BY MINK IE MINTWOOD. 
Sarah Flint bad an oval face, a large moutb, 
a straight lined nose, gray eyes, a low, broad 
brow anil light brown, wavy hair, worked up for 
her physiognomy. Moreover, she had extremely 
beautiful hands and feet, which, at any time, take 
a man’s heart by storm a hundred-fold sooner, 
than will a good stock of common sense. She 
was neither tall nor short! — just enough of her 
to look tall, when her nerves steeled with anger, 
and to he the most lovable and charming little 
body, when good-natured. She was one of 
those creatures, who can till almost any niche, 
and suit almost any place. But she was positive, 
withal. When she said no, she meant it, and 
would give you a reason for it, so convincing 
you would see at once how useless it would be 
to try to persuade her differently. 
On the evening of March 4th, eighteen hun¬ 
dred and sixty-five, Harvey Truman pocketed 
a “no” from her, and the next night hadjt 
wrapped up in one of her logical reasons, with a 
little addenda, to the effect that in five years he 
might do a great deal toward making himselt a 
man and a Christian. 
Harvey, like most men under similar circum¬ 
stances, thought the girl wonderfully conceited, 
If she Thought she could do any better! — and 
wasn’t he a man! — five feet ten inches tall, 
twenty-five years old anil worth six thousand 
dollars! He carried a moustache, a heaver hat, 
a walking stick, and —and —smoked ! hud 
weren't these enough to make a man out of 
God and humanity will hold us responsible for 
this wicked waste of treasure ! ” 
“Oh! but Sarah, you are getting rabid, 
unreasonable upon this subject. What good 
will it do you—of what good accomplished for 
others — for you to refuse Harvey ? ” 
“ It will be evidence that I value a principle of 
right more than married life My example may 
strengthen some other sister to adhere to princi¬ 
ple, even though personal comfort he sacrificed. 
Harvey has been fire years building up this 
habit. I will give liiru five years to demolish 
the structure. He then will he only thirty, and 
that is early enough for any man to marry. 
They hardly know what they need before that. 
If his love for tobacco is too deeply rooted to 
give place to love for me, I may be thankful I 
am not his. I believe the safety, purity and 
honor of men lie in woman’s hands. I believe 
an earnest, truthful, pure-hearted woman can 
do anything, everything, for man’s elevation. I 
know by wornau came tbe apostaey. But it 
was not woman who denied her Master, or slept 
during the agonies of Gethsemane, or forsook 
Him on the hill of Calvary. It is not for her to 
bend the bow of Achilles or wield the club of 
Hercules. But by the thousand nameless ways 
of hers, her voice of love, her lip of entreaty, 
her look of compassion, and above all her 
woman's heart, she can mould him to the 
noblest destiny. But so long as women will 
countenance wrong—so long a? she bestows her 
smiles upon vices—so long she will marry liber¬ 
tines, drunkards, tobacco-users or gamblers, just 
so long will there he such men I If I married 
Harvey. I should henceforth be obliged to 
smile upon the habit. I would have no right to 
stick up my nose if I drabbled my skirts in 
pools of the juice, for didn’t my husband use 
it ? I must swallow all the smoke and fumes of 
almost anything? 
As for Christianity, he was in good standing 
as a member of the Eighth Street Methodist 
Church, paid liberally toward the support of the 
Gospel, had charge of a class in Sabbath School, 
and said the Lord's Prayer twice a week. 
A week or two later Fanny Brown came to 
spend the day w ith Sarah, and opened her femi¬ 
nine artillery with -. — “I’m in a stew r of wonder 
and curiosity to know why you have rejected 
Harvey Truman, aud came over this morning 
almost expressly to ascertain if you were in 
your right mind,” glancing mischievously at 
Sarah and ensconcing herself in a cosy chair by 
the grate, as much a; to say, “of course you’ll 
tell me all about it” — while her glib tongue 
ran on! 
“ They say Harvey has been as cross and sullen 
as a bear for a week; and of course everybody 
blames you—or at least wonders at your relusal; 
you know w'hcn Madame Grundy don’t know the 
reason of au act, she isn’t slow to manufacture a 
plenty of them! ” 
■Fanny Brown,” and the gray eyes of the 
girl shot into blackness as she spoke, “so fai uc 
the public are concerned, it is simply noue of 
their business why 1 have done so; I have my 
reasons for so doing, and have done it on the 
principle that one example is worth a hundred 
sermons without it. You know I have always 
said I never would marry n tobacco-user /” 
“But, fie! Sarah, that isn’t the reason you 
refused Harvey ? ” 
“Yes — the very reason. I like Harvey’. He 
has the elements of a fine manhood; but he is 
most shamefully enslaved to tobacco! I can 
scarcely walk out of an afternoon or evening 
without seeing him with a cigar in bis mouth! ” 
“But in marrying him, Sarah, you might 
influence him to abandon the habit. A wife’s 
influence ought to accomplish much.” 
“Yes, but it’s too dangerous an experiment. 
Let him thoroughly reform first, then 1 could 
trust him. Too many w’omen have shipwrecked 
their happiness upon just such suppositions. 
To marry a man is no way to reform him, if lie 
evinces no spirit of reformation previously.” 
“But you don’t expect to marry a man free 
from all vices?” asked Fanny in a confident 
tone. 
“I do — why not? Vices are needless and 
uncalled for. No truly honorable man would 
wish to soil his life with them. If I ever 
marry, I intend to marry a man and a Christian." 
u But do you believe tobacco-using robs a man 
of his manhood or prevents him being a Chris¬ 
tian ?” 
“ Yes,—perhaps not always in a direct way. I 
use the term man in its highest, noblest sense. 
God gave Harvey Truman his body as a tem¬ 
ple for his spirit, to be preserved a ‘ living sac¬ 
rifice, holy , acceptable unto God ; ’ and if he 
pollutes or betrays it to inglorious or base, 
degrading uses, he soils himself , his manhood! 
It might he overlooked if marriage were of 
brief duration. But to be joined for a life-time 
to a tobacco shop—smoking, chewing, spitting, 
drizzling! Mercy 1 What kind of comfort will 
that be ? I’m sure if I hod a husband I should 
want to kiss him sometimes, and I shouldn’t 
want to be obliged to go to the filthy Ups of a 
tobacco saloon tor it! It is a habit which 
most thoroughly disgusts me! There is nothing 
manly, noble, decent, respectable or human 
about it 1 It is growing to be a national curse 
and a national disgrace. Englishmen say Amer¬ 
icans are smoking themselves to death—aud I 
think there’s truth in it, for there is hardly a 
man but has turned his mouth into a fire-place 
and his nose into a fluu! Men have come to 
such ft pass, they must he penned off like cattle, 
or squalid emigrants, into oars by themselves 
so they may smoke! We enter a public hall and 
staring us in the face are huge letters to the 
effect that our men must forego therein the use 
of the filthy weed. It shames mo for Americans! 
And here in our very State of New York where 
ten millions are expended annually fur flour, 
from twelve to fifteen millions are expended for 
tobacco, burnt and chewed up; while hundreds 
are dying of starvation and proving a curse to 
the land because of the want of education! 
C-/L ^ 
pipes and cigars, because, did’nt my husband 
use it ? I could utter no remonstrance against 
the shameful outlay of money for it, because 
wasn’t my husband’s money spent for It ?” 
“ Well, really, Sarah, you had better give us 
a course of lectures upon it,” said Fanny, 
laughingly. 
“ Not much use lecturing, even should one 
rise from the dead to do it, so long as our 
own sex sanction the vice by marrying the men, 
and then, perhaps, after marriage , growl at their 
husbands the rest of their lives because they 
use it.” 
“ But what would you do if you married and 
ascertained afterward your husband used it?” 
“I can tell you what I think I should do. If 
he could not be prevailed upon to abandon it, 
I’d adopt it too. You roll up your eyes in won¬ 
der at that, as if it would he worse in me than in 
him. Custom only makes the real difference. 
In localities where both sexes use it equally, 
nobody wonders at it. It would build up a 
wall of loathsomeness between ns that would be 
hard to overcome; and I think I could be 
reconciled so long as I was married to him, and 
had him to live with, in no better way than by 
bringing myself down to his level and smoko 
with him. No nse try ing to soar with weights 
to your wings. It only produces friction that 
wears you out uselessly. I think a man who 
will torment, a woman's existence with it., ought 
to marry a wife who loves it equally with him¬ 
self. It would be the only sensible feature 
about it — mutual enjoyment!" 
“Well, 1 think he would break off, short, to 
see you puffing a cigar in the street! ” 
“Perhaps he would when he saw how the 
thing appeared in its true light. He could feel 
no more deeply mortified to see me smoking 
than I should to see him — my husband— thus 
defiling himself! ” 
“ But I think, Sarah, you make your assertions 
too sweeping. Some men have acquired the 
habit by using it to remove or cure some 
malady.” 
“ Yes, I know some say they began its use to 
cure the rickets, or heart disease, or gout., or 
toe-distemper, or neuralgia — but I don’t believe 
it ever cured a disease. It may, temporarily have 
relieved the toothache or something of that sort; 
but even admitting its remedial power, what 
would you say of an individual who continued 
the use of calomel or arsenic after recovery, 
simply because it had been administered as a 
remedy when ill?" 
“Why, of course, it would be very foolish,” 
answered Fanny; “hut as you intimated a lime 
ago, I do not Bee how it interferes with one’s 
Christian living. Do you not believe a man 
may use it and be just as genuine a Christian, 
notwithstanding ? ” 
“No — the supposition in itself is unreasona¬ 
ble. I never yet know a tobacco-user to be a 
real pure, buly, Christ-like disciple. If I should 
ask you if you believed a man perfectly saue 
who every day should open a vein and let out a 
pint or more of blood until be died from so 
doing could be Christian, you would not hesi¬ 
tate to say no. You would see at once it would 
be self - murder. Now, every man who uses 
tobacco knows, if be knows anything of its 
effed upon the human system, that It shortens 
his life from five to fifteen years, according to 
bis physical endurance, and excess of use. If 
the habit is formed us early as at eight or ten 
years of age, life is shortened from twelve to 
twenty years. And if it is right and consistent 
with the Christian religion, for one knowingly, 
wilfully, and foolishly to shorten his life ten or 
twenty \ears, where is the siu in immediate sui¬ 
cide? Moreover, a Christian is bound to set a 
good example. And no Christian man will parade 
our streets with ft cigar in his month, where 
there are scores of boys to Imitate his example, 
thinking it must be rigid because Mr. so-and-so 
does so, aud he belongs to the Church. By his 
very example he is shortening the lives of a score 
of men, aud taking from their pockets a fortune, 
easting it. in the mire ! No—no- Fanny, I see 
nothing manly or Christian-like in it, and be¬ 
lieving as I do, I cannot give my hand and heart 
where It lies, thereby sanctioning it! ” 
The two girls sat awhile in silence, when 
Fanny spoke: — “1’hiB is a new gospel to me. 
Sarah, but I believe it. I only wish the world 
had more such as you — there would be purer, 
truer, better men and women. And to make 
Oath of what I say, 1 give you my hand and 
promise to bo with you in living this l’alth.” 
The oath was given, and in the hand-clasp of 
the two girls began a centralization of influence 
not to be despised. 
, llillilale Farm, nca-r Ludlowville, N. Y., 1805. 
a 
Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker. 
LIFE IS ACTION. 
BY GEO. G. W. MORGAN. 
Lite is action, Life is motion, 
And he wbo'd live in earnest, must 
Be incessant as the ocean — 
Inactive sickles spoil by rust. 
Tbe plow that glistens in the sun 
Sheds bright lusters all around ; 
Tells ns of actions it has done, 
Needs no voice its praise to sound. 
Pure water stagnates if con lin’d, 
As rust corrodes inactive steel; 
Inaction acts upon the mind, 
And they are lost who lose life's zeal. 
Let’s be active; let’s be doing, 
Though 'tin little we can do; 
E’en the ivy on a ruin 
Adds a beauty to the view. 
Little seeds sown in the gronnd, 
Grow to flowers by-aud-by, 
Spread a fragrance all around, 
Seeds for future use supply. 
And so the seeds that wo may sow, 
May blossom Into noblest deeds, 
And, by God’s blessing, they muy grow 
And bless the world with other seeds. 
Oh would that man would strive to do 
As God design'd he should at birth; 
'Twonld not, be long ore he wotild view 
A heaven, where he now sees earth. 
Then rouse thee, earthly dreamer, rise, 
Clear out the weeds that strew thy way- 
lie sorely wins who nobly tries— 
Begin a new- life from to-day t 
Washington, D, C. 
A HALF-HOUK WITH RUSKIN. 
Among some other choice books which we 
like to “take up" when we have time, are those 
of Luskin. Ami we always find pleasant pas¬ 
sages and something to make us more thought¬ 
ful and thankful that we live in this world. 
Shall wc transfer some of these marked passages 
to the Rural for our readers benefit ? We think 
we will; for although many of our readers have 
read Buskin again and again perhaps, we hazard 
nothing in saving *jcv will discover something 
new at another reading. 
The Lesson of a River. 
We were struck, years ago, when we first read 
the following passage, with its quaint lesson ; 
“All rivers, small or large, agree in one charac¬ 
ter; they like to lean a little on one side; they 
cannot bear to have their channels deepest in 
the middle, but will always if they can, have one 
hanlc to sun themsMvus upon, aud another to 
get cool u!idorA.o«bl<lng}y shore to play over, 
where they may uallow, and foolish, and 
childlike; aud another steep shore, under which 
they cun pause and pacify themselves, and get 
their strength of waves fully together for due 
occasions. 
“Rivers in their way are just like wise men, 
who keep one side of their life for play, and an¬ 
other for work; and can be brilliant, and chat¬ 
tering, and transparent when they are at. ease, 
and yet take deep counsel OH the other side 
when they set themselves to the main purpose. 
And rivers are just in this divided, also, like 
wicked and good men; the good rivers have 
serviceable deep plates along their bunks that 
ships can sail in, but the wicked rivers go scoop- 
ingly, irregularly tinier their banks until they 
get full of straggling eddies which no boat can 
row over without being twisted against the 
rocks, and pot^Is like wells which no one can get 
out of but the wuter-Uelple that live at the bot¬ 
tom; but wicked and good, the rivers all agree 
in having two sides.” 
Pictures in the Pools. 
“ There is baruly a road-side pond or pool 
which has not as much landscape in it as above 
it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we 
suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, 
and in the bottom of that there are the boughs 
of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking 
grass, and all manner of lutes, of variable pleas¬ 
ant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter 
that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of 
the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, 
if yon will look deep enough, you may see the 
dark, serious blue of far off-sky, and the passing 
of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you 
see In that despised stream, either the refuse of 
the street, or the image of the sky—so it is with 
almost all other things we despise.” 
Now Look uj> nt the Sky. 
“It is a strange thing how little in general 
people know about the sky. It is the part of 
creation in which nature has done more for the 
sake of pleasing wan, more for the sole and evi¬ 
dent purpose of tdking to him aud teaching him, 
than in any other of her works, and it is just the 
part in which we least attend to her. There are 
not many of lie) others works in which some 
more material or essential purpose than the mere 
pleasing of man Is not answered by every part 
of their organization; but every essential pur¬ 
pose of the sky night, so far as we know, be an 
swered, if once h three days, or thereabouts, a 
great ugly, black rain elond were brought up 
over the blue, at! everything well watered, and 
so all left blue ajalu till next time, with perhaps 
a film of rnornin, and evening mist for dew. 
“ Aud instead if this there is not a moment of 
any day of our lives, when nature is not pro¬ 
ducing scene after scene, picture after picture, 
glory after glory and working still upon such 
exquisite and CCnstftnt principles of the most 
perfect beauty, lhat it is quite certain it is all 
done for us, udl intended lor our perpetual 
pleasure. And ivery man, wherever placed, 
however lar fron other sources of interest or of 
beauty, has this doing for him constantly. 
“ The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen 
and known but by few; it is not intended that 
mau should always live in the midst of them; 
he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel 
them if he be always with them; but the sky is 
for all; bright as it is, it is not too bright nor 
good, for human natures daily food; it is fitted 
in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and 
exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and 
purifying it fl ora its dross and dust. Sometimes 
gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, 
never the same for two moments together; al¬ 
most human in its passions, almost spiritual in 
Us tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its 
appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, 
as its ministry of chastisement, or of blessing, to 
what is mortal is essential. 
“And yet we neverattendto it, we never make 
it a subject of thought, hut as it has to do with 
our animal sensations; we look upon all by 
which it appeals to us more dearly than to the 
brutes, upon all which hears witness to the in¬ 
tention of the Supreme, that we arc to receive 
more from the covering vault than the light and 
the dew which we share with the weed and the 
worm, only as a succession of meaningless and 
monotonous accident, too common aud loo vain 
to be worthy ol a moment of watchful ness, or a 
glance of admiration. 
“ If in our moments of utter idleness aud in¬ 
sipidity, wc turn to the sky as a last resource, 
which of its phenomena do we speak of? One 
says it has been wet, and another it has been 
windy, and another it has been warm. Who 
among the whole chattering crowd can tell me 
of the forms and the precipices of the chain of 
tall white mountains that girdled the horizon at 
noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeum 
that, came out of the sontb, and smote upon their 
summits until they melted and mouldered invay 
in a dust of blue rain ? Who saw the dance of 
the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last 
j night, and the west wind blew them before it 
j like withered leaves? All has passed nnregret- 
j ted as unseen: or if the apathy be ever shaken 
off, even for an instant, it is only by what is 
gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not 
in tbe broad and fierce manifestations of the ele¬ 
mental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor 
the drift of the whirlwind, t hat the highest char¬ 
acters of the sublime arc devclopod. God is not 
in the earthquake nor in the fire, but in the still 
small voice. They are bat the blunt and low 
faculties of our nature which can only be ad¬ 
dressed through lampblack aud lightning. It is 
in gentle and subdued passages of unobtrusive 
majesty, the deep, and the calm, aud the per¬ 
petual,—that which must be sought ere it is 
seen, and loved ere it is understood,—things 
which the angels work out for us daily, and yet 
vary eternally, which are never wanting and 
never repeated, which are to be found always, 
yet each found but ouce; it is through these that 
the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught aud the 
IIow to Enjoy Beamy. 
“ The sensation of beauty is not eensual ou the 
one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but 
is dependent on ft pure, right, and open state of 
the heart, both for its truth aud its intensity, in¬ 
somuch that even the right after-action of the 
intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, 
is dependent on the acuteness of the heart feel¬ 
ing about them; and thus the apostolic words 
come true, in this minor respect as in all others, 
that men are alienated from the life of God, 
‘ through the ignorance that is in them, having 
the understanding darkened because of the hard¬ 
ness of their hearts, and so being past feeling, 
give themselves up to lasciviousness;’ for we do 
indeed see constantly that men having naturally 
acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not view¬ 
ing it with a pure heart, nor into their hearts at 
all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from 
it, hut make it a more minister to their desires, 
and accompaniment and seasoning of lower 
sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take 
the same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty 
sinks into the servant of lust. Nor is what the 
world understands by the cultivation of taste, any¬ 
thing more or better than this, at least in times 
of corrupt and over-pampered civilization, when 
men will build palaces, and plant groves, and 
gather luxuries, that they and their devices may 
hang in the corners of the world like line spun 
cobwebs, with greedy, puffed up, 6 pider likc 
lusts in the middle. And this, which in Christian 
times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of 
beauty, was in that pagan life of which St. Paul 
speaks, little less than the esseuce of It. aud the 
best they had; fori know not that of the ex¬ 
pressions of affection towards external Nature 
to be found among heathen writers, there, are 
any of which the balance and the leading 
thought cleaves not towards the sensual parts of 
her. Her beneficence they sought, and her 
power they shunned; her teaching through 
both they understood never. The pleasant in¬ 
fluences of soft winds, and singing streamlets, 
and shady coverts, of tbe violet couch, and plane- 
tree shade, they received perhaps in a more no¬ 
ble way than we, but they found not anything 
except tear upon the bare mountain or in the 
ghostly glen.” 
THE CYNIC. 
The cynic is one who never sees a good qual¬ 
ity in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is 
the human ow), vigilant in darkness and blind to 
light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing no¬ 
ble game. The cynic putn all human nations 
into only two classes—openly had and secretly 
bad. All virtue, aud generosity, and disinterest¬ 
edness are merely the appearance of good, but 
selfish at the bottom. He holds thut no man 
does u good thing except for profit. The effect of 
hi« conversation upon your feelings is to chill 
aud sear them; to send you away soro and 
morose. His criticisms and innuendoes fall indis¬ 
criminately upon every lovely thing, like frost 
upon flowers. 
& 
■L 
7$ 
Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker 
HE LEADS ME. 
BY ALLEN DE LEE. 
Staff in hand, all tenderly, 
Israel’s Shepherd came to me; 
As a flock, 
Gathered he the loug estray, 
Leading up my thoughts to-day, 
To the Rock. 
From the depth invisible, 
Lo I the Living waters well; 
By its side, 
Now I drink, though tremblingly, 
Of its crystal parity, 
Satlsfled. 
Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker. 
THE CHRISTIAN’S WARFARE. 
The Christian’s progress from this world to 
the Heavenly City, is often termed a warfare. 
This is the way in w hick St. Paul viewed it, for 
near the close of his earthly pilgrimage, he says: 
“I have fought a good fight, I have kept the 
faith, henceforth there is laid up for rue u crown 
of life;” hence lie advises all who go out to fight 
this good tight, to clothe themselves with nil the 
panoply of God— the Helmet of Salvation—the 
Shield of Faith—the Sword of the Spirit, &c. 
At onr conversion, so great a change do we 
meet, so deep are our joys, wc fancy all our 
conflicts past, that our work is to be easy, our 
burden light; for a few days, not a cloud 
arises, to darken our skies, or hide for one mo- 
moment onr Saviou’s smiling face. Truly 
“ ’twas a Heaven below oarRedcemcrto know.” 
We go from one to another telliug what the 
Lord hath done for our souls, aud though 
here and there, one turns upon ns a mocking 
smile, we put up a prayer for such and go on our 
way rejoicing. 
But Satan, who, in thetanguage of Holy Writ 
“goetb about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he 
may devour," finds time to devise a plan for our 
destruction. Where he sees a weakness in our 
nature, he throws temptation in our pathway, 
and gives it such a semblance of truth, that, we 
are deceived and fall in with his devices. But 
how quickly do the scales fall from our eyes! 
Our hope in Christ has become dim, and Satan, 
overjoyed at bis success, and anxious to perfect 
our overthrow, insinuates that wc have been de¬ 
ceiving ourselves ami others, and we had better 
cease our profession of religion, unless wc can 
walk more circumspectly. We arc almost ready 
lo act upon his advice, when the Savior’s inter¬ 
view with Peter recurs to mind. Jesus said to 
Peter, “ Satan hath desired thee, that he may 
sift thee as wheat”—mark well wlmt follows: 
“ hut T jirajfad Jar ihtf that tty faith fait 
not!" Oh! what can prevail over oue for whom 
the Son of God hath prayed! The prayer 
breathed by Him for Peter, embraced in its di¬ 
vine significance all who should thereafter be¬ 
lieve in Cubist. And this should be to us a 
strong tower, into which we may run and be safe 
from the attacks of our great enemy; and 
though, while in the flesh, we shall be subjects 
of temptation, we should not be discouraged. 
Tried and tempted one, look up! Christ has 
prayed thut thy faith fail not. 
gome sutler more from the assaults of Satan 
than others, because of peculiarities of meutal 
and physical organizations. A sensitive mind 
aud nervous temperament are, or seem to 
be, more open to the assaults of the adversary. 
Let us watch the first approach of Satan, aud by 
prayer, guard and fortify every accessible ave¬ 
nue of approach, and the great Captain of our 
Salvation w ill bring usofl more than conquerors, 
and administer to us an abuudant entrance to 
His heavenly kingdom. Sybil. 
Greene, Chenango Co., March 1865. 
AN OVERWROUGHT CONSCIENCE. 
IIow great these torments of conscience are 
here, let auy man Imagine thut can but under¬ 
stand what despair means; despair upon just 
reason; let it be what it will, no misery can be 
greater than despair. And because I hope noue 
here have felt those horrors of an evil conscience 
which arc consignations to eternity, you may 
please to learn it by your own reason, or else by 
the sad instances of story. 
It is reported of Petrus Ilosuunus, a Polonian 
schoolmaster, that having read some ill-man¬ 
aged discourses of absolute decrees aud divine 
reprobation, he began to be fantastic and mel¬ 
ancholic, and apprehensive that he might he 
one of those many whom God had decreed for 
hell from all eternity. From possible to proba¬ 
ble, from probable to certain, tbe temptation 
soon carried him : and when he once began to 
believe himself to be a person inevitably perish- 
iug, it is not possible to understand perfectly 
what infinite fears, and agonies, and despairs, 
what tremblings, what horrors, what confusion 
and amazement, the poor man felt within him, 
to consider that he was to be tormented ex¬ 
tremely, without remedy, oven to eternal ages. 
This, In a short continuance, grew insufferable, 
and prevailed upon him bo far that he hanged 
himself, aud left an account of it to this purpose 
in writing in his study:—“I am gone from 
hence to the flumes of hell, and have forced my 
way thither, being impatient to try what those 
great torments are, which here I have feared 
with an insupportable amazement.” This in¬ 
stance may suffice to show what it is to lose a 
BOUk —Jeremy Taylor. 
HJ 
Let him who thlnketb he stuudetli take heed 
lest he fall — in other words, it is better lo look 
closely alter our own foundation for faith than 
to be over anxious about Other people’s upright¬ 
ness and moral status. 
mfr-- 
Oizn 
