Now bear my broken body out -Appleton's Journal. TRAFFIC IN ARDENT SPIRITS.-LYMAN BEECHER. The amount of suffering and mortality inseparable from the commerce in ardent spirits renders it an unlawful article of trade. The wickedness is proverbial of those who in ancient days caused their children to pass through the fire unto Moloch. But how many thousands of children are there in our land who endure daily privations and sufferings which render life a burden, and would have made the momentary pang of infant sacrifice a blessing! Theirs is a lingering, living death. There never was a Moloch to whom were immolated yearly as many children as are immolated, or kept in a state of constant suffering, in this land of nominal Christianity. We have no drums and gongs to drown their cries, neither do we make convocations, and bring them all out for one mighty burning. The fires which consume them are slow fires, and they blaze balefully in every part of our land, throughout which the cries of injured children and orphans go up to Heaven. Could all these woes, the product of intemperance, be brought out into one place, and the monster who inflicts the sufferings be seen personified, the nation would be furious with indignation. Humanity, conscience, religion, all would conspire to stop a work of such malignity. We are appalled and shocked at the accounts from the East, of widows burned upon the funeral-piles of their departed husbands. But what if those devotees of superstition, the Bramins, had discovered a mode of prolonging the lives of their victims for years amid the flames, and by these protracted burnings were accustomed to torture life away? We might almost rouse up a crusade to cross the deep, to stop by force such inhumanity. But alas! we should leave behind us, on our own shores, more wives in the fire than we should find of widows thus sacrificed in all the East; a fire, too, which, besides its action upon the body, tortures the soul by lost affections, and ruined hopes, and prospective wretchedness. Every year thousands of families are robbed of fathers, brothers, husbands, friends. Every year widows and orphans are multiplied, and gray hairs are brought with sorrow to the grave. No disease makes such inroads upon families, blasts so many hopes, destroys so many lives, and causes so many mourners to go about the streets, because man goeth to his long home. Can we lawfully amass property by a course of trade which fills the land with beggars, and widows, and orphans, and crimes, which peoples the graveyard with premature mortality, and the world of woe with the victims of despair? Could all the forms of evil produced in the land by intemperance, come upon us in one horrid array, it would appall the nation, and put an end to the traffic in ardent spirits. If, in every dwelling built by blood, the stone from the wall should utter all the cries which the bloody traffic extorts, and the beam out of the timber should echo them back,-who would build such a house?--and who would dwell in it? What if in every part of the dwelling, from the cellar upward, through all the halls and chambers, bab-blings, and contentions, and voices, and groans, and shrieks, and wailings, were heard, day and night? What if the cold blood oozed out, and stood in drops upon the walls; and by preternatural art all the ghastly skulls and bones of the victims destroyed by intemperance should stand upon the walls, in horrid sculpture within and without the building,-who would rear such a building? What if at eventide, and at midnight, the airy forms of men destroyed by intemperance were dimly seen haunting the distilleries and stores where they received their bane,-following the track of the ship engaged in commerce,-walking upon the waves,―flitting athwart the deck,-sitting upon the rigging,--and sending up from the hold within, and from the waves without, groans, and loud laments, and wailings? Who would attend such stores? Who would labor in such distilleries? Who would navigate such ships? Oh! were the sky over our heads one great whisperinggallery, bringing down about us all the lamentation and woe which intemperance creates, and the firm earth one sonorous medium of sound, bringing up around us from beneath, the wailings of the lost, whom the commerce in ardent spirits had sent thither, these tremendous realities, assailing our sense, would invigorate our conscience, and give decision to our purpose of reformation. But these evils are as real as if the stone did cry out of the wall, and the beam answered it, as real as if, day and night, wailings were heard in every part of the dwelling, and blood and skeletons were seen upon every wall,-as real as if the ghostly forms of departed victims flitted about the ship as she passed o'er the billows, and showed themselves nightly about stores and distilleries, and with unearthly voices screamed in our ears their loud lament. They are as real as if the sky over our heads collected and brought down about us all the notes of sorrow in the land, and the firm earth should open a passage for the wailing of despair to come up from beneath. A STORY OF CHINESE LOVE. The festive Ah Goo And Too Hay, the fair They met, and the two They "spooned" in the way And Ah Goo kissed Too Hay, And Too Hay kissed Ah Goo. Said the festive Ah Goo, As his heart swelled with pride, "Me heap likee you— You heap be my blide?" And she looking down, All so modest and pretty, "Twixt a smile and a frown, Gently murmured, " You bette." HALF-WAY DOIN'S.-IRWIN RUSSELL. Belubbed fellow-trabelers, in holdin' forth to-day, De grass keeps on a-growin' for to smudder up de crap. My frien's, dere was a garden once, where Adam libbed wid Eve, Wid no one roun' to bodder dem, no nabors for to thieve; An' ebery day was Christmas, an' dey had dere rations free, An' eberyting belonged to dem except an apple-tree. You all know 'bout de story,-how de snake come snookin' 'round, A stump-tail, rusty moccasin, a-crawlin' on de ground, But had gone about dere gardenin', an' 'tended to dere work, No half-way doin's, bredren, 'twill nebber do, I say! Whateber you's a-dribin' at, be sure an' dribe it t'ro', I thanks you for de 'tention you hab gib dis afternoon; Sister Williams will oblige us by a-raisin' ob a tune. I see dat Brudder Johnson's gwine to pass around de hat; Don't let's hab no half-way doin's when it comes to dat. COURTSHIP. Fairest of earth! if thou wilt hear my vow; Promise affection which no time shall sever; Thou shalt have pearls to deck thy raven hair,— For aught save each other. We will fling And thou shalt be my queen, and I thy king! Still coy, and still reluctant? Sweetheart, say, MATRIMONY. A SEQUEL TO "COURTSHIP." Now, Mrs. Pringle, once for all, I say Enough to drive a man to drink, I vow! In wedding you, I thought I had a treasure; Ha! what's that uproar? This, ma'am, is my leisure; I seek retirement, and I find—a riot; Confound those children, but I'll make them quiet! |