"Had the disputatious and needle-witted schoolmen known of these most curious mysteries of vitality, how vainly subtle would have been their speculations concerning the solution of such enigmas?"
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
Oh smiling land of the sunset, How my heart to thy beauty thrills-- Veiled dimly to-day with the shadow Of the greenest of all thy hills! Where daisies lean to the sunshine, And the winds a plowing go, And break into shining furrows The mists in the vale below; Where the willows hang out their tassels, With the dews, all white and cold, Strung over their wands so limber, Like pearls upon chords of gold; Where in milky hedges of hawthorn The red-winged thrushes sing, And the wild vine, bright and flaunting, Twines many a scarlet ring; Where, under the ripened billows Of the silver-flowing rye, We ran in and out with the zephyrs-- My sunny-haired brother and I.
Oh, when the green kirtle of May time, Again o'er the hill-tops is blown, I shall walk the wild paths of the forest, And climb the steep headlands alone-- Pausing not where the slopes of the meadows Are yellow with cowslip beds, Nor where, by the wall of the garden, The hollyhocks lift their bright heads. In hollows that dimple the hill-sides, Our feet till the sunset had been, Where pinks with their spikes of red blossoms, Hedged beds of blue violets in, While to the warm lip of the sunbeam The check of the blush rose inclined, And the pansy's white bosom was flushed with The murmurous love of the wind.
But when 'neath the heavy tresses That swept o'er the dying day, The star of the eve like a lover Was hiding his blushes away, As we came to a mournful river That flowed to a lovely shore, "Oh, sister," he said, "I am weary-- I cannot go back any more!" And seeing that round about him The wings of the angels shone-- I parted the locks from his forehead And kissed him and left him alone. But a shadow comes over my spirit Whenever I think of the hours I trusted his feet to the pathway That winds through eternity's flowers.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY ASA SMITH, M. D.
The London _Examiner_, in reviewing Mr. McCulloch's new work on Wages, etc., seems to be displeased that the author should have expressed himself against the cultivation and use of tobacco, using the following language in its defence: "We quarrel," says the _Examiner_, "with Mr. McCulloch, for bestowing offensive epithets on tobacco, which he is pleased to call 'this filthy and offensive stimulant.' Why it should be more filthy to take a pinch of snuff or a whiff of tobacco smoke, than to swallow a quart of port wine, is not to us intelligible. Of all the stimulants that men have had recourse to, tea and coffee excepted, tobacco is the least pernicious. For the life of you, you cannot get drunk on it, however well disposed, and no man or woman has ever been charged with committing a crime under its influence--save only the factitious crime created by an irrational and excessive duty. For the best part of three centuries, all the nations of the earth have been using tobacco--saint, savage, and sage, being among the consumers."