294 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



your castle, and there pursue what studies you please." He accordiugly com- 

 menced the study of law under that hospitable roof. 



And here may we not pause and 'urn aside for a moment to remark what a 

 field lies open for some man of capacity and generous temper to do credit to his 

 country by sketching the portraits of eniinent women of the Southern States — no, 

 not exactly eminent, but whose noble deeds and dispositions would have gained 

 eminence for any man in any age in which courage, humanity and high moral 

 bearing under adversity have been esteemed worthy of cotemporary honor or his- 

 torical renov^^n. 



The annals neither of our Revolutionary or subsequent times Avill ever have 

 been filled up with anything like fullness or fidelity, until they shall have been 

 made to relate at least the most conspicuous of the numberless instances of de- 

 voted heroism, of unshrinking fortitude and unfailing humanity displayed by high- 

 bred Southern women, under the most trying bereavements and vicissitudes of 

 the war — a war which seemed to reserve its fiercest rage for that devoted region. 

 Their ready sacrifices of property — their ministerings with equal readiness to the 

 wants and the sickness of friend and foe — of the soldier and the slave — such as 

 should carry down their names, with Mrs. Greene s, to posterity, along with the 

 most illustrious matrons of Greece or Rome. Who, let us ask, in the name of 

 justice and patriotism, will take up this too long neglected task of chivalry and 

 gratitude ? But, to return to our narrative. 



Mrs. Greene was engaged in a piece of embroidery in which she employed a 

 peculiar kind of frame called a tambour. She complained that it was badly con- 

 structed, and that it tore the delicate threads of her work. Mr. Whitney, eager 

 for an opportunity to oblige his hostess, set himself at work and speedily pro- 

 duced a tambour-frame made on a plan entirely new, which he pr^ented to her. 

 Mrs. Greene and lier family were greatly delighted with it, and thought it a won- 

 derful proof of ingenuity. 



How curious would appear a recital of a series of extraordinary acadents, as 

 they are termed, which have seemed to be turning pivots in the lives of eminent 

 men, lifting them at once from obscurity to distinction, and leading perhaps more 

 frequently to fortune, in military life, but sometimes to extraordinary mechan- 

 ical inventions and profound discoveries in science, and sometimes influencing 

 even the industry and the fate of whole nations. Every reader is familiar with 

 the alleged pomological origin of the Newtonian philosophy, by the light of 

 which we have lately seen one of his great discii)les indicate, without looking 

 for it, the existence and exact locality of a hitherto undiscovered planet, in a 

 particular portion of immeasurable space, at a distance of one hundred thousand 

 millions of miles ! 



All such events, however, which, from their suddenness and obscure or con- 

 cealed causes, we are prompted, in our short-sightedness, to call accidents, or 

 miracles, are really in the eye of philosophy but so many links, all of equal de- 

 pendence on each other, in an unbroken chain of moral and physical causes 

 and effects, which become causes in their turn, from the beginning of time 

 to the present hour; and being, as all of them must be, the result of ade- 

 quate influences to produce them — could not at the instant have happened 

 otherwise than they have done. Thus it is under the same universal law that 

 the sun goeth down in the west and the autumn leaf falleth to the ground. 'J'hus 

 it is, too, in the scheme of Providence, that nati(Mis tempered in the fire of ad- 

 versity, rise under the auspices of good and wise counselors to prosperity and 



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