn one side Ot each leaf; and number the pages, 1,2, 8, &c. The Editor will be responsible only for his own articles. Those wishing papers changed, should give the Post-Office they wish changed from, as well as the one to be changed to. Those forwarding names of subscribers or re mittances. should always write the name of Post Office, County, and State, in full. All letters containing remittances, or articles or the Paper, should be directed to the Banner & Baptist, Atlanta, Georgia, and not to the Edi tors by name ADVERTISING SCHEDULE. jl" M 0 . Mo 3 Mo. (6 Mo. |9 Mb. 112 Mo. Ibouabe* rarsoof 7 00$ 8 oo fßTfojfii 66 2 sq’rs 500 7501000 12 OOi 18 00 22 00 3 sq’rs 700 10 00 12 00 16 00! 24 00 30 00 4 sq’bs 9 00: 12 00 15 00 20 00i 30 00 36 00 5 sq’rs 11 00 14 00 17 00 24 00 34 00 42 00 6 sq’rs 12 50: 16 00 19 00 28 00: S3 00' 46 00 7 sq’rs 14 P - 17 50 21 00 82 00; 42 00 50 00 8 sq’bs 15 00! 19 00 22 00 85 00; 45 00 54 00 9 sq’rs 16 00 ; 20 00 23 00 88 00: 48 00 57 00 10 SQ’RS 17 00 ! 21 00 24 00 40 00; 50 00 60 00 A Square, is the space occupied by ten lines of Minion type. One Square, one insertion, $1.50; and SI.OO for each subsequent insertion. Professional and Business Cards, not ex ceeding flye lines, $5 per annum; each addi tional fine $1 00. Special Notices, fifteen cents per line, for the first insertion; ten cents per line for each subsequent insertion. School Advertisements. —Our charges for School advertisements will be the same as for others, when not paid in advance. When paid in advance we will deduct Twenty-five cents in the Dollar from our regular charges. Cash for Advertisements considered due, and collectable, at one half the time contracted for insertion, except yearly ad vertisements, due and pay&nto quarterly. ~ LITE RAM DEPARTMENT. Talent, Available and Unavailable. We often hear the remark, “It is odd he don’t get along, for he is quite intelli gent.” Yet we have always found that the persons spoken of, however talented they m y be, have not the peculiar kind of abili ty required for the business they pursue. If lawyers, they are deficient of eloquence, or application, or logical aCcumen ; if mer chants, in energy, economy, or knowledge of finance or trade; it farmers, in thrift; if mechanics, in industry. Ihe world is full of men engaged in occupations for which they are unfitted. Nearly every person has a special talent for someone thing. Nobody has the ability to do everything equally well. Hence, what may be called available talent is altogether relative. A planter who thinks more of politics than of agriculture might make a very good politi cian, but is certainly a worthless farmer, and his talent is therefore unavailable. A speculating doctor might do to sell town lots, but is unfit to cure men’s ailments—is out of place. More than halfthe mistaken careers which we see about us, originate in unavailable talents. It is therefore important that ever) man, at the outset of life, should engage in that pursuit for which he is most competent. Work, then, becomes a pleasure instead of a task. If every member ofsociety were in his right place, doing that thing for which he was specially fitted, happiness would be more general and the aggregate wealth of the community vastly greater. For not only would idleness be felt to be the curse which it is, but fortunes, at least a compe tence, would be nearly universal. Success almost always attends him whose heart is in his profession. Men work harder for love of their pursuit than they do even for money. This is abundantly proved by the privations which travellers voluntarily en counter, by the nights of studying which men of science undertake, and by the her culean labors which poets, historians, and other literary men endure with no hope of adequate pecuniary reward. The ordina tion of Providence doubtless was that work, at first mans task master, should become eventually his mistress. The ideal of soci etv, if ever the human race attains it, will witness no such thing as unavailable talent; for each man will be in bis right place. It must not be supposed, however, that *ll. at the outset of LUe, are capable of judg ing what is lh@ pursuit most proper for them. A large proportion of the unavrnd A, BSUGKOHI AJI© &XS3Bm.&¥ HJSWSff’AJ'Kii. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, SEPTEMBER 27, 1862. able talent of the world has become so be. cause of some boyish preference of a parti cular profession. A lad reads) of strange countries, of voyages of discovery, of ad venturous explorers, and forthwith nothing will satisfy him till he goes to sea, and is ruined, perhaps, for life. It is not a passing whim of this description which ought to be allowed to determine the choice of an ft vocation. The opinion of a parent, who has seen the world, and who has stu died the child’s character, should correct the too hasty tendencies of an imaginative youth. Thousands of men who are now starving at the law, might have made ex cellent farmers, mechanics or merchants, and lived in comfort all their days, if their fathers had not yielded to a boyish vanity, which aspired to be a Patrick Henry, or a Daniel Webster, without ability to sustain their part. Men do not starve, in general, because they are absolute fools, but because they follow pursuits to which they are un fitted. It is the unavoidable character of a man’s talent which drags him under in the wild torrent of life. The Great Difficulty. To combine business with religion, to keep up a spirit of serious piety amidst the stir and distraction of a busy and active life—this is one of the difficult parts of a Christian’s trials in this world. It is com paratively easy to be religious in the church, to collect our thoughts and compose our feelings, and enter, with an appearance of propriety and decorum, into the offices of religious worship, amidst the quietude of the Sabbath, and within the still and sacred precincts of the house of prayer. But to be religious in the world—to be pious and holy and earnest minded in the counting room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the farm; fo carry out oftr gbod and solemn thoughts and feelings into the throng and thoroughfare of daily life—this is the great, difficulty of your Christian call ing. No man not lost to all moral influ. ence can help feeling his worldly passions calmed, and a degree of seriousness stealing over his mind, when engaged in the per formance of the more awful and sacred rites of religion; but the atmosphere ofthe do mestic circle, the exchange, the street, the city’s throng, amidst coarse work and cankering cares and toils, is a very different atmosphere from that of a communion table. Passing from the one to the other has often seemed as if the sudden transition from a tropical to a polar climate—from balmy warmth and sunshine to murky mist and freezing cold. And it appears as difficult to maintain the strength and steadfastness of religious principle and feeling when we go forth from the church into the world, a9 it would be to preserve an exotic alive in the open air in the winter, or to keep the lamp that burns steadily within doors from being blown out, if you take it abroad un sheltered from the wind. Death and Immortality. Death is the great antagonist of life, and the cold thought of the tomb is the skeleton of all feasts. We do not w ant to go through the dark valley, although its pass age may lead to paradise ; ani with Charles Lamb, we do not want to lie down in the muddy grave, even with princes for our bed-fellows. But the fiat of nature is inex. orable. There is no appeal or relief from the great law which dooms us to dust. We flourish and fade as the leaves of the forest, and the flower that blooms and with ers in a day has not a fairer hold upon life than the mightiest monarch who ever shook the earth with his footsteps. Generations appear and vanish as the grass, and the countless multitude that throngs the world to-day will to-morrow disappear as the foot steps on the shore. In the beautiful drama of lon, the instinct of immortality, so eloquently uttered by the death-devoted Greek, finds a deep response in every thoughtful soul. When about to yield his young existence as a sacrifice to fate, his beloved Clemanthe asked if they shall meet again, to which he replies : ** I have asked that dreadful | question of the hills that look eternal-—of the clear streams that flow forever—-of the stars, among whose fields of azure my ■ raised spirit hath walked in glory. All were dumb. But while 1 gaze upon that j living face, I feel that there is something in 1 “his banner over” us is “love.” flhr ~.V V : - *•. r. .• % . -.- j ,S .. .. the love that mantles through its beauty that cannot wholly perish* We shall meet again, Clemanthe.” Charity. When you meet with one suspected Of some secret deed of shame, And for this by all rejected Asa thing of evil fame; Guard thine every look and action, Speak no wordjof heartle?s blame, • For the slanderer’s vile detraction Yet may soil thy goodly name. When you meet with one pursuing Ways the lost have entered in, Working out his own undoing, With his recklessness and sin; Think, if placed in his condition, Would a kind word be in vain ? Or a look of cold suspicion Win thee back to truth again ? There are spots that bear no flowers, Not because the soil is bad, But the summer’s genial showers Never make their bosoms glad; Better have_an act that’s kindly, Treated sometimes with disdain, Than by judging others blindly, Doom the innocent to pain. MR. HIRAM GORMLEI. A STORY FOR SPECULATORS. OLD Hiram Gormley was an individual whom Fortune had not forgotten in the distribution of the good things of this life. He had a fine fortune, a magnificent dwel ling, and a plump, good-temp6red wife. — Moreover, he had a great reputation for sanctity and uprightness, and was a deacon of the church to which he belonged. A very good man and a thorough Christian old Hiram considered himself; for he.had family prayers every morning, ‘went to church every Sunday, and allowed the cook to give all uneatable scraps of bread which remained in the lardei To any beggar who applied for them. A judicious parent he believed himself to be, and a just one ; for when his only daughter had married against his will, he had cast her off forever, and refused to see her when she stood ■weak and trembling at his door, to tell him that her husband lay on the verge of death and that starvation stared them in the face. “As she has sowed so she must reap,” he muttered, as he saw her turn away, hiding her grieved face in her shabby bon net. “ She had her own choice and must abide by it.” And so saying, he went back to his account books and banished his daughter from his mind. Old Hiram Gormley was, as 1 have said, very wealthy, but he yet clung to trade with the utmost pertinacity. Money-get ting was his life, and he was never so hap py as while making a bargain. Amongst other things he ‘ speculated 5 in flour, and had made more, perhaps, in that line of business than in any other, flow old Hi ram and his brothers in the trade chuckled as the poor man’s loaf decreased and the store in their coffers augmented, it is best known to themselves. It was at such a season that Mr. Hiram Gormley sat before his parlor fire, basking in its blaze and sinking gently into an after dinner nap. His portly form filled the huge velvet chair, and his own portrait 1 j looked down from its gQdad frame upon its drowsy original with a dignity entirely of the artist’s own invention. Mrs. G. had gone out to dine, and the carriage was to be sent for her at an appointed hour, so that the old man and his portrait were alone together in the comfortable room. They were alone at least for many min utes. But as the silver-toned time-piece rung out the hour of seven, the outer door was opened and a small man, clad in a faded green velvet coat, entered the room j with the soft tread of a stealthy cat. He was a queer looking individual, so wither ed and so wrinkled that he might have re sembled some old goblin, and his white hair stood out strangely enough upon! either side of his brown forehead. Upon his meagre lower limbs he wore great mud stained boots, a world too wide for him, j and in his hand he carried a cap of the same! color and material as his coat. He looked first at old Hiram, then at his portrait, then back again to the original, and finally step I ped forward and touched him on the shoulder. Hiram Gormley awoke with a start, and | springing to his feet, regarded him with j 1 astonishment. “ Who are yo'u, and what dp you want here 1 ” he asked in a manner sufficiently imperative. “ Who I am is a matter of no import ance,” replied the stranger; “ but lam here on business. I believe you are buying up flour ? ” “I am,” replied old Hiram, becoming interested and gracious in a moment.— Take a seat, sir, and let me understand your business.” He pointed to a chair, and the visitor seated himself immediately, crossing his muddy boots, andTolding his elfin arms up on his bosom, as he bent down his head and peered from under his drooping black brows straight into Hiram Gormley’s eyes. “ We have flour to sell,” he said. “We?” said Hiram, interrogatively. “land my or, more politely speaking, my partner and I,” responded the little man. “ Oh,” said Hiram. “ May I ask the name of the firm ? ” “ I’d rather not mention names until I am sure that we shall come to terms,” re plied the little man.- “ But let me tell you, Mr. Gormley, that such a chance was never offered to one man before. If you accept it, bread will run up this’ year to such a price that a loaf of the better sort will be worth its weight in gold, and rich men will give great sums for what they esteem as nothing. How many barrels do you think we have on hand, my partner ahd I? ” “ How many ? ” asked old Hiram, trem bling with eagerness. The little man bent forward and whis pered something in his ear .which made him start to his feet once more. “So many ?” he cried. “ Why the very speculators themselves will be at my feet. I shall be the richest man in the whole world! i’ll buy it all i- -all, fill. When can I see it ? —when can I sign the contract? Be quick—tell rne where all the store is hidden ! ” “In our oflice,” said the little man. “ Where ? ” “Hush!” whispered the little man.— “ There is an underground passage, and a cellar or vault, capable of containing ten times what, it holds. As for the time, you may come with me to-night, if you like— all hours are the same to my partner and me.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth ere Hiram Gormley had hurried on his overcoat, dashed his broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, and seized his gold-headed cane with a nervous grasp of his right hand. “ Lead the way,” he said, “ lead the way— I’d follow you if we were going to the moon.” The stranger only grinned and passed out of the door before him. At the gate stood a small vehicle, black as ink, and capable of containing only two persons. A small elf-like pony was fasten ed to its shafts, and a little black boy held the reins. Hiram glanced doubtfully at the shabby turn-out, but, in compliance to a nod from his fellow’-traveller, stepped in and took his seat beside him. If the shaggy pony was small and unpromising to look at, he was nevertheless as fleet of foot as any race horse, arid the dingy vehicle spun along at a rate which made old Hiram i cling to the sides with both hands and shut I his eyes that he might not grow giddy.— I Upon passing from the town, it turned into the broad country road, and paused at the I margin of a little piece of woodland “ Your oflice seems to be in a very ! strange locality,” muttered old Hiram, sus : piciously. “ Not at all,” replied the little man in green ; “ only we are going by the under ground way, so as not to attract attention.” “Ah’” said old Hiram. “Well, this does seem to be an underground passage, sure enough,”—for they were turning now into a sort of cave, only one faint ray of light in the far distance saving them from being wrapped in utter darkness. “ 1 shall be glad when I am safe home again,” he added to himself. “ How do 1 know where the fellow i9 taking me ? ” But even as he spoke the distant light grew larger, and the carriage paused at an iron-bound door with a grating in the top,, through which fell a red glare, like that of a flame from the chimney of a pottery on a dark night. “ This is our office,’" said the little man TERMS —Three Hollars a-year. in green ; and old Hiram followed h*m as he leaped from the crazy vehicle, which sud denly vanished in a most mysterious man ner. A rap at the door summoned a dark visaged man, who admitted them without parley, and old Hiram Gormley stood in a veritable counting-house, the most spacious which had ever met his eyes. He glanced down the rows of diligent cleiks, all dress ed in Mack, and all engaged in making en tries in immense iron-bound volumes; at the huge fire, which he could see reflected on the roof through a wide grating in the distance, and which rendered any thing in the way of lamps .and candles unnecessary; and then turned towards a tall, dark man, who strode towards him from the very cen tre of the glowing light. He was clad in black, and his hair was bound together in an old-fashioned cue. There was a sort of supple, snake-like ease in his movements, and his feet were singularly shaped, and covered with shoes that suggested either the gout or bunions. “ Mr, Gormley,” said the little man in green, “Mr. Gormley, partner. He has come to inspect our stock of flour; he’d like to buy it in.” “ He would like.to buy it in, would he ?” said the new comer. “You are very wel come, Mr. Gormley; I have no doubt we shall come to terms. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Hiram Gormley, with whose name you are so well acquainted, and whom you have expected so long.” As he spoke, the long rows of black-clad clerks arose with one accord, and bowing, turned upon him their hollow, blood-shot eyes, filled with the light which must have been reflected from the fire beyond, it was so red and horrible. Old Hiram Gormley shaddered involun tarily, and addressing himself to his two he said, ** Can I see this flour of which you have been speaking? ” “ Certainly, sir,” replied the taller of the two, as he flung open a narrow door to his right and beckoned Hiram to approach, “ Light up, boys, light up ! ” And at the words a myriad of torches flared down a seemingly interminable vista —and Hiram looked down upon myriads and myriads of barrels, stretching away until they faded away into mere specks in the distance. “ Full of flour, from the very first brand down to the. poorest; not another barrel left in the market. You can have the up per hand of the whole of them, Hiram Gormley, when you can starve ten millions, if you like. Do you close the bargain, or shall we send for someone else ? ” “ Hush. I agree. Tell me your terms,” gasped Hiram, nervously. “ They are very easy,” said the tall man in black. “ Sit down, if you please. Here is pen, ink and paper, and the document.” Hiram seized the pen, and conned it rap idly, growing white and cold as he read on —at last he flung it from him, and scream ed. “My soul! Promise to give you my soul! In the name of the fiend, who are you ?” “ Your humble servant,” said the black clad creature bowing; and Hiram Gormley saw a cloven foot peeping from the queer hoot, and distinguished the perfume of brimstone. “ Let me go,” he said, “ let ine go.” “ Softly ! Why do you care so much for what you have already mortgaged 1 You are half mine already, do you know thatl” “It is false,” said old Hiram. “ I cheat man, I belong to the church ; and subscribed fifty dollars to the missionaries a year a g f >" The dark being grinned contemptuous ly—“ Bring me Mr. Gormley’s box,” he said. And he who conveyed old Iliram to the spot where he now stood, sat upon the ta ble a box like that in which the lawyers keep the papers of clieuts, labeled “Hiram Gormley, Esq.”—From the depths of this box he drew a pile of parchment, and read from thence : “ A mortgage on the soul of Hiram Gormley, given on the day when he turned his daughter from the door. An other when he seized old widow Potter’s furniture for rent. Another, when he took advantage of a flaw in the papers to evade the payment of a just debt of his own. Myriads when he first began business and told fifty lies a day, and gave false weight and measure; and one tremendous rnort NO. 45.