PENDULUM 'TWIXT SMILES AND TEARS.
In many particulars this year of our Lord, 1883, was a sad one for us
all. The pecuniary loss, resultant upon the town-building disaster,
was severe; but the revelation which came to me of the innate meanness
of human nature in matters of money, was the more depressing by far.
It was amazing to hear wealthy people, who had bought of me a few
hundred dollars' worth of stock, and who really felt the loss of it
much less than they would suffer from a fly bite, whine as if this had
reduced them to the direst poverty, and insinuate that I, who had lost
manifold more than they, should refund, though the loss was entirely
the result of their own stupidity in failing to send me the proxies I
had asked for by mail.
We consoled ourselves, as usual, with the knowledge that we had acted
honestly and conscientiously towards all, and that the miseries of
this short life are "not worthy to be compared with the glory which
shall be revealed in us in the near future of the life eternal."
The blue arch above us, ever changing like the sea, has always
possessed a peculiar fascination for me, and I never let slip a
convenient opportunity to feast my eyes upon it. I was pursuing this
favorite occupation one day this year, when an unusually beautiful
cloud attracted my attention, and as I watched its rapidly changing
forms, there was slowly evolved from it the kindly loving face of my
mother. It was no fancy, no distorted figment of a dream. The dear
face smiled upon me with angelic sweetness, glanced upward, and was
gone; then I knew that I had another guardian angel in heaven.
In a short time, news came from R---- that she who had gladly devoted
her life to self-sacrifice for her children, had been relieved from
the always weak and suffering body.
Dear, good mother! Her highest and only ambition was to do good; not
a selfish thought ever even flitted across her horizon. Frank as the
day, constant as the sun, pure as the dew; like our Lord himself, she
sacrificed herself for the good of others. Her sons, Richard and Mark,
welcomed her at the gates ajar, and she was at rest.
What is death but a journey home?
A perfect rest when the work is done,
A gentle sleep for earth-weary eyes,
And the soul ascends to the azure skies.
We in the earth life went on as best we could. My only brother Joshua
sold the old homestead with its burdens, too heavy for him to bear
alone, bought our former home for one-half it had cost us, which was
much more than any other would pay for it; while we sold our castle
and farm which had become a mountain on our shoulders, and went to
live with my wife's parents in Boston, where I continued my work of
introducing the school text-books which had been sold, and myself with
them, to a New York publishing firm.
When the winter winds and snows began to blow, I longed for the balmy
zephyrs of fair Florida, and like the summer birds, I once more
journeyed southward; there, after a long search for the best
throughout the land of flowers, journeying in steam yachts, row-boats,
on horseback, and sometimes hand over hand on the branches of trees,
over tracks inaccessible in any other manner, I formed another stock
company consisting of several financiers who had spent all their lives
in Florida, and secured many thousands of acres of excellent lands
in the highlands of Marion County, hoping to do good and get good by
inducing the surplus population of our cities to go back to the bosom
of Mother Earth, where a moderate amount of labor will give them an
independent livelihood free from the snow and cold which infest the
wintry north, free from the heart-breaking demoralization of
begging for work in our overcrowded cities where scores of the
poverty-stricken are tumbling over each other in the frantic grabbing
for every job of work and every crumb of charity.
Were a mere modicum of the vast sums now worse than wasted in
pauperizing the unemployed; a tithe of the money squandered on
building palaces for our numberless, ever-begging colleges, devoted to
settling the poor upon the unimproved lands in Florida, the dangerous
flood of ever-increasing crime, and physical and mental suffering
which now threatens the very existence of our republic, would soon
vanish from our cities, and thousands of the dangerous classes would
become self-supporting, self-respecting, independent men and women.
Were a tithe of the vast sums lavished by our millionaires upon the
pictured walls, gorgeously embellished ceilings, overcrowded book
shelves of our numerous libraries, and upon the unchristlike towers
of unfrequented cathedrals, be even loaned to those who would gladly
cultivate the thousands of acres of untilled soil in fair Florida,
all the suffering hangers-on for jobs would become successful
agriculturists, owning their own farms, buying their own books, and
sufficiently educating their own children.
If the money spent every winter in pauperizing the unemployed by
giving them free soup, could be devoted to settling colonies upon our
uncultivated lands, the vexing problems and contests between labor and
capital would be easily solved and obliterated; the unskilled poor
would be at once enabled to respond to the call of the poet--
"Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her beautiful lap.
Come out from your alleys, your courts and your lanes,
And breathe like your eagles, the air of our plains!
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it all nonsense insuring your lives."