Alas! too real were his sins and errors; Too truly had he made the earth his goal; Here, youthful reader, ponder! and if thou, And shakest off sin's iron bondage now, This ghastly dream may prove thy guide to bliss; Its wrinkles will not be a dream, like this. - FROM"FIRST FLOWER PIECE." ONCE on a summer evening I was lying in the sunshine on a mountain, and fell asleep. Then I dreamed that I awoke in a church-yard. The down-rolling wheels of the steeple-clock, which was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for the sun in the empty night-heaven, for I thought an eclipse was veiling it with the moon. All the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house were moved to and fro by invisible hands. Shadows which no one cast flitted on the walls; and other shadows walked erect in the thin air. In the open. coffins none were sleeping now but children. In the sky hung in large folds merely a gray sultry mist, which a giant shadow like a net was drawing down nearer, tighter, and hotter. Above me I heard the distant fall of avalanches; under me the first step of an illimitable earthquake. The church wavered up and down with two unceasing discords, which contended with each other and vainly endeavored to mingle in unison. At times a gray gleam skipped up along its windows, and under the gleam the lead and iron ran down molten. The net of the mist and the reeling earth thrust me into that fearful temple, at the door of which, in two poisonous thickets, two glittering basilisks were brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing round the empty altar; and in all of them the breast, instead of the heart, quivered and beat. One dead man only, who had just been buried in the church, still lay on his pillow without a quivering breast, and on his smiling countenance stood a happy dream. But as a living one entered, he awoke, and smiled no more; he lifted with difficulty his heavy eyelids, but within was no eye, and in his beating breast there was, instead of a heart, a wound. He lifted up his hands and folded them to pray; but the arms lengthened out and dissolved, and the hands, still folded, fell away. Above, on the vault of the church, stood the dial-plate of eternity, on which no number appeared, and which was its own index hand; but a black finger pointed thereon, and the dead sought to see the time by it. . . . An immense and immeasurably extended hammer was about to strike the hour of time and shatter the universe, when I awoke. My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God and the joy, and the weeping, and the faith in him, were my prayer. And as I arose, the sun was glowing deep behind the full purpled ears of corn, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight red on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an aurora; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air people was stretching out its short wings, and living, as I did, before the Infinite Father; and from all nature around me flowed peaceful tones as from distant evening bells. MAXIMS FROM RICHTER'S WORKS. HE who remains modest, not when he is praised but when he is blamed, is truly modest. OF all human qualities, modesty is most easily stifled by fumes of incense, or of sulphur; and praise is often more hurtful than censure. THE truest love is the most timid; the falsest is the boldest. IF If you wish to become acquainted with your betrothed, travel with him for a few days, especially if he is accompanied by his own folks, and take your mother along. IT is the misfortune of the bachelor that he has no one to tell him frankly his faults; but the husband has this happiness. DYING for the truth is death not merely for one's country, but also for the world. TRUTH, like the Medicean Venus, may be transmitted to posterity in thirty fragments, but posterity will put them together into a goddess. GENIUS is the alarm-clock of sleeping centuries. THERE are truths of which we hope that great men will be more firmly convinced than we can be, and that therefore our conviction will be supplemented by theirs. WE wish for immortality not as the reward, but as the perpetuity, of virtue. VIRTUE can be no more rewarded than joy; its sole reward is its continuance. VICE Wins the battle-field, but virtue the Elysian fields. ART may not be the bread, but it is the wine of life. To disparage it on the plea of utility is to imitate Domitian, who ordered the grape-vines to be rooted out in order to promote agriculture. A CONVERSATION about a work of art can embrace almost everything. KNOWLEDGE and Action. It is a fine thing in the springtide of youth to poetize and theorize, and then in the years of manhood to rule from a higher throne and to crown thoughts with deeds. It is like the sun, which in the morning merely paints the clouds and lights up the earth, but at midday fructifies it with heat, and yet continues to shine and to paint rainbows on storm-clouds. IF a ruler has received the two heavenly gifts of knowledge. and purity of heart, the earthly gift of statecraft will come of itself. Thus two celestial telescopes combine to form one terrestrial telescope. NECESSITY is the mother of the arts; but also the grandmother of vices. SATIRE invents ridiculous combinations of purely imaginary follies, not in order that they may be laughed at and laid aside, for they never existed, but in order to render the sense of the ludicrous more acute, so that like combinations in real life may be better observed. A MAN may curse a misfortune, but never weep over it. HE who no longer aspires to be more than a man will be less than a man. THE thought of immortality is a luminous sea, in which he who bathes is all surrounded by stars. WHERE man is, infinity begins. A BEING in whom the thought of immortality can arise cannot be mortal. O MUSIC! thou that bringest the past and the future with their fluttering flames so near to our wounds, art thou the evening zephyr of this life, or the morning breeze of the life to come! Yes, thy notes are echoes which angels catch from the joyous tones of another world, in order to drop into our mute heart and our desolate night the exhaled vernal harmonies of the heavens that fly far from us. MAN, an Egyptian deity, a patchwork of beasts' heads and human bodies, stretches out his hands in opposite directions towards the present and the future life. He is moved by spiritual and material forces, as the moon is attracted at once by the sun and the earth; but the earth holds it fast in its fetters, while the sun only produces slight deviations in its course. THE progress of mankind towards the holy city of God is like that of some penitents, who on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem always take three steps forward and one backward. He who differs from the world in important matters should be the more careful to conform to it in insignificant ones. PHILOSOPHY and the nymph Echo never let you have the last word. CHILDHOOD, and its terrors rather than its raptures, take wings and radiance in dreams, and sport like fireflies in the little night of the soul. Do not crush these flickering sparks! It is a fine thing that authors, even those who deny the immortality of their souls, seldom dare to contest that of their names; and as Cicero affirmed that he would believe in another life even if there were none, so they wish to cling to the belief in the future eternal life of their names, although the critics may have furnished positive proofs to the contrary. LET us not despise the slender thread upon which we and our fortune may depend. If, like the spider, we have spun and drawn it out of ourselves, it will hold us quite well; and we may hang on it safely as the tempest tosses us and the web uninjured to and fro. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB, a popular American dialect writer, often referred to as the "Burns of America," was born at Greenfield, Ind., in 1854. He made his first appearance as a writer of verses in the "Indianapolis Journal," in 1882. He has published "The Old Swimmin' Hole, and 'Leven More Poems, by Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone " (1883); "The Boss Girl and Other Sketches, Stories and Poems" (1886); "Afterwhiles," and "Character Sketches and Poems" (1887); "Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury," and "Old-Fashioned Roses" (1889); "Rhymes of Childhood Days" (1890); "Neighborly Poems" (1891); "Flying Islands of the Night" (1891); "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" (1891); "Green Fields and Running Brooks" (1893); "Poems Here at Home" (1893); "Armazindy" (1894), a volume of Hoosier harvest-airs and child-rhymes; "Rubáiyát of Doc Sifers" (1897); "A Child World" (1897). THE ELF-CHILD. LITTLE Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, An' wash the cups an' saucers up, and brush the crumbs away, We set around the kitchen fire, an' has the mostest fun Ef you Watch Out! Onc't they was a little boy would n't say his pray'rs - His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl, Selections used by permission of the author and the Bowen-Merrill Co. |