Life and Literature Part 36

--_Shakespeare._

484

THE ORPHAN BOY'S DREAM.

The room is old--the night is cold,-- But night is dearer far than day; For then, in dreams, to him it seems That she's returned who's gone away!

His tears are pa.s.s'd--he clasps her fast,-- Again she holds him on her knee; And, in his sleep, he murmurs deep, "Oh! mother, go no more from me!"

485

_Dreams._--Children of night, of indigestion bred.

--_Churchill._

486

We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires, And introduces hunger, frost and woe, Where peace and hospitality might have reign'd.

--_Cowper._

487

Those who think that in order to dress well, it is necessary to dress extravagantly or grandly, make a great mistake. Nothing so well becomes true feminine beauty as simplicity.

No real happiness is found In trailing purple o'er the ground.

--_Geo. D. Prentice._

488

_Numbers vi, 3._--"He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink."

A heathen king, who had been for years confirmed in the sin of drunkenness by the evil practices of white men on the Sandwich Islands, had been led to forsake the dreadful habit. He said lately to a missionary, "suppose you put four thousand dollars in one hand, and a gla.s.s of rum in the other; you say, you drink this rum, I give you four thousand dollars, I no drink it; you say you kill me, I no drink it."

489

THE RIGHT ANSWER.

In an address to a temperance society, Admiral Capps told a story which is printed in the New York _Tribune_.--A man who had ruined his health with alcohol sat looking sadly at his wife, to whom he had made many promises of reform.

"Jenny," he said, "you are a clever woman, a courageous, good woman. You should have married a better man than I am."

She looked at him, thin-limbed and stoop-shouldered, prematurely old, and answered, quietly, "I did, James."

490

_Genesis ix, 21_--"Noah drank of the wine, and was drunken."

A person in Maryland, who was addicted to drunkenness, hearing a considerable uproar in his kitchen one night, felt the curiosity to step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter; when he found his servants indulging in the most unbounded roars of laughter at a couple of negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken fits!--as how he reeled and staggered--how he looked and nodded--and hiccupped and tumbled. The pictures which these children of nature drew of him, and which had filled the rest with such inexhaustible merriment, struck him with so salutary a disgust, that from that night he became a perfectly sober man, to the great joy of his wife and children.

491

From drink, with its ruin, and sorrow and sin, I surely am safe if I never begin.

492

Pray tell me whence you derive the origin of the word dun? The true origin of this expression owes its birth to one Joe Dunn, a famous bailiff of the town of Lincoln, England, so extremely active, and so dexterous at the management of his rough business, that it became a proverb, when a man refused to pay his debts, "Why don't you Dun him?"

that is, why don't you send Dun to arrest him? Hence it grew a custom, and is now as old as since the days of Henry VII.

--_Mulledulcia._

493

Knowledge is the hill which few may hope to climb; Duty is the path that all may tread.

--_Lewis Morris._

494

When a minister preaches his sermon, he should do so fearlessly, i. e.

like a man who cuts up a big log,--let the chips fall where they may.

495

Do what you ought, come what may.

--_French._

496

_Duty_:--I hate to see a thing done by halves; if it be right, do it boldly; if wrong, leave it undone.

--_Gilpin._