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ill imu mi BY HORNADY & ELLS. VOL. 111. ' 1 DEVOTED TO RELIGION AND LITERATURE, Is published every Saturday, at Atlanta, Georgia, at the subscription price of three dollars per year. HORNADY & ELLS, Editors and Proprietors. H. C. Hornady] [James N. Ells. MISCELLANY. The City of the Dead. BY ANNIE E. BLOUNT, There is a beautiful city, Laid out in walk and square, Where flowers in rich profusion Perfume the summer air. ’Tis there the willow waveth, And the violet lifts its head; And they call this lovely city The city of the dead. The breeze, in gentle dalliance, From flower to'flower roves; And the very air seems purer In those quiet, shaded groves. No sound stillness— No laughter, rude and loud; For there’s something in that city Awes e’en ths gayest crowd. And, side by side, there slumber The rich man and the poor; There foes lie down together, Nor wrong each other more. There sleep the great, the lowly, The same trees o’er them wave; For earth’s proud and vain dis'inctions Are levelled by the grave. Here some weary, aged warrior Quietly takes his jest; And near him some pale young mother, With her baby on her breast. There the wealthy merchant slumbers, And dreams no more ot gain; There the widowed one forgetteth Life’s weariness and pain. There sleep in peace together Betrayer and betrayed; The wronged lies down by the wronger, And feels no more afraid. And afar in some lone corner, Slumbers the suicide— No marble tablet telling How he lived and how he died ! The bride, in her fair young beauty, With orange buds in her hair, And the wedding robe around her, Sleeps calm and peaceful there. There the orator proud reposes, A stone at head and feet— A nameless one lies near him, Whose rest is just as sweet. Artist, Statesman, and Poet! Wooers alike of fame: Your haunting dreams have vanished, And a white slab bears your name. Ah ! who has not bowed with weeping Over some coffined head; For we all have loved and lost ones In tlie city of the dead ! LITTkEJPINKY. TIIE MINER’S STORY. “ Yes, sir,” said the man, running his hand through his shaggy locks, his harsh face showing marks of unusual intelligence, “ mining in this region is a hard life, but l think we’ve all been better since little Pin ky went away.” “ And who was little Pinky ? ” asked the gentleman, while the dark eyes of the lady at his side sparkled in anticipation of a story. “ Well, you see—it be something of a tell—and if ye’d move further on in the shade of the old oak yonder, it’ll mayhap be pleasant for the young mass, for the sun be hot.” The lady and gentleman followed the brown and weather-beaten to the cool shad ow of the oak, and finding a seat for the young lady on a convenient root that came squarely up from the ground, the miner be gan, with his usual preface: “ You see—Pinky were the son of Jesse Pinkham, a young man, and a regular good one, as the saying goes. I reckon Pinkham was the only man of us as ever said the Lord's prayer, or any other prayer. He were a tine young fellow, that’s the fact ! But we’re a rude set, sir, we of the mines, and 'specially in this place; we didn’t like anything that was what we call ‘pious.’— Sunday, sir, used to be regular—well, 1 might say devil’s day— with us. It was nothing but drinking and dancing, pitching, and cards, and s\\ earing. “ Well, sir, you see—Jesse he got mar- \ ried to a regular lady like girl, sir, and it! turned out a pious one. They didn't, none u f ’em —that is, Pinkham, his wife, and old mother —jine us in our merry-makings on A RffiSUXStIOTO AM® i,SS®®A¥ MWS*>A*®M. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, OCTOBER 25, 1862. a Sabbath, but sometimes the young man and Bessy—that’s his wife, sir—would walk five miles to hear a parson preach.— We was all down upon Jesse, sir—you see the real thing was, he made us ashamed of ourselves by his goodness, and I was worse than the rest, trying my best all the time to pick up a quarrel with him. Well, sir, one Saturday night what did we see but a notice stuck up on this very tree, that there’d be a parson from Frankstown on the nmrro®_to- preach- Ira us. We didn’t like the news, and we could tell pretty well where the move come from ; 'cause, you see, we knew Jesse was pious. So we de termined, the greatest part of us, that we wouldn’t have any psalm singing—no cant ing prayer—no reading out of the Bible. “ Well, the minister came, and he found a Babel. We all got together, and we raved, and laughed, and pitched quoits, and made such a noise that the parson had to give it up. He tried agin and agin, and came right among us—he was plucky, I tell ye—but we hooted in his ears, and threw mud on his betterrnost clothes, and so he was fairly driven off—•’cause you see we had liquor enough in us to set us all erazy. “Poor Jesse! how we jeered him after that; but he bore it meek, sir, and I was often ashamed of myself, though I’d died afore I’d confessed it. But I am sorry enough for my part of it; for one day there came a rumbling, heavy noise, shaking the earth, and then a crash like rattling thun der beneath our feet, and we knew that somebody was buried alive. It was in the working shaft where Jesse was, and there didn’t happen to be a soul in the place ex cept him, poor fellow ! The) ’d all gone into another shaft, where he didn’t like to follow ’em, ’cause they were such a wicked set; and as they were eating their dinners, and he his, the accident happened. “We dug him out, sir! He was awful crushed—-all but his face—that looked smi ling and peaceful-like, and we couldn’t bear the sight; it made us think how we’d treated him. So we carried him home to Bessy. She didn’t cry and take on, as most the men’s wives do when an accident hap pens, but it were awful to see how still and white she were! Awful, sir, and l never want to see a sight like it agin. “We all felt bad, for poor Jesse hadn’t never said a harsh word to one of us, and he’d borne many an insult. “We couldn’t see through it when he vere living, but used to call him ‘ weak headed,’ and a ‘ tame covey ;’ and as he lay there in his coffin, there came a different feeling over me, sir, you may depend upon it. Oh! if I’d a-heard then to the lesson that was telling of me; if I’d only listened then to the voice of God, speaking, as it weie, from the lips of that crushed dead body —I’d a saved myself many a day of sufferin’, many an hour of torment. But I didn’t. “We all walked to the grave, and I tell ye it touched even hard fellows like us, to see that young widder, with her little child in her arms, fuller close to the coffin—nev er crying, only holding her head down as if it were heavy bowed with her sorrow to keep it up. “ Well, we had a talk at the grave by the same parson as we’d treated so badly. I don’t know what his good words would a done in after days, if 1 hadu't been a lead er in wickedness, a hater of pious people, and everything that had to do with religion —a wicked swearer, worthless sinner ! I say it to.my shame, I don’t boast, sir—God forbid ! I wish I could just shut out my thoughts all these >ears of my life that I | ain’t spent piously. But God, I hope, ’ll be merciful to me. “ Well, sir, his wife—the poor young thing!—took the death sadly to heart.— They said the shook had been too sudden, dried up all the tears, like. She never cried one’t—only languished and ‘pined, grew thinner and whiter, and died just three months after poor Jesse. This was how the little boy—Jesse's little boy —came to be an orphan, sir. “ Well, we were all determined to take care of the Tittle one; so we east lots eve ry month to see which should have the maintainin’ of him. It used to come to me pretty often, but I done it willingly, sir. because 1 considered I’d been hard to | the man—hard to poor dead Jesse. “ The boy was pretty, sir but he didn’t “his banner over” its is “love.” grow much. You see he hadn’t no mother love to thrive on. The women, they thought they did well by him, but they sort o’ hus tled him, and he wanted something different, coming of a delicate stock. I don’t spose nothing, sir, can givea child that feel, which having somebody to love and call mother, does—no, not all the cosscntin’ in the world by strangers. “Well, the years passed, and the little fellow began to be handy in the mine. It seemed a pity to see him beginning that hard sort o’ life, but then we’re not able to take care of one more helpless hand, and there was plenty as young as he down there. But he was so different from all the rest of the children. He looked for all the world, before he got the grim in his face, like a gentleman’s child, sir. Ilis skin was like the shells you sometimes see with a little red tinge on’em, and he had his moth er’s large brown eyes, and his father’s curly hair, and then he was so slim-like and girl ish. But he had spirit beyond his strength, and gloried in his work. Things was going on about as usual, ex cept that I was harder down on religion than ever. The soft feeling wore off my heart, and I think I hated what was pious worse nor before. Our Sundays was train ing days—nothing good—everything evil, just as evil could be. “Weli, sir, one day that little fellow was on my beat, and he had done up his work quick and airly—so he stood some time beside me talking. He was queer at talking—l never heard such strange things as he’d say. So says he, as I was fixing my tools, says he, ‘ Keene ’ —that’s my name, sir—‘wherd all thisfcoalcome from?’ “‘ Come from the earth,’ I said. “ ‘ Yes, but what made it ? ’ “ I prided myself on my little learning so says 1, ‘ Wy, nater made it, Pinky we used to call him Pink, and Pinky. “‘Well, what made nater, Keene?’ he still kept askin’. “‘Why,—why! nater made itself!’ 1 said. “ ‘ Oh, no ! ’ he cried ; and with a solemn look as ever I see on any face —and his voice of warnin’—l don’t know why, but 1 never heered anything like it; says he, ‘God made everything; God is down here in the dark ! ’ “ I declare it was as nigh as if a man had struck me as could be. Says I, ‘Pinky, where did you get that from ? ’ “ Says he, * The good man told me.’ “ ‘ What good man ? ’ I asked, and an ug ly feeling came over me. “ ‘ What preached at mammy’s funeral,’ said he. “ And where’d you see him?’ f sort of growled, like. “‘Out in the road yesterday. I seed him on a horse, and he took me up and ri- t ded me so far a back, and he told me all the good things.’ “ I was silent, I tell you. I didn’t know what to say; but I was mad. Just then, in moving up quick, my lamp went out.— Now, that’s a thing that don’t happen but a few times in a good many years; 1 knew I’d have to wait and holler till somebody come —for the pit was full of holes; and so Ij said, ‘ Don’t be afraid, Pinky, they’ll be here soon; ’ but 1 was shaky, for he was in ; a dangerous part of the pit. “Says he, ‘I don’t feel afraid, Keene;! don’t you s’pose God’s close to us? ’ “ I declare 1 felt my blood trickle, cold \ at every wind that came down the shaft way. I thought this was his breath—the breath of God! “Well, the hours passed away, and no-1 body come. Presently says little Pinky, | i’ll go for you, God will show me the way,’ | and I heard his little feet patting along them I dangerous places. It was awful! Ihe ! sweat started on me thick, and it seemed ; like 1 couldn’t breathe. But when I railed ; him back he shouted with his little voice,! j‘ God’ll show me the way.’ “It almost makes me tremble when I ; think on’t, sir; the boy went over the worst ! road in the pit, full of sunk shafts and dan gerous places, without no lamp ! Oh, sir, when they came for me with plenty light, I I—l couldn’t believe it, sir, l couldn’t; and | though they kept telling me that Pinky was ; safe, I tell you, sir, 1 thought it was a lie 1 till I see him and heard him cry out, * I am j safe, Keene—God showed me the way ! ’ Well, sir, you may not say this looks true, but ’tis. Oh, ’cis as true as wonder ful, sir; and 1 tell you, I was a different man after that. Not that I grew good at once—no, I didn’t know the way then, sir. 1 didn’t feel like little Pinky; I didn’t feel sure that God’d show me, but he did. “ One day, after Pinky had been working hard, he said he was dry and his head ach ed. Well, we always expected something’d bo ailing, him ; so that night I carried him home in my arms and laid him on his bed, and he never, sir,” —the miner choked for a moment, drew one rough hand across his eyes, turned away for a brief second, then sa'd hurriedly—“ he never got up from it of himself again. Every night 1 came home he was worse, and I tell ye I felt as if all the light I ever see was going out! “ One morning he asked me in his weak voice, ‘ Wouldn’t I send for the good man that preached for his mammy ? ’ I didn’t say no, twan’t in my heart to do that thing, and before long the parson was there, talk ing and praying. That seemed to do the child good; and as the miners dropped in with their black ft ;s, and the lamps in their hands, he’d smile on ’em sweet, sir; it would adoneyour heart good to a seen it.” The man paused again, overcome by the recollection of the scene. The muscles round his firm lips quivered, and over his great bronzed face there swept an expres sion of almost womanly tenderness. “ Did he die then ? ” The question was softly asked, and the dark eyes of the lady were full of tears. “ Oh, my dear Miss—yes, yes, he died then. He grew very bright and lively; though, and we’d all set our hearts on his getting well, when there was another change, and the color left his face, and his little hands hadn’t no strength in’em. The min ister came again, and as he stooped down, says he, ‘My dear child, are you afraid to go?’ And what do you think, sir—what do you think, Miss—he said ? Oh, how it went through me! “ ‘ God’ll show me the way ? ’ “ And He showed the way, sir. 1 never see anything like that dying, sir—never. He held my hand, he said, ‘Keene, you love God, too.’ He gave a gasp, and then q smile, and then there came a bright glory light over his white face that made it shine all over. Oh, sir, I—l can’t tell it.” The man held his head down and sobbed like a child, and his were not the only tears. The next morning was the Sabbath. A near bell was heard ; a plain white meeting house stood in sight. The stranger and his daughter met the miner, who, pointing to the heavenward spire, exclaimed, as a smile broke over his face: “ You see, sir, God shows all the way.” Confession of a Drunkard. Some years since there was a pamphlet pub lished in England,entitled the “Confession of a Drunk trd.” The statements made in it are asserted on good authority to be au thentic, —and what does the writer say ? “Of my condition there is no hope that it should ever change; the waters have gone over me ; but out of the black depths, could 1 be heard, I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the peril ous flood. “Could the youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes ol life, or the entering upon some newly discovered paradise, look into my ! desolation, and be made to understand I what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his ] destruction and have no power to stop it, j and yet to feel it all the way emanating] from himself; to perceive all goodness; emptied out of him, and yet not be able to I forget a time when it was otherwise; to j bear about the piteous spectacle of his own | self-ruin ; could he see my feverish eve. fe- \ ; verish with last night’s debauch, and fever- j j ishly looking for this night’s repetition of] !the folly; could he feel the body of the [death out of w'hieh I cry hourly, with fee ble and feebler outcry to be delivered—it were enough to make him dash the spark ling beverage to the earth in all the pride jof its mantling temptation.” Adhesiveness is a large element of sue. cess. Genius has glue on his teet, and will , take hold on a marble slab. The first part jof economy is to do your peculiar work; the second, to do it by system. TERMS Three Dollars a-year. Sir. It is doubtful whether there be another monosyllable in the language which admits of such delicate distinctions as that most common one which heads this article—Sir. Not the trembling ‘No ’ of the bashful maiden, whose command of verbal inflec tion is so perfect that she makes it to fill the place of ‘Yes.’ could be more signifi cant; not the emphatic ‘There’ of the dined aide-man, who pushes his last plate an inch or two from his encroaching stom ach with a satisfied sigh, and a comfortable and firm belief in his own mind that he has, in the highest and noblest sense, said Grace; not the ‘ Well?’ of the rival con versationalist, interrogatively fitted in at the conclusion of your very best narration, as though the point were yet to come ; not the facile ‘Ah ! ’ of the debt-hardened bor rower, when he is reminded of the little account which, with the utmost delicacy, you have forborne to speak of until it has almost run clean out of sight forever under neath the statute of limitations ; not the ‘ Bah !’ of the attorney, so different from the same expression in the mouth of the inno cent wearers of his shefpskins, when you inadvertently let fall some moral axiom or some tender sentiment, forgetting in whose presence you stand ; nothing, equally brief, had ever such variety of meaning as this ‘Sir.’ Even in writing, and when it stands apart and unrelieved by ‘My dear,’ or ‘Dear,’ it has a certain unpleasant significance. It shows that the writer has no acquaintance, and far less friendship with the person he addresses ; that, for certain, he does not know anything about him, and that, in all probability, he does not care. There is not only a stiffness and reserve, but an absolute antagonism in a ‘ Sir ’ of this sort. It is more than possible that it may be followed by, ‘ As the legal advisers of Messrs. Har py,’ Ac., and that the whole may be con cluded—like an unprepossessing scorpion, whose worst has yet to come in the tail of it—by the signature of a legal firm. One has, in this case, to write back ‘ Gentlemen,’ too, in return for it, which, it may be, is as tremendous a sacrifice of truth as of in clination. The editor of the Moral Lever begins with the ‘Sir’ indignant, when he writes that he is in truth astonished at his once esteemed contributor requiring com pensation in dross for that blessed privi lege of elevating the masses which has been afforded to him by the publication of his article; and the once esteemed contributor has made previous use of it, apologetically, in demanding modestly to know whether the Lever was accustomed to balance its accounts at the end of every six months or of a year. This ‘Sir’ epistolary may be the herald of a compulsory marriage (when it ema nates, for instance, from one of the big brothers of the three Miss Malonies, de nominated, for certain reasons, ‘ Plague, Pestilence, and Famine’); of death, itself, even—provided, at least, that there is no property bequeathed to us, in which case we mi) be sure it would become ‘My dear Sir,’ or ‘My very dear Sir,’ in pro portion to the sum ; but it is never by any chance the harbinger of anything satisfacto ry, except perhaps in the extremely miti gated form of a receipt for the second pay ment of a disputed bill. ‘Sir’ never asks you to dinner, nor even pays you a com pliment, except of the most artificial cha racter, such as that of representing some body as your most obedient and humble servant, who, if not an utter stranger, is a foe determined upon your ruin. ‘Sir’ is the dogged submission which the most savage hand is compelled to pay to the laws of civilization, the transparent veil through which it strikes with undiminished power. The only social invitation which it ever heralds is that which belongs to the duello, the pressing summons to ‘ pistols for two in the saw-pit,’ or other unfrequent ed meeting-place; nor has it anything to do with love, except at the extreme fag-end of it, when it sometimes announces Cupid’s death and the birth of Mammon coincident ly, in the notice of action for breach of promise of marriage. It is the sign that the chain of friendship is broken, and that the remaining life-links which connect us and the writer must needs be formed of a far baser metal. Indeed, the only sort of excellence which the ‘Sir’ epistolary pos sesses, is of a decidedly negative character; it does not, as far as we are aware, form part of the formula of a writ. NO. 49.