r tC1 "T 
XiX 
[Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker.j 
FRAGMENTS. 
notice his allusion to my large hands. “Certainly, 
set just as nice a table as you like out of it, and 
gome time when you’re not trading very heavily, 
remember 1 want a new coat for Sundays, a pair of 
gaiters, and a beaver. Three dollars a week- 
twelve dollars a months and he sung, right merrily, 
a verse or two of 
“ Come, wife anil children, let's be gay.' 
“Like as not we’ll have enough left to buy a little 
farm with,” he added, by way of conclusion. So 
we made the arrangement, Habra promising to 
“make the best of it,” whatever might happen in 
the culinary department. 
Two months had hurried away since 1 was in¬ 
stalled maid-of-all-work and since Peter and Biddy 
“went to the praste’s and thin to his sister’s over 
the ferry.” Harry said to me, as he veaebed over 
his plate for a second piece of strawberry shortcake, 
“Susan, you can cook as well as my mother, and 
any woman understands the force of that compli¬ 
ment; “how much brighter and better this part of 
the bouse seems—not a ‘hired help' shadow to mar 
the scene—a little farm in prospective, a Sunday 
coat and a pair of gaiters." Though I had burned 
my fingers getting dinner, and felt unusually tired, 
yet in view of Hakry’k content, 1 was able to adopt 
anew this clause of the Catechism—“And do my 
duty in that state of life to which it may please 
an n to cull me.” Mary J. Crosmax. 
The shadow of death is not the darkest that is in 
the world—not the darkest that falls on the loves 
and hopes of human hearts. It may take from us 
the fair visions and bright fancies that cluster 
around our Ihonghts of a future with one beloved; 
it may wound us sorely through the clinging of our 
natures to the stay it is taking from us; but the pain 
can be nothing in bitterness 1o that which we feel 
when those that we have trusted fail us. and pledges 
that we dreamed binding for all time are broken. 
In the first overwhelming sense of loss, the first 
bitter realization that death has severed ties which 
earth can never see re-uni*ed. there may seem for a 
little while to be nothing left to hope for; but if the 
silent heart was true to the last, with its death there 
has not died for us also all faith in human affection, 
all dependence upon mortal vows. We have the 
hope of re-union, and as we turned to the shelter of 
the love that throbbed in that heart while it lived, 
we turn, when it lies in the dust at our feet, to the 
land where we can but believe, it has blossomed 
into immortality, and for us, henceforth, it is 
“ Hallowed, sanctified, by the dread seal of death.* 
MAN’S WORK SHALL FOLLOW HIM. 
[Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker.] 
THE MIND. 
AFTER ALL 
BY JOHN O. WHITTIER. 
The apples are ripe in the orchard, 
The work of the reaper is done, 
And the golden woodlands redden 
In the blood of the dying sun. 
At the cottage door the graudsire 
Sits pale in his easy chair. 
While the gentle wind of twilight 
Plays with his silver hair. 
A woman is kneeling beside him, 
A fair, young head is pressed, 
In the tirst wild passion of sorrow, 
Against his aged breast. 
And far from over the distance 
The faltering echoes come 
Of the flying Mast of trumpet 
And the rattling roll of drum. 
And the graudsire speaks in a whisper,— 
“ The eud no man can see; 
But we give him to his country, 
And we give our prayers to Thee.” 
The violets star the meadows, 
The rose-buds fringe the door. 
And over the grassy orchard 
The pink-white blossoms pour. 
But the graudsire*s chair is empty, 
The cottage is dark and still;— 
There’s a nameless grave in the battle-field, 
And a new one under the hill. 
And a pallid, tearless woman 
.By the cold hearth sits alone. 
And the old clock In the corner 
Ticks on with a steady drone Vanity Fair. 
We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
Of which the coming life is made, 
And fill our future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 
The tissue of the life to be 
We weave with colors all our own, 
And in tile field of Destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 
Still shall the soul around it call 
The shadows which it gathered here, 
And. painted on the eternal wall, 
The past shall rc-appear. 
For there we live our life again— 
Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the past remain: 
Man’s work shnll follow him. 
BY CHARLES M. DICKINSON. 
When Flora lays her fragrant gift 
Upon the verdant breast of spring, 
The vines their -lender tendrils lift, 
And quickly twine them round the string; 
With seeming instinct up they start 
To deck the porch with verdure o’er. 
And guided by the hand Ot art, 
They form around the farmer’s door 
A shelter from the scorching sun, 
When hall’ his daily toil is done. 
And thus the mind, whose shoots in youth, 
If trained with cure and led aright, 
Will clamber up the conic of Truth, 
And gain the brow of Science' height; 
And day by day will they expand. 
And ouch around each other clasp. 
Until, at last, no mortal hand 
Can tear, from their tenacious grasp. 
The gems iff truth and science brought 
From out the golden mine of thought. 
A sprout springs up upon the plain, 
The sunbeams kiss its timid ticad, 
And nourished by the dew and rain, 
Its leafy branches grow and spread 
Each day by day, and years on years, 
Until, at last, it gains its prime, 
And then for cycles it appears.— 
Uninjured by the strokes of time. 
It stands, as other oaks have stood, 
A giant monarch of the wood. 
And thus the mind, when reason bright 
First pierces through this mortal clod, 
And tearing off the shroud of night, 
Lets in the sun bright smile of GOBj 
Fired by the powers that first wore wrought 
Within it by its source sublime. 
And nurtured by the bread of thought, 
And moistened by the dews of time, 
Its size and strength increase eaeb day 
As swiftly as " ite house of clay.” 
Its mortal house may waste away 
’Neath the corroding dust of years, 
And slow the light of life decay, 
Oft dampened by a shower of tears; 
But still the mind of heavenly mold 
Will kindle with a vestal flame 
That will not die while life shall hold 
Its vigil o’er Us mortal frame; 
And e’en iii death’s impending gloom, 
Twill pieree the darkness of the tomb. 
Lowville Academy. N. Y., 1S62. 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-YoTkcr.] 
DEAD. 
There are times when we are haunted by mourn¬ 
ful fancies, aud troubled by a restlessness that seems 
to have no Cause, to come through no sorrow, yet 
iieB heavily on the soul, so heavily that we call. 
through silence and distance, fur the life of another 
land, and gaining no answer, turn, mortal-like, to 
see nothing hut dreariness and desolation in the 
earthly life—to mourn over the loneliness of earthly 
ways and daily paths—to make ourselves miserable 
with the thought that life was given us for a higher 
and nobler purpose than we, in our strongest efforts, 
can ever hope to attain. 
Only God and our guardian angels know how 
many hearts have fainted in vain longings and 
aspirations; how many feet have walked unsteadily 
and to little purpose, in the more lowly of life’s daily 
paths; and, perchance, they only know how keen a 
test of heroism is the manner in which the most 
humble and trivial ot life’s duties are performed. 
It is no light thing to sacrifice all that One has 
dreamed of, or hoped to be, to the fulfillment of 
humble or uncongenial duties; yet such a sacrifice 
cannot fail to bring its own reward. The soul that 
can offer it will grow strong in its fulfillment and be 
blessed in its acceptance; for the altars of earthly 
duty are. but the vailed ones of heaven, and there is 
an old poem that says, 
• In small measures life may perfect be." 
We may all know how and where it is right for us 
to go; and no effort is too strong, no ambition too 
far-reaching, in a cause (hat it is right for us to 
espouse—right for us to gift with the devotion of time 
and talent—right for us to make the goal of all labor 
and energy. 
Be sure before you are steadfast; God’s ways 
are the right ways, however humble, and for you 
who walk them; on their thorns of trial and tribu¬ 
lation, on their stony places of ingratitude and 
wrong, on their gulf-brinks of despair and pain, if 
such they keep for you, 
“ Plant ye your feet as on a stair, 
. And mount right up and on.” 
It is one of life’s self-evidences, that, in all things, 
whether of small or great moment, we have no fore¬ 
knowledge as to what the result of our action in 
regard to them may be; for, however wildly and 
earnestly we may plead, the Future gives no answer 
to the questionings of the Present, and we can only 
learn in living. Seeing this, knowing that our lives 
are in Gon’s keeping, can we do otherwise than 
believe that when we do what seems to us right, 
governed in so doing by the convictions of heart and 
mind, and the laws of reason and justice, it is all 
that we can do? The rest is in God’s bands, and 
all that we need is faith; faith, that, let the end be 
what it may, it works out. in some way, fully and 
perfectly, the aim which marked it from the begin¬ 
ning. E. C. L. Kimbel. 
Charlotte Center, N. Y., 1862. 
enlarging their sphere 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
WORKING FOR WAGES. 
every living soul upon this broad earth to her own 
taste and fashion? Take, now, man’s acknowledged 
public superiority, and woman’s imperceptible but 
universal influence, and which, 0 proud, aspiring, 
discontented woman, would you choose, for extent 
or perpetuity? What true woman will not exult in 
her position? Though hampered, and driven, and 
cramped by ten thousand whirling, crushing, oppos¬ 
ing circumstances, would she exchange her post 
with any man? Name the pre-eminent for intellect, 
learning, fame, and heroism, and he is but one, and 
can do but the work of one. But let. a mother— 
electrified with the same aspiration after true great¬ 
ness, and laying her bands upon the heads of fo.ur, 
six, or eight children—impart the godlike influence 
to them, and send them forth into the world, and 
she has, by so many, multiplied her greatness. If 
she may not send forth men, let her train daughters 
who, in their turn, shall transmit the inextinguisha¬ 
ble fire of heaven, and she has doue more to bless 
and purify the world, than any single individual 
can possibly accomplish. Talk not ol an enlarged 
and noble sphere. It is large and noble enough 
already. 11 overwhelms one, who thinks of it at all, 
with its inconceivable, unutterable vast ness. Let 
us quietly, humbly, hopefully, fall back into our 
retired, unobtrusive place, and patiently labor on, 
as the coral iusects toil to build up the beautiful 
reefs of the Pacific. By and by, what we liave 
bnikled will rise before the universe in one impos¬ 
ing view; and while angels and men admire, and 
our Father graciously commends, we will fall and 
cry, “ Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name 
be the glory.”— Mrs. Stowe. 
I’d been trying to learn Grecian painting for 
three days, but just as 1 would attempt some ex¬ 
quisite shade upon feature or landscape, Bridget, 
or the baby, or the door bell, would be sure to inler- 
pose their claims; so my picture looked little better 
than a daub; and hearing Harry’s footstep in the 
hall, I hastily thrust it into a pile of newspapers 
and caught up my knitting. Though it was only 
half-past seven, Harry had looked his office, and 
said he was going to spend the evening wiilt me, or 
KS_forthe baby counts one, now that he has four 
teeth, and can say “ papa”—now that he has a hun¬ 
dred cunning ways and acts which make a vernacu¬ 
lar intelligible as plain English. 
“My head aches, and has for a week,’ said 
Harry; “you magnetize me, or something;*' and 
so, after a fashion of my own, I nearly succeeded 
in coaxing away the pain. Still there was a shadow 
upon his brow. We talked of the present and the 
future—wondered how long before the baby would 
walk—how long before the buds under the south 
window would unfold their white hearts to their 
lover, the sun—and how long before we should 
finish paying for our home. The shadow deepened. 
“ I was at. brother J aMEs’ this morning.” “ Were 
you? what was Susan about?” “ Making a summer 
coat for James.” 
To be honest, I never liked to have him refer to 
Susan, because she was so much more of a mauager 
than I, had more executive ability than a dozen 
ovdinary women, and was a master hand to calcu¬ 
late, whatever the case might be. She could make 
a man’s overcoat or a baby’s shoe, a wedding dress 
or a shroud; and whatever her hands found to do 
she did with all her might. But, withal, her nature 
was stern and exacting, her will commanding and 
arbitrary; so Harry, by way of an opiate to my 
uncomfortableness, would remark that he'd rather 
she was his brother’s wife than bis own. He knows 
that I have more confidence in him than Susan has 
He knows that “ Harry said so,” 
[Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker.] 
THE DISADVANTAGES OF READING, 
you may become as great, uui «u cannot, ue 
equally great—all cannot be alike—aud it is a wise 
Providence which forbids it. Nevertheless, to be 
contented in the position assigned to us is difficult; 
to be dissatisfied is the characteristic of bumau 
nature. The man of labor looks with envy upon 
the man of leisure. But the man of reading cannot 
regard his position as altogether favorable, ne 
knows that all which he may have acquired from 
books is greatly inferior to that knowledge which 
is the result of a ulan's own labors and experiments, 
ne knows that if all work and no play lead to 
dullness, all play and no work lead as surely to 
idleness and vice. 
A great reader seldom makes a great writer. It 
could hardly be expected. For. as 6oon as he 
attempts to express his thoughts upon any subject, 
there instantly arises before him the recollection of 
something better which he has read, and the effect 
is to discourage him from the attempt. To write au 
Multitudes to be insirueted, and few to instruct 
them; a world lyiug in wickedness, sleeping the 
Sleep of spiritual death, and only here and there one 
to sound an alarm; a world in arms against God, 
Ignorant, rebellious, selfish, despising of authority, 
careless ot truth, breaking covenants, full of strifes 
aud envies, aud only a few to act as the Lord’s depu¬ 
ties in leading them back to obedience and concord; 
even the chosen people themselves brought into the 
same condemnation, and yet their prophets, it not 
dumb, given over to a lie; sublime opportunities, 
and few or none to embrace them; the field, which 
was the world, white, in this sense, with the harvest, 
and yet scarcely a hand to thrust in the sickle and 
reap. Such were the facte which prompted this 
language of the Savior. At the time he spoke, he 
stood alone in the vast field. It was after medita¬ 
ting upon the world’s great want, that called around 
him for instruction, aud then sent forth to teach, the 
twelve Apostles. Verily, the work was great and 
the workmen few. Such was the immense disparity 
between the common necessity and the means to 
meet it, at the beginning of t he present order. 
Ages have rolled away; the faith once delivered 
to the saints has been jjeard in many lands, and 
established in the hearts of many races. As the 
church has extended her sway, the ministry has 
been multiplied. The original twelve, in the ordi¬ 
nary functions of the apostolate, have been dupli¬ 
cated over and over, times without number; and so 
with the hosts of inferior teachers commissioned by 
their authority. As the church has never been 
deprived of tbe proper channel for communicating 
been without means for 
A single glance did it. When the mine is charged, 
when the pile is prepared, nothing is more simple. 
A glance is a spark. It was all over. Marius loved 
a woman. His destiny entered into the region of the 
unknown. The glance of woman assembles certain 
machinery, tranquil to all appearance, yet formida¬ 
ble. You pass close to it every day. quietly and 
with impunity, without the slightest suspicion. 
There cornea a moment when you forget even that 
the thing is there. You go aod come, you dream, 
talk, aud laugh. All of a sudden you are caught. 
It is done. The machinery holds you fast, the glance 
lias seized you. It has seized you. no matter where 
or how, by some part of your thought that was hang¬ 
ing about you, by some absence of mind of yours. 
You are lost. You are wholly absorbed by it. A 
concatenation of mysterious forces has taken posses¬ 
sion of you. You struggle in vain; no human 
succor is possible. Y r ou will fall from one wheel to 
another, from anguish to anguish, from torture to 
torture—you. your fortune, your soul; and, accord¬ 
ing as you shall be in the power of a wicked creature 
or a noble heart, you will only issue forth from the 
fearful machine disfigured by passion. — Les Miser¬ 
able, by Victor Hugo. 
in her husband 
is as high authority as I want in temporal things, 
while Susan has her own opinions, whether the 
head ot the house coincides with them or not. I 
have observed that the other gender almost inva¬ 
riably prefer a companion just a degree or two 
below them in will and wisdom—it seems to give 
harmony to the domestic machinery. 
Finally, IIaiiry hinted that we must in some 
way curtail our expenses or increase our income. 
“If I could only earn something,” said 1, looking 
at my sewing-machine and then at Harry; “don’t 
you suppose I could embroider or sew for some of 
the clothing stores?” “ Yes.” was the quick reply, 
“and receive equal degrees of profit and pleasure. 
When will you go out after your first job?” And 
after teasing me in playful badinage about our 
poverty and its remedy, he began to fumble over 
the table for tbe morning paper, which, unfortu¬ 
nately, brought my picture to light. “ Why, you 
could teach painting,” said Harry, holding up my 
poor, spoiled painting, and laughiDg outright till 
he nearly woke the baby. “ That’s a oow-ardly 
looking beast,” be remarked, pointing to a half- 
finished bovine in one corner, and the man’s eyes 
were as full ot delight as a champagne bottle is full 
of bubbles. “ My trials are Wian-ifold," I exclaimed, 
attempting to keep Charlie from waking. An 
idea at this moment came into my mind. Harry 
commenced reading after he had suspended my 
picture upon the wall. I jogged tbe cradle and 
hummed lullabies for an hour, thinking meanwhile, 
ever so busily. Then through my thoughts and 
the dining room door came a voice; “Missus Ames, 
will ye plase step this way if the chiltber is aslape?” 
I went and took the seat Biddy proffered. “Ye 
see it’s so that I shall have to lave you,” said she, 
blushing red as a pulpit cushion; “ me owuPether 
Flinne has coom from over the sae, and to-morrow 
night we go to the praste’s, and thin to his sister’s 
over the ferry, mam, lor the space uv a week or two. 
Och, missus, I was so glad to see him. lvery night 
of late I’ve dbramed of him, and twice this morn in 
I dhropped my dishcloth; and at four o'clock he 
came. Pktuer is such a jewel!” she continued, 
“the bouldest, bravest boy ye iver knew. Ah, the 
land of the shamrock has not anither like him!” 
At this Biddy wiped tbe perspiration from her 
heated countenance. I forestalled further eulogy 
by asking her what I was to do. “Ah, there’s 
plinty of them betther than meself,” to which I 
inwardly assented. 
I went back to the sitting-room, and repeated 
Biddy’s story with all the dramatic power I was 
mistress of. Harry asked the same question I had 
asked Biddy, “ What are you to do?” “Earn three 
dollars a week,” I said, “ on the principle that *a 
penny saved is a penny earned.’ Biddy’s wages 
are twelve shillings a week, her board as much 
more, to say nothing of waste or breakage.” Harry 
smiled increduotisly, saying, “These little hands 
were never made,” &c., pointing to my huge meta¬ 
carpal proportions. “Of course you'll let me have 
all the money thus earned,” I said, affecting not to 
BULL RUN VINDICATED 
Hard as the case may now seem to be, I have no 
doubt that a fair record of xi Bull Jiwi” will show 
courage as dauntless, heroism as invincible, patriot¬ 
ism as lofty, and purpose as pure as ever shone on 
Bunker’s field, or Grecian plain. 
We over-do, or we under-do, like a had oven 
baking bread. Historical heroes have the benefit 
of forgetfulness of some points, amplification and em¬ 
bellishment of others, and a lucky obscurity for the 
remainder. If they did meditate running away in 
their first battle, and staid, merely because the 
enemy started^/b'st, we are none the wiser for their 
intention; they did well, and we will praise them; 
but they were flesh and blood, like ourselves. 
YYrnng men who have walked these streets, modest 
in apparel and demeanor, who at their country’s call 
dwell in tents, subject to rigid discipline and scauty 
fare, ready to encounter fever’s fearful rage, or to 
march on death dealing batteries —these have my 
heart’s approval, like those who died at Bunker Hill, 
or conquered at Yorktown. 
Those who undertook the Atlantic Telegraph, 
found to their sorrow that though the electric cur¬ 
rent could travel far, its force was weakened by 
distance; so we, who would draw inspiration from 
brave deeds, should not be forced to seek them 
through the mists of ages past, but should get tbe 
electric current fresh from American hearts! Fight 
on, my brave boys! living or dying, you fulfill your 
mission—you gain the victory. Henceforth none 
shall believe that patriotism is a forgotten virtue, 
and heroism a myth of history .—Hugh T. Brook's 
Lecture on the Doom of Despotism. 
orders, so she has never 
recruiting the changing, wasting ranks ot her minis¬ 
try. And yet, if to-day we survey tbe field, measure 
the work to be done in both hemispheres, and then 
turn to the laborers aetually engaged, sickle in 
hand, we shall find the language of our Lord, as be 
beheld from Judea the boundless moral waste 
stretching out on all sideB from himself, as appro¬ 
priate now as when first uttered. 
SINGING BY YOUNG WOMEN. 
It was the opinion of Dr. Rush, that singing by 
young ladies, whom the customs of society debar 
from many other kinds of salubrious exercise, ought 
to be cultivated not only as an accomplishment, but 
as the means of preserving health- He particularly 
insists that vocal music should never be neglected 
in the education of a young lady, and states, that 
besides its salutary operation in soothing the cares 
of domestic life, it has a still more direct and import¬ 
ant effect In his remarks on tins subject, the 
doctor introduces a fact which was suggested to him 
by his professional experience, which is, that the 
exercise of the chest by siugiug contributes very 
much to defend them from the diseases to which the 
climate and other causes expose them. The Ger¬ 
mans, he continues, are seldom afflicted with con¬ 
sumption, nor has he ever known more than one 
instance of spitting of blood among them. This, he 
believes, is in part occasioned by the strength which 
their lungs acquire by exercising them frequently 
in vocal music, which constitutes an essential branch 
of their education. 
The Family and Revivals.— Many persons 
are forever running around for revivals, careless 
of home, neglectful of children, and seeking their 
own pleasurable excitement, frequently, in a kind 
of religious carnival. The regularity of the family, 
often, is almost lost in the tumultuous exhilerations 
of religious excitements. Now, any conception ot 
religious culture and life that leaves the family out ' 
or that is at the expense of family, is fundamentally 
wrong, and in the end cannot but be mischievous. 
Genial and general religious excitements have then 
benefits. The world could not get on without them- 
Man is a social being, religiously, as much as in any 
other respect; and revivals of religion are normal. 
But, good as are religious excitements, they have 
evils and dangers, which must be watched against; 
and this is one of them;—When they do not spring 
as tbe proper streams out of the family; or w ^ e11 
they go forward only as church movements, and not 
as family movements. 
WHO IS OLD 
A wise mau will never rust out. As long as he 
can move and breathe, he will do something for him¬ 
self, his neighbor, or posterity. Almost at the last 
hour of his life, Washington was at work. So were 
Franklin atfd Young and Howard and Newton. 
The vigor of their lives never decayed. No rust 
marred their spirits. It is a foolish idea that we 
must lay down and die because we are old. Who is 
old? Notthe man of energy; not the day laborer 
in science, ai t. or benevolence; but he only who suf¬ 
fers his energies to waste away and the springsof life 
to become motionless—on whose hands the hours 
drag heavily — to whom all things wear the garb of 
gloom. Is he old? should not be put: but is he ac¬ 
tive? can he breathe freely and move with agility? 
There are scores of gray-headed rnen we should pre¬ 
fer, in any important enterprise, to those young gen¬ 
tlemen who fear and tremble at approaching shad¬ 
ow’s, and turn pale as at a lion in their path, at a 
harsh word or a frown. 
Beecher on Newspapers.— The Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher, in the course of a sermon delivered 
in Plymouth church last week, thus spoke of news¬ 
papers;— “There is a common, vulgar objection 
about newspapers that ‘ they lie’ so. They don t lie 
any more than you do. Man is naturally a lying 
creature. Truth is a gift from Heaven, and very 
few possess it before they get there. The news¬ 
papers give both facts and rumors, and they would 
be blamed if they did not do so. It is for the reader 
to judge of these rumors. The last economy should 
be in regard to newspapers. It is better to deprive 
the body of some ribbon or jewel or garment, than 
to deprive the mind of its sustenance.” 
Christianity.— Pure Christianity nevei >v a.-, 
never can be, the national religion of any coiin iy 
upon earth. It is a gold too refined to be worked 
up with any human institution, without a large 
portion of alloy; for no sooner is this small gram o 
mustard seed watered with the fertile showeis u 
civil emoluments, than it grows up a large an 
spreading tree, under the shelter of whose - li a ' 1 | L , 
and leaves the birds of prey and plunder will 
fail to make themselves comfortable habitat , 
and thereby deface its beauty and spoil its mats. 
War is all very well in its place and time, but 
usually it is better to deal with the sw’ard than the 
sword, to use saltpetre in the beef-barrel than in the 
gun-barrel, to drive the cart than the cartridge, to 
use the scythe rifle than the Minie rifle. 
