![]() Has not the world waited for such a generation. He is not drawn, he never was drawn, in a willow wagon. Ah! this little Irish boy, I know not why, revives to my mind the worthies of antiquity. ![]() I saw a little Irish boy, come from the distant shanty in the woods over the bleak railroad to school this morning, take his last step from the last snow-drift on to the schoolhouse door-step, floundering still, saw not his face nor his profile, only his mien I imagined, saw clearly in imagination, his old worthy face behind the sober visor of his cap. I have seen in the form, in the expression of face, of a child three years old the tried magnanimity and grave nobility of ancient and departed worthies. It is not words that I wish to hear or to utter, but relations that I wish to stand in, and it oftener happens, methinks, I go away unmet, unrecognized, ungreeted in my offered relation, than that you are disappointed of words. If I am thus seemingly cold compared with my companion's warm, who knows but mine is a less transient glow, a steadier and more equable heat, like that of the earth in spring, in which the flowers spring and expand. Will you do us the favor to read it before the Bungtown Institute?ĭec. Curators of Lyceums write to me,ĭear Sir,-I hear that you have a lecture of some humor. What a groveling appetite for profitless jest and amusement our countrymen have! Next to a good dinner, at least, they love a good joke, to have their sides tickled, to laugh sociably, as in the East they bathe and are shampooed. The last rays of the sun falling on Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.-I see the feathers of a partridge strewn along on the snow for a long distance, the work of some hawk, perhaps, for there is no track. Take Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark, evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year. How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset,-which at midday appears to rest on its axis.ĭec. That I am cold means that I am of another nature. . . Fire itself is cold to whatever is not of a nature to be warmed by it. . . You who complain that I am cold, find Nature cold. Crystal does not complain of crystal any more than the dove of its mate. Hence when I am absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you. It is not that I am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness are not of the same nature. It is not the warmth of fire that you would have everything is warm or cold according to its nature. Cold! I am most sensible of warmth in winter days. Is the stone too cold which absorbs the heat of the summer sun, and does not part with it during the night? Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold to melt it was in melting that they were formed. It takes the summer's sun to warm it.-My acquaintances sometimes imply that I am too cold, but each thing is warm enough for its kind. ![]() The fates only are unkind that keep us asunder but my friend is ever kind. If the truth were known, which I do not know, I have no concern with those friends whom I misunderstand or who misunderstand me. I feel sometimes as if I could say to my friends, "My friends, I am aware how I have outraged you, how I have seemingly preferred hate to love, seemingly treated others kindly and you unkindly, sedulously concealed my love, and sooner or later expressed all and more than all my hate." I can imagine how I might utter something like this, in some moment never to be realized, but, at the same time, let me say frankly that I feel I might say it with too little regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Others can confess and explain, I cannot. There is no precept in the New Testament that will assist me. . . My difficulties with my friends are such as no frankness will settle.
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