on windless eve the sun's decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers,
Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light,
Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night:
Weep not for Her.
VIII.
Weep not for her!--There is no cause for woe;
But rather nerve the spirit that it walk
Unshrinking o'er the thorny paths below,
And from earth's low defilements keep thee back:
So, when a few, fleet, severing years have flown,
She'll meet thee at heaven's gate--and lead thee on!
Weep not for Her.
Having right and law on my side, as any man of judgment may perceive with
half an eye, nothing could hinder me, if I so liked, to print the whole
bundle; but, in the meantime, we must just be satisfied with the
foregoing curiosities, which we have picked out. All that I have set
down concerning myself, the reader may take on credit as open and even-
down truth; but as to whether Taffy's master's nick-nackets be true or
false, every one is at liberty, in this free country, to think for
himself. Old sparrows are not easily caught with chaff; and unless I saw
a proper affidavit, I would not, for my own part, pin my faith to a
single word of them. But every man his own opinion,--that's my motto.
In the Yankee Almanack of Poor Richard, which, besides the Pilgrim's
Progress and the Book of Martyrs, I whiles read on the week-days for a
little diversion, I see it is set down with great rationality, that "we
should never buy for the bargain sake." Experience teaches all men, and
I found that to my cost in this matter; for, cheap as the coat and
waistcoat seemed which I had bought from the auld-farrant Welsh flunkie
with the peaked hat and the pigtail, I made no great shakes of them after
all. Neither the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, nor any other of the grand
public characters, ever made me an offer for them, as some had led me to
expect; and the playhouse people lay all as quiet as ducks in a storm.
After hanging at my window for two or three months, collecting all the
idle wives and weans of the parish to glour and gaze at them from morn
till night, during which time I got half of my lozens broken, by their
knocking one another's heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them
at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs,
Pan's pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on
a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing "Carle now the
King's come," as the other wh
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