4 
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Wrecks on the Ocean of Life. 
BY W. B. FOX. 
Yes! all around us they are drifting— 
wrecks on the ocean of life. With hearts 
filled with ambitious hopes, and lives 
bathed in the golden sunlight of buoyant 
youth, they severed their barques from their 
moorings and launched them out upon the 
great ocean around them. The sea was 
calm, the sky was unclouded, and all bid 
fair for a successful voyage and a safe en¬ 
trance into the haven of peace and rest. 
But ere long the raging storms and blight¬ 
ing tempests arose, lashing the waves 
around them into angry tossing billows, 
which threaten to capsize, and bury them 
forever beneath the surging tide. One by 
one the waves sweep over the shattered 
decks, and they are left without helm or 
rudder to drift with the tide in mid-ocean. 
In vain tile anguished cries for help and 
rescue go up. Those who hear are deaf to 
them, and only the moaning winds that 
sigh drearily around them, re-echo their 
wails, The rents are mended, and once 
* 
more they seek to gain the harbor; but all 
in vain, No beacon light burns brightly 
on the lonely shore, casting its gleams out 
over the dark and surging waters to guide 
them into port. No noble hearts are there 
who are willing to brave the dangers and 
go to their rescue, but “Let them alone,” 
they say. “They have brought their own 
misery upon themselves and let them per¬ 
ish by it.” How many noble souls have 
found their downfall in the unfaithfulness 
of that one in whom their trust and con¬ 
fidence was placed—a wife, a friend or a 
brother, as it may be—being awakened from 
their dream of happiness to find that the 
“iconoclast” has entered, blighting and de¬ 
faming all that they had to cheer their lives, 
leaving naught but a dreary waste of black 
and smoking ruins. In vain they look out 
upon the world filled with brightness and 
beauty, for something to assuage their grief 
and heal the cruel wounds that pierce their 
bruised and broken hearts; its joyousness 
but deepens the gloom that enshrouds them, 
and plunges them deeper into the gulf of 
despair. When they contrast their lives 
with those that are filled with pleasure and 
sunshine, it serves but to enhance the utter 
lonliness and misery of their own and make 
it all the more unbearable. Reader, if you 
have a true and faithful friend who looks 
to you for counsel and guidance, cast him 
not away for what the world says of him, 
or because he is poor or has a fault. If you 
are bound to another by ties that are more 
holy and sacred, by far, than those of friend¬ 
ship, if you have taught a trusting heart to 
love you, and ha \ e registered promises of 
faithfulness, fail nut in the consummation of 
those vows, or you may cause that soul to 
sink in depths of despair, never to renew 
the life struggle again, and thus add one 
more wreck to the myriads that float 
around you. The world suffers far more 
,from these caruses than it is often willing to- 
confess. Delve deep down in the great 
mass of humanity, if you would know of 
its misery and sufferings. All around you 
are those whose lives are darkened by sor¬ 
row and disappointment; tenderly lead 
them back from the thorny path they are 
treading, and by your sympathy and faith¬ 
fulness make them believe that all the 
world is not untrue. There are those whom 
the world sees fit to trample under foot, 
because their names are stygmatized, and 
yet no fault of theirs ever brought the 
stain upon it. There are those who are- 
struggling and sinking beneath burdens 
which they of themselves never took up, 
but the hands of others have cruelly laid 
upon them. O! comfort and cheer the lives 
of those lonely ones who stand at the grave 
of buried hopes, that one by one have with ¬ 
ered and faded from their lives, leaving 
them dreary and desolate; and now o'er 
their funeral pile they bend, and the 
anguished prayer goes up, the bitter tears 
course down their cheeks, but all avails 
them nothing; they can not call them 
back, or heal the wounds that pierce their 
bleeding hearts. 
Salem , IF. Va., Jan. 11, 1884. 
Pea Culture,—Best Varieties. 
BY THOMAS D. BAIRD. 
Mr. John Marshall, in the January num¬ 
ber of Seed-Time and Harvest, speaks of 
McLean's Little Gem as yielding its crop all. 
