McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 22

Half-killed with wonder and surprise, "So soon returned!" old Dodson cries.

"So soon d' ye call it?" Death replies: "Surely! my friend, you're but in jest; Since I was here before, 'T is six and thirty years at least, And you are now fourscore."

"So much the worse!" the clown rejoined; "To spare the aged would be kind: Besides, you promised me three warnings, Which I have looked for nights and mornings!"

"I know," cries Death, "that at the best, I seldom am a welcome guest; But do n't be captious, friend; at least, I little thought that you'd be able To stump about your farm and stable; Your years have run to a great length, Yet still you seem to have your strength."

"Hold!" says the farmer, "not so fast!

I have been lame, these four years past."

"And no great wonder," Death replies, "However, you still keep your eyes; And surely, sir, to see one's friends, For legs and arms would make amends."

"Perhaps," says Dodson, "so it might, But latterly I've lost my sight."

"This is a shocking story, faith; But there's some comfort still," says Death; "Each strives your sadness to amuse; I warrant you hear all the news."

"There's none," cries he, "and if there were, I've grown so deaf, I could not hear."

"Nay, then," the specter stern rejoined, "These are unpardonable yearnings; If you are lame, and deaf, and blind, You've had your three sufficient warnings, So, come along; no more we'll part."

He said, and touched him with his dart: And now old Dodson, turning pale, Yields to his fate--so ends my tale.

XXIII. THE MEMORY OF OUR FATHERS. (128)

Lyman Beecher, 1775-1863, a famous congregational minister of New England, was born in New Haven, graduated from Yale College in 1797, and studied theology with Dr. Timothy Dwight. His first settlement was at East Hampton, L. I., at a salary of three hundred dollars per year. He was pastor of the church in Litchfield, Ct., from 1810 till 1826, when he removed to Boston, and took charge of the Hanover Street Church. In the religious controversies of the time, Dr. Beecher was one of the most prominent characters. From 1832 to 1842, he was President of Lane Theological Seminary, in the suburbs of Cincinnati. He then returned to Boston, where he spent most of the closing years of his long and active life. His death occurred in Brooklyn, N. Y. As a theologian, preacher, and advocate of education, temperance, and missions, Dr. Beecher occupied a very prominent place for nearly half a century. He left a large family of sons and two daughters, who are well known as among the most eminent preachers and authors in America.

We are called upon to cherish with high veneration and grateful recollections, the memory of our fathers. Both the ties of nature and the dictates of policy demand this. And surely no nation had ever less occasion to be ashamed of its ancestry, or more occasion for gratulation in that respect; for while most nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians.

Many of them were men of distinguished families, of powerful talents, of great learning and of preeminent wisdom, of decision of character, and of most inflexible integrity. And yet not unfrequently they have been treated as if they had no virtues; while their sins and follies have been sedulously immortalized in satirical anecdote.

The influence of such treatment of our fathers is too manifest. It creates and lets loose upon their inst.i.tutions, the vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow; for after the memory of our father shall have been rendered contemptible, who will appreciate and sustain their inst.i.tutions? "The memory of our fathers" should be the watchword of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, behold their like again. Such models of moral excellence, such apostles of civil and religious liberty, such shades of the ill.u.s.trious dead looking down upon their descendants with approbation or reproof, according as they follow or depart from the good way, const.i.tute a censors.h.i.+p inferior only to the eye of G.o.d; and to ridicule them is national suicide.

The doctrines of our fathers have been represented as gloomy, superst.i.tious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in season to seek an answer to this objection.

The persecutions inst.i.tuted by our fathers have been the occasion of ceaseless obloquy upon their fair fame. And truly, it was a fault of no ordinary magnitude, that sometimes they did persecute. But let him whose ancestors were not ten times more guilty, cast the first stone, and the ashes of our fathers will no more be disturbed. Theirs was the fault of the age, and it will be easy to show that no cla.s.s of men had, at that time, approximated so nearly to just apprehensions of religious liberty; and that it is to them that the world is now indebted for the more just and definite views which now prevail.

The superst.i.tion and bigotry of our fathers are themes on which some of their descendants, themselves far enough from superst.i.tion, if not from bigotry, have delighted to dwell. But when we look abroad, and behold the condition of the world, compared with the condition of New England, we may justly exclaim, "Would to G.o.d that the ancestors of all the nations had been not only almost, but altogether such bigots as our fathers were."

XXIV. SHORT SELECTIONS IN PROSE. (130)

I. DRYDEN AND POPE.

Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, more certainty in that of Pope. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is the velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and leveled by the roller. If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If, of Dryden's fire, the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpa.s.ses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

--Samuel Johnson.

Note.--A fine example of ant.i.thesis. See p. 26.

II. LAS CASAS DISSUADING FROM BATTLE. (130)

Is then the dreadful measure of your cruelty not yet complete? Battle!

against whom? Against a king, in whose mild bosom your atrocious injuries, even yet, have not excited hate; but who, insulted or victorious, still sues for peace. Against a people, who never wronged the living being their Creator formed; a people, who received you as cherished guests, with eager hospitality and confiding kindness. Generously and freely did they share with you their comforts, their treasures, and their homes; you repaid them by fraud, oppression, and dishonor.

Pizarro, hear me! Hear me, chieftains! And thou, All-powerful! whose thunder can s.h.i.+ver into sand the adamantine rock, whose lightnings can pierce the core of the riven and quaking earth, oh let thy power give effect to thy servant's words, as thy Spirit gives courage to his will! Do not, I implore you, chieftains,--do not, I implore, you, renew the foul barbarities your insatiate avarice has inflicted on this wretched, unoffending race. But hush, my sighs! fall not, ye drops of useless sorrow! heart-breaking anguish, choke not my utterance.

--E. B. Sheridan.

Note.--Examples of series. See p. 28.

III. ACTION AND REPOSE. (131)

John Ruskin, 1819 ---, is a distinguished English art critic and author.

From 1869 to 1884, he was Professor of the Fine Arts at Oxford University.

His writings are very numerous, and are noted for their eloquent and brilliant style.

About the river of human life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly suns.h.i.+ne; the iris colors its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose.

Let us beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which, so long as they are tempest-tossed and thunderstricken, maintain their majesty; but when the stream is silent and the storm pa.s.sed, suffer the gra.s.s to cover them, and are plowed into the dust.

IV. TIME AND CHANGE. (131)

Sir Humphry Davy, 1778-1829, was an eminent chemist of England. He made many important chemical discoveries, and was the inventor of the miner's safety lamp.

Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea; in the system of nature, we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only dust, Nature a.s.serts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, in a period of annual successions, by the labors of man--providing food, vitality, and beauty--upon the wrecks of monuments which were raised for the purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.

V. THE POET. (132)

William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842, was a distinguished clergyman and orator. He took a leading part in the public affairs of his day, and wrote and lectured eloquently on several topics.

It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys; and in this he does well, for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being.

VI. MOUNTAINS. (132)

William Howitt, 1795-1879, was an English author. He published many books, and was a.s.sociated with his wife, Mary Howitt, in the publication of many others.

There is a charm connected with mountains, so powerful that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! How the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our hearts bound to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of their gus.h.i.+ng rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How inspiriting are the odors that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower, from the h.o.a.ry and solemn pine! How beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes, as over a vast, inimitable picture!