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twg_000000038600 | the country is a great thing, a beautiful thing, a thing to thank God for; a thing to make one happy, buoyant of spirit, full of gratitude to the great Creator; a thing to make one merry, too, not with a loud and boisterous mirth, but with a heart full to overflowing with cheerfulness, and a calm joy. To see | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038601 | the bright sun standing in his glory up in the sky, shedding his placid light over the earth, when the air is clear, the winds hushed, and the leaves are still and moveless on the trees; and then to look along the hillsides, and mark the bright sunlight, and the deep shadows, the green of the fir, the hemlock, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038602 | the spruce, the yellow of the birch, the crimson of the maple, the dark brown of the beech, the grey of the oak, the silver glow of the popple, and the varying shades of all these, mingling and blending in all the harmony of brilliant coloring. Why, these hillsides are decked like a maiden in her beauty, like a bride | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038603 | robed for the altar! Talk about springtime, or summer! Green on the hillside! green in the meadows and pastures! green everywhere--all around is changeless and everlasting green! as if hillside and valley, forest and field, had but a single dress for morning, noon, and night, and that only and always green! True, there is the music of the birds, joyous | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038604 | notes and variant, happy and hilarious, in the spring-time, but there is no cricket under the flat stone in the pasture, his song is not heard in the stone wall, or in the corner of the fences; no music of the katydid; no tapping of the woodpecker on the hollow tree, or the dead limb; no chattering of the squirrel, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038605 | as he gathers his winter store; no pattering of the faded leaves, as they come so quietly down from their places; no falling of the ripened nuts, loosened from their burs or shucks by the recent frosts. All these sounds belong to the calm autumnal days, and while they differ the whole heavens from the merry songs of spring, there | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038606 | is nothing sad about them. No! No! nothing sad. I remember (and who that was reared in the country does not) when I was a boy, how I went out in the sunny days of autumn, after the frosts had painted the hillsides, to gather chestnuts; and when the breeze rustled among the branches, how the nuts came rattling down; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038607 | and how if the winds were still, I climbed into the trees and shook their tops, and how the chestnuts pattered to the ground like a shower of hail. I remember the squirrels how they chattered, and chased each other up and down the trees, or leaped from branch to branch, gathering here and there a nut, and scudding away | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038608 | to their store houses in the hollow trees, providing in this season of plenty for the barrenness of the winter months. I remember, too, how we gathered, in those same old autumnal days, hickory-nuts and butter-nuts by the bushel; and how pleasant it was in the long cold winter evenings, to sit around the great old kitchen fire-place, cracking the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038609 | nuts we had gathered when the green, the yellow, the crimson, the brown, the grey, and the pale leaves were on the trees. Pleasant evenings those seem to me now, as they come floating down on the current of memory from the long past, and dear are the faces of those that made up the tableaux as they were grouped | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038610 | around those winter fires. Logs were blazing on the great hearth, and the pineknots, thrown at intervals on the fire, gave a bold and cheerful light throughout that capacious kitchen. I remember how the winter wind went glancing over the house-top, whirling, and eddying, and moaning around the corners, hissing under the door and sending its cold breath in at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038611 | every crevice; and how the windows rattled when the blast came fiercest, and how the smoke would sometimes whirl down the great chimney, I remember well where my father's chair was always placed; and where my mother sat of those winter evenings, when her household cares were over for the day, plying her needle, or knitting, or darning stockings, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038612 | mending garments, for such employment was no dishonor to the matrons of those days. With these for the leading figures, I remember how seven brothers and sisters were grouped around, and how the old house dog had a place in the corner, and how lovingly the cat nestled between his feet. Cherished memories are these pleasant visions and they come | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038613 | to me often, vivid as realities. But the dream vanishes, the vision fades away, and I think of the six pale, still faces as I saw them last, and of the names that are chiseled upon the cold marble that stands through the sunny spring-time, the heat of summer, the autumnal days, and the storms and tempests of winter, over | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038614 | the graves of the dead." . A SURPRISE--A SERENADE--A VISIT FROM STRANGERS--AN INVITATION TO BREAKFAST--A FASHIONABLE HOUR AND A BOUNTIFUL BILL OF FARE. The evening was calm, and the lake slept in stirless beauty before us. The shadows of the mountains reached far out from the shore, lieing like a dark mantle upon the surface of the waters, above and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038615 | beneath which the stars twinkled and glowed like the bright eyes of seraphs looking down from the arches above, and up from the depths below. The moon in her brightness sailed majestically up into the sky, throwing her silver light across the bosom of the lake; millions of fireflies flashed their tiny torches along the reedy shore; the solemn voices | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038616 | of the night birds came from out the forest; the call of the raccoon and the answer, the hooting of the owl, and the low murmur of the leaves, stirred by the light breeze that moved lazily among the tree-tops, old familiar music to us, were heard. This latter sound is always heard, even in the stillest and calmest nights. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038617 | There may be no ripple upon the water; it may be moveless and smooth as a mirror, no breath of air may sweep across its surface, and yet in the old forest among the tree-tops, there is always that low ceaseless murmur, a soft whispering as if the spirits of the woods were holding, in hushed voices, communion together. We | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038618 | had retired for the night under the cover of our tents. My companion had sunk into slumber, and I was just in that dreamy state, half sleeping and half awake, which constitutes the very paradise of repose, when there came drifting across the lake the faint and far off strains of music, which, to my seeming, exceeded in sweetness anything | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038619 | I had ever heard. They came so soft and melodious, floating so gently over the water, and dying away so quietly in the old woods, that I could scarce persuade myself of their reality. For a while I lay luxuriating as in the delusion of a pleasant dream, as though the melody that was abroad on the air was the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038620 | voices of angels chanting their lullaby into the charmed ear of the sleeper. Presently, Smith raised his head, supporting his cheek upon his hand, his elbow resting upon the ground, and after listening for a moment, opened his eyes in bewilderment exclaiming, as he looked in utter astonishment about him, "What, in the name of all that is mysterious, is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038621 | that?" Spalding and the Doctor followed, and their amazement was equalled only by their admiration when "Oft in the stilly night" came stealing in matchless harmony over the water, "A serenade from the Naiads, by Jupiter!" exclaimed Smith. "A concert, by the Genii of the waters!" cried the Doctor. "Hush!" said Spalding, "we are trespassing upon fairy domain; the spirits | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038622 | of these old woods, these mountains and rock-bound lakes, are abroad, and well may they carol in their joyousness in a night like this." In a little while the music changed, and "Come o'er the moonlight sea" came swelling over the lake. And again it changed and "Come mariner down in the deep with me" went gently and swiftly abroad | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038623 | on the air. The music ceased for a moment, and then two manly voices, of great depth and power, came floating to our ears to the words: "'Farewell! Farewell! To thee, Araby's daughter,' Thus warbled a Perl, beneath the deep sea, 'No pearl ever lay under Onan's dark water, More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee.'" "That's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038624 | flesh and blood, at least," exclaimed the Doctor, "and I propose to ascertain who are treating as to this charming serenade in the stillness of midnight." We went down to the margin of the lake, and a few rods from the shore lay a little craft like our own, in which were seated two gentlemen, the one with a flute | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038625 | and the other with a violin. They had seen our campfire from their shanty on the other side of the lake, and had crossed over to surprise us with the melody of human music. And pleasantly indeed it sounded in the stillness and repose of that summer night in that wild region. The echoes that dwell among those old forests, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038626 | those hills and beautiful lakes, had never been startled from their slumbers by such sounds before, and right merrily they carried them from hill to hill, and through the old woods, and over the calm surface of that sleeping lake, and with a joyousness, too, that told how welcome they were among those wild and primeval things. After listening to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038627 | their music for half an hour, we invited our new friends ashore. We found them to be two young gentlemen from Philadelphia, who had just graduated at one of the Eastern colleges, and who had concluded to spend a month among these mountains and lakes, before entering upon the study of the profession to which they were to devote themselves. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038628 | They had been close friends from their childhood, and room-mates during their collegiate course. They had cultivated their taste for music, until few mere amateurs could equal their skill upon their respective instruments, or in harmony of voice. They were highly intelligent and courteous gentlemen, and if their future shall equal the promise of the present, they will make their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038629 | mark in the world. We accepted, at parting, their invitation to breakfast with them on the morrow, and at one o'clock they left us to return to their shanty over the lake. We sent one of our boatmen to row them home; and as they started across the water, they treated us to a concert to which it was pleasant | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038630 | to listen. There is something surpassingly sweet in the music of the flute and violin in the hands of skillful performers; and yet, to my thinking, it falls far short of the melody of the human voice. I have listened to some of the most celebrated singers, and of the most distinguished performers, but it appears to me now, that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038631 | I never, on any other occasion, heard the melody of the human voice, or instrumental music half so enchanting, as that which came floating over the lake on that calm summer night. There was a volume and compass about it which can never be reached in a concert room. It was not loud, but it seemed to fill all the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038632 | air with its sweetness. It came over the senses like a pleasant dream, as it went swelling up to the hills that skirted the lake, floating away over the water, and dying away in lengthened cadence in the old forests. Every other sound was hushed; the voices of the night-birds were stilled; even the frogs along the shore suspended their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038633 | bellowing, and all nature seemed listening to the new harmony that thus fell like enchantment upon the repose of midnight. The music grew fainter and fainter as it receded, until only an occasional strain, wavy and dream-like, came creeping like the voice of a spirit over the water, and then it was lost in the distance. The frogs resumed their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038634 | roaring, the night-birds lifted up their voices; the raccoon called to his fellow, and was answered away off in the forest; the pile-driver hammered away at his stake, the old owl hooted solemnly from his perch, and we retired to our tents to talk over the romance of our serenade, and to dream of Ole Bull and the Swedish Nightingale. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038635 | The morning broke bright and balmy. A pleasant breeze swept lazily over the lake, lifting the thin mist that hung like a veil of gauze above the water. We left our tents standing, and crossed over to the shanty of our friends of the previous evening to breakfast. We found them living like princes. Their two boatmen had built them | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038636 | a log shanty; open in front, and covered with bark so as to be impervious to the rain, while within was a luxurious bed of boughs. Around the campfire were benches of hewn slabs, and a table of the same material. A few rods from the door a beautiful spring came bubbling up into a little basin of pure white | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038637 | sand, the water of which was limpid and cold almost as ice-water. They had been here for a week, hunting and fishing. They had employed their leisure in jerking the venison they had taken, of which they had some four or five bushels, and which they intended to take home with them, to serve, together with the skins of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038638 | deer they had slain, as trophies of their success. They received us cordially, and we sat down to a breakfast, which, for variety, at least, rivalled the elaborate preparations of the Astor or the St. Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison stew, fresh trout, broiled | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038639 | partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee, and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth compels | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038640 | me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, a drop or two of Old Cognac may have been added by way of relish, or to temper the effect of a hearty meal upon the delicate stomachs of some of the guests. We were exceedingly fashionable in our time for breakfasting this morning, and it was eleven o'clock before | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038641 | we rose from table. The sun was travelling through a cloudless sky, and his brightness lay like a mantle of glory upon the water, while his heat gave to the deep shadows of the old trees, whose long arms with their clustering foliage were interlocked above us, a peculiar charm. The description which we gave of the beautiful lake we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038642 | had left the day before, the story of the moose and the bear we had killed, together with our quit-claim of the shanty we had, inhabited, brought our friends to the conclusion to drift that way for a week or so. It was amusing to hear Smith relate the manner of capturing the bear, the glory of which achievement he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038643 | had won by the tossing up of a dollar; how he had started out alone in one of the boats with his rifle to look into a little bay half a mile below the shanty, where be left the rest of us sleeping after dinner; and how, as he was floating along under the shadow of the hills, at the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038644 | base of a wall of rocks some forty feet high, rising straight up from the water, he heard something walking just over the precipice; and how he picked up his rifle that lay in the bottom of the boat, to be ready for any emergency; and then how astonished he was to see a great black bear walk out into | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038645 | view along the edge of the rocks above, and how carefully he sighted him; and how, at the crack of his rifle, the animal came tumbling down the cliff, and how quick he reloaded and gave trim a settler in the shape of a second bullet; and how he tugged, and strained, and lifted to get him into the boat, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038646 | and how astonished we all were when he returned with his prize to camp. While relating this wonderful achievement, he winked at the Doctor, as much as to say, "fair play; remember our compact; stand by me now." And the Doctor did stand by him, boldly endorsing, with a gravity that was refreshing, every invention of Smith's prolific imagination, on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038647 | the subject of his slaughtering the bear. We left our new friends in the afternoon; they to start in the morning for our old camping-ground on the lake above, and we down the stream on our retreat from the wilderness. We came back to our tents, after securing a string of trout from the mouth of the little stream across | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038648 | the bay. Our evening meal was over, and we sat around our campfire just as the sun was hiding himself behind the western highlands, when, from a little hollow in the forest behind us, and but a short way off, we heard the call of a raccoon. Martin started over the ridge with the dogs, and in five minutes he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038649 | hallooed to us to come with our rifles for he had the animal "treed," and ready to be brought down at "a moment's warning." We went over to where he was, and sure enough, away up in the top of a tall birch, sat his coonship, looking quietly down upon the dogs that were baying at the foot of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038650 | tree. "Gentlemen," said Spalding, "we will not all fire at this animal as we did at Smith's bear. One bullet is enough for him, and if he gets down among us, I think six men will be a match for one 'coon,' so we need not be inhuman through a sense of danger. Whose shot shall he be?" "I move | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038651 | that Spalding have the first shot," said Smith; and the motion was carried. "Do I understand you, gentlemen," Spalding inquired, adjusting himself, as if preparing to bring down the game, "that I am to have this first shot, and that no one is to fire until I have taken a fair shot at him?" We all answered, "Yes." "Are you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038652 | perfectly agreed in this, and do you all pledge yourselves to abide the compact?" Spalding inquired again, bringing his rifle to a present, and looking up at the game. "All agreed," we answered, with one voice. "Very well, gentlemen," said Spalding, shouldering his rifle, "there's one life saved anyhow. That animal up there has been in great peril, but he's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038653 | safe now. I don't intend to fire at him sooner than ten o'clock to-morrow, and if I understand our arrangements, we leave here in the morning at six." "Sold, by Moses!" exclaimed Martin, as he broke out into a roar that you might have heard a mile; "I thought the Judge meant something, by the time he wasted in talkin' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038654 | and gettin' ready to shoot." "Spalding," inquired Smith, "do you expect us to keep this compact?" "Of course I do," he replied; "did any of us peach when you opened so rich in the matter of your bear? Did any one break his compact with you on that subject? Absolve us from our agreement about the bear, and you may | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038655 | take my shot at that animal up in the tree." "I wasn't born yesterday," Smith replied, "and I can't afford to exchange the glory of killing the bear in my own way, and baring three responsible endorsers, for the honor of shooting a coon. Gentlemen," he continued, "I move that that coon be permitted to take his own time to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038656 | descend from his perch up in the tree-top there;" and the motion was carried unanimously. . WOULD I WERE A BOY AGAIN. "We have played the boy again, yesterday and to-day, pretty well," remarked Smith, as we sat in front of oar tents in the evening, smoking our pipes. "And I am half inclined to think we have started for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038657 | home too soon, after all. Spalding's moralizing for the last two or three days deceived me. I thought, as he was becoming so serious, he must be getting tired of the woods; but his proposition yesterday to escort that deer to the shore, and frighten him almost to death, his jolly humor with our young friends over the way, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038658 | the trick he played on as in regard to the raccoon this evening, satisfies me that he's got a good deal of the boy in him yet. We shall have to retreat from the woods slower than I thought, to exhaust it." "If the cares of business or the duties of life did not call us back to civilization" said | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038659 | the Doctor, "I could almost spend the summer among these lakes, only for the luxury of feeling like a boy again. When I listen to the glad voices of the wild things around as, I can almost wish myself one of them." "That coon, for instance," interrupted Smith, "that came so near getting shot by his chattering." "I call the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038660 | gentleman to order," said I; "the Doctor has the floor." "I sometimes think that it is no great thing after all to be human;" the Doctor continued, bowing his acknowledgments for my protecting his right to the floor. "Mind is a great thing, but there is more of sorrow, anxiety, and care clustering about it, than these wild things we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038661 | hear and see around us suffer through their instincts. Reason, knowledge, wisdom, are great things. To stand at the head of created matter, to be the noblest of all the works of God, the only created thing wearing the image, and stamped with the patent of Diety, are proud things to boast of. But great and glorious and proud as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038662 | they are, they have their balances of evil. They bring with them no contentment, no repose, while they heap upon us boundless necessities and limitless wants. We are hurried through life too rapidly for the enjoyment of the present, and the good we see in prospect is never attained. When we were boys we longed to be men, with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038663 | strength and intellect of men; and now that we are men, with matured powers of body and mind, true to our organic restlessness and discontent, we look back with longing for the feelings and emotions of our boyhood. What a glorious thing it would be if we could always be young--not boys exactly, but at that stage of life when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038664 | the physical powers are most active, and the heart most buoyant. That, to my thinking, would be a better arrangement than to grow old, even if we live on until we stumble at last from mere infirmity into the grave, looking forward in discontent one half of our lives, and backward in equal discontent the other." "You remind me," said | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038665 | Spalding, "of a little incident, simple in itself, but which, at the time, made a deep impression upon my mind, and which occurred but a few weeks ago. Returning from my usual walk, one morning, my way lay through the Capitol Park. The trees, covered with their young and fresh foliage, intertwined their arms lovingly above the gravelled walks, forming | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038666 | a beautiful arch above, through which the sun could scarcely look even in the splendor of his noon. The birds sang merrily among the branches, and the odor of the leaves and grass as the dews exhaled, gave a freshness almost of the forest to the morning air. On the walk before me were two beautiful children, a boy of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038667 | six and a little girl of four. They were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038668 | full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes. They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards them, as I saw them waltzing and dancing and skipping about under the green foliage of the trees. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038669 | "'Willy,' said the little girl, as they sat down on the low railing of the grass plats, to breathe for a moment, and listen to the chirrup and songs of the birds in the boughs above them, 'Willy, wouldn't you like to be a little bird?' "'A little bird, Lizzie,' replied her brother. 'Why should I like to be a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038670 | little bird?' "'Oh, to fly around among the branches and the leaves upon the trees,' said Lizzie, 'and among the blossoms when the morning is warm, and the sun comes out bright and clear in the sky. Oh! they are so happy,' "'But the mornings aint always warm, and the sun don't always come up bright and clear in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038671 | sky, Lizzy,' said her brother, 'and the leaves and blossoms aint always on the trees. The cold storms and the winter come and kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves, and what would you do then? I shouldn't like to be a bird, but I _should_ like to be a big strong man like father.' "'Please tell me what tune | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038672 | it is?' said the little boy, addressing me. "I told him, and he turned to his little sister, saving, 'Come, Lizzie, we must go; mother said we must be home by half-after seven, and it's most that now;' and he put his arm lovingly around her neck, and she put hers around his waist, and they walked away towards home, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038673 | talking about the leaves and the blossoms on the trees, the merry little birds, the bright sunshine, and the pleasant time they had had in the park that morning. "It was a pleasant thing to see those two little children, so confiding, so earnest and true in their young affections, clinging to each other so closely, as if no shadow | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038674 | could ever come between them, or tarn their hearts from each other. How natural was that simple question put by that little girl to her brother, 'Wouldn't you like to be a little bird?' It was the thought of a pure young mind, that sees only the bright sunshine of to-day, whose life is in the present, and to which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038675 | there is no forebodings of darkness in the future. There was philosophy, too, in the answer of her brother, a simple but suggestive sermon, 'But the sun' said he, 'don't always come up bright and clear; the mornings aint always warm; the leaves and blossoms aint always on the trees. The cold storms, and the winter come and kill the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038676 | blossoms and scatter the leaves, and what would you do then?' To finite minds like ours, it would seem to have been a more beautiful arrangement of nature, could it have been, that we could always have the spring time in its glory with us; if the leaves and the blossoms were always young and fresh and fragrant; if the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038677 | cold storms of winter could never come to 'kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves;' if the sun would always come up bright and clear; if the birds were always merry, and their glad voices always on the air. This world would be a paradise then, and one older and wiser in the learning of the schools, but not wiser | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038678 | or better in the heart's affections, than that little girl, might well wish to be a little bird, to fly around among the branches, the green leaves, and the blossoms on the trees. And yet what presumption in finite man to sit in judgment upon, or criticise the wisdom of the Omnipotent God! How know we but that a single | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038679 | change, the slightest alteration of a simple law, would go jarring through all the universe, throwing everything into confusion, and bringing utter chaos, where now all is order. The mother sees her little child die, she lays it in its coffin, and surrenders it to the grave, and her heart rebels against the Providence that snatched away her treasure. In | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038680 | her agony, she appeals reproachfully to Heaven, and asks, 'Why am I thus bereaved?' Foolish mother! impeach not the wisdom of your bereavement. Mysterious as it may be, know this, that in the councils of eternity your sorrows were considered, and the decree which took from you your darling, was ordered in mercy. Pestilence sweeps over the land; a wail | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038681 | is on the air. Peace, mourners, be still! The pestilence has a mission of mercy, mysterious as it may be to us. The storm lashes the ocean into fury; tall ships, freighted with human souls, go down into its relentless depths; a shriek of agony comes gurgling up from the devouring waters; a cry of woe is heard from a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038682 | thousand homes over the wrecked and the lost. Peace, again, mourners! The storm has a mission of mercy. It may never be comprehended by us here, but when the veil shall be lifted, as in God's good time it doubtless will be, we shall see how the pestilence and the storm, that cost so many tears, were essential to the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038683 | harmony of a glorious system, a perfect plan, and that seeming sorrow was at last the occasion of unspeakable joy. Let no man say that this or that law, or operation of nature, were better changed, until he can fathom the designs of God; till he can create a planet, and send it on its everlasting round; till he can | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038684 | place a star in the firmament; till he can breathe upon a statue, the workmanship of his own hands, and be obeyed when he commands it to walk forth a thing of life; till he can dip his hand into chaos and throw off worlds. The 'cold storms of winter' are essential to the enjoyment of the brightness and glory, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038685 | the genial sunshine, the pleasant foliage, the blossoms and the odors of spring. They have their uses, and chill and dreary and desolate as they may be, they are parts of an arrangement ordered by infinite goodness and omnipotent wisdom. "'I should like to be a big strong man like father is!' How like a boy was this? Thirsting for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038686 | the strength, the might and power of manhood! And this is the aspiration of the young heart always; to be mature, strong to grapple with the cares, and wrestle with the stern actualities of life. How little of these does childhood know! How little does it calculate the chances, that when, in the long future, it shall have attained the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038687 | full strength and maturity of life, when manhood shall be in the glory and strength of its prime, and it looks forward into the dark cloud beyond, and backward into the bright sunshine of the past, the aspiration, the hope will change into regret, and the yearning of the heart, speaking from its silent depths, will be, 'would I were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038688 | a boy again!'" . HEADED DOWN STREAM--RETURN TO TUPPER'S LAKE--THE CAMP ON THE ISLAND. We started down stream again at six o'clock in the morning, intending, if possible, to reach Tupper's Lake before encamping for the night. It would make for us a busy day to accomplish so much; but going down stream and down hill are very different things | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038689 | from going up, as any gentleman may satisfy himself by rowing against a current of two miles the hour, or toiling up an ascent of three or four hundred feet to the mile, and then retracing his steps. We accomplished more than half the distance, and that over the worst of the journey, by twelve o'clock, and we halted for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038690 | dinner and a _siesta_. If there is one thing in life which can lay any claim to being considered a positive luxury, it is a nap on a mossy bank, in the deep shadows of the forest trees, after a hearty meal, of a warm summer day. There should be, in order to its full appreciation, a mixture of weariness | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038691 | with a due proportion of laziness. Too much of either detracts from the enjoyment of its beatitudes. To _feel_ the sensation of resting, that weariness is leaving you, and that the process of recuperation is an active, living agency, going on all through the system, while the natural love of repose is being gratified as an independent emotion, constitute the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038692 | very perfection of mere animal enjoyment. The musquitoes at midday have gone to their rest, or if a straggler comes buzzing and singing about your ears, you are lulled rather than disturbed by his song. If he takes his drop of blood from your veins, the tickling of his tiny lance is but a pleasant titilation, and you let him | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038693 | feed on, almost grateful for his kindness in keeping you from sleeping too soundly, or losing in utter oblivion the full extent of the luxury of perfect repose. After an hour's rest, we launched our little fleet upon the river again, and while the sun was yet above the western highlands, we stood upon the broad flat rock at the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038694 | mouth of Bog River, looking out over Tupper's Lake, one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the sun or the stars ever looked upon. Our sea-biscuit was getting low, and our egress from the wilderness was therefore becoming, in some sort, a necessity. There was no lack of venison, or fish, but these are rather luxuries than actual | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038695 | necessaries, and they were becoming somewhat stale to as. The staff of life is bread, and of this we had but two days' supply. It is entirely true that our jerked venison, now dry and hard as chips, could, if necessary, be made to furnish, to some extent, a substitute; still, while "it is written that man shall not live | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038696 | by bread alone," it is equally the law that he cannot very well get along without it. We launched our boats upon the lake and rowed to the head of Long Island, where we put up our tents for the night. I have spoken so often of the loveliness of the evenings on these beautiful lakes, that to attempt a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038697 | description of the one we enjoyed on this romantic island, would be only a tiresome repetition. But there was a splendor about the heavens above, and their counterpart in the depths below, which I have scarcely ever seen equalled. There was no moon in the early evening, and so pure and clear was the atmosphere, so moveless and still the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038698 | waters, that the stars seemed to come out in vaster numbers, and with an intenser glow, and to be reflected back from away down in the lake with a brighter refulgence; the hills along the shore seemed to stand up in bolder outline; the bays to lay in deeper shadow; while the tall peaks stood in grim solemnity, like pillars | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038699 | supporting the mighty arches of the sky. "I was asking myself," said Smith, as we sat looking out over the water, in the evening, or gazing down into the glowing depths, and listening to the night voices, faint and far off in the old forests, as they came floating over the lake, "I was asking myself, as we journeyed around | 60 | gutenberg |
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