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almost peculiar to itself, does it fly in the face of its victims, and hold their quivering eyeballs in its fangs, till they abhor the light and swim in blood. But, to be a little more 2 particular--mark that carbuncled, slavering, doubtful remnant of a man, retching and picking tansy, every morning before sunrise-loathing his breakfast-getting his ear bored to the door of a dram-shop an hour after-disguised before ten-quarrelling by dinner-time, and snoring drunk before supper. See him next morning at his retching and his tansy again; and, as the day advances, becoming noisy, cross, drivelling, and intoxicated. Think of his thus dragging out months and years of torture, till the earth refuses any longer to bear such a wretch upon its surface, 3 and then tell me if any Barbadian slave was ever so miserable.

But who is this that comes hobbling up, with bandaged legs, inflamed eyes, and a distorted countenance? Every step is like the piercing of a sword, or the driving of a nail among nerves and tendons. He suffers more every day: and every night than he would under the lash of the most cruel driver. And what is the cause? The humors, he tells us, trouble him; and though he has applied to all the doctors far and near, he can get no relief. Ah, these wicked 4 and inveterate humors! Every body knows where they came from. But for the bottle he might have been a sound and healthy man. Now he is the most miserable of slaves, and there is no hope of his emancipation. He may live as long, possibly, as he would in a sugar-house at Jamaica; but, to grind more miserably in the prison which he has built at his own expense, and in manacles which his own hands have forged.

Look next at that wretched hovel, open on all sides to The the rude and drenching intrusion of the elements. 5 panting skeleton, lying as you see, upon a little straw in the corner, a prey to consumption, was once the owner of yonder comfortable mansion, and of that farm so rich in verdure and in sheaves. He might have owned them still, and have kept his health too, but for the love of strong drink. It is intemperance which has consumed his suband stance, and rioted upon his flesh and his marrow, shortened his breath, and fixed that deep sepulchral cough in his wasting vitals. Was ever a kidnapped African more

6 wretched in his Atlantic dungeon? But your sympathies come too late. Perhaps you sold him the very poison which has brought him to this-or it went out sparkling from your distillery to the retailer, and thence into the jug, half-concealed by the tattered garment of the victim, as he carried it home to his starving family. There is no help for him now. He must, day and night, groan and cough away the remnant of his mortal existence, without mitigation and without hope.

Does your sickened and harrowed soul turn away with 7 horror from such a scene? Go with me, then, to the almshouse, and tell me whether you recognise that bloated figure, sitting all day and all night in his chair, because the dropsy will not suffer him to lie down, and thus lingering from week to week under the slow torments of strangulation. How piercing are his shrieks, as if he were actually drowning, from which, indeed, he can obtain a short reprieve only, by diverting from the seat of life the accumu-lating waters. He was once your neighbor, thrifty, reputable, and happy; but he yielded to the blandishments of 8 the great destroyer. He drank, first temperately, then freely, then to excess, and finally, to habitual inebriation. The consequences are before you. His daily and nightly sufferings no tongue can utter. His disease no skill can cure. The swelling flood in which he catches every precarious breath, no finite power can long assuage. The veriest wretch, chained and sweltering between decks in a Portuguese Guineaman, is not half so miserable.

But here we must leave him, to be cast a wreck by the angry waters upon the shore of eternity; and enter that 9 hut, towards which a solitary neighbor is advancing with hurried steps. Here a husband and a father (shall I call him such?) is supposed to be dying. The disease is delirium tremens. And oh what a pitiable object! Every limb and muscle quivers as in the agonies of dissolution. Reason, having been so often and so rudely driven from her seat, by habitual intoxication, now refuses to return. sibly he may once more be reprieved, to stagger on a little further, into his ignominious grave; but in the meantime, who that is bought and sold and thrown into the sea, for 10 the crime of being sable and sick, suffers half so much as this very slave?

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I might ask you, in pas ing the Insane Hospital, just to look through the grated window, at the maniac in his straight-jacket-gnashing his teeth, cursing his keepers, withering your very soul by the flashes of his eye, disquieting the night with incoherent cries of distress, or more appalling fits of laughter. Here you would see what it is for the immortal mind to be laid in ruins, by the worse than volcanic belchings of the distillery; and what happens every day from these Tartarean eruptions.

LESSON LXIX.

Adam's Account of himself to the Angel.-MILTON.

1 FOR man to tell how human life began

Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?
Desire with thee still longer to converse
Induced me. As new waked from soundest sleep,
Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid

In balmy sweat, which with his beams the sun
Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed.
Straight toward heaven my wondering eyes I turned
And gazed awhile the ample sky, till raised
By quick instinctive motion up I sprung,
2 As thitherward endeavoring, and upright
Stood on my feet about me round I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murm'ring streams; by these,
Creatures that lived and moved, and walked, or flew
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb

Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigor led;

3 But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not to speak I tried, and forthwith spake ;
My tongue obeyed, and readily could name
Whate'er I saw. "Thou Sun," said I, "fair light,
And thou enlightened Earth, so fresh and gay,
Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures tell,

Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here?
Not of myself; by some great Maker then,
In goodness and in power pre-eminent;
4 Tell me how may I know him, how adore,
From whom I have that thus I move and live,
And feel that I am happier than I know."
While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither,
From where I first drew air, and first beheld
This happy light; when answer none returned,
On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers,
Pensive I sat me down: there gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seized
My droused sense, untroubled, though I thought
5 I then was passing to my former state

Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve:
When suddenly stood at my head a dream,
Whose inward apparition gently moved,
My fancy to believe I yet had being,

And lived. One came, methought, of shape divine
And said, "Thy mansion wants thee, Adam, rise,
First man, of men innumerable ordained
First Father, called by thee I come thy guide
To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared."
6 So saying, by the hand he took me, raised,
And over fields and waters, as in air
Smooth sliding without step, last led me up
A woody mountain; whose high top was plain,
circuit wide, enclosed, with goodliest trees
Planted, with walks, and bowers, that what I saw
Of earth before scarce pleasant seemed. Each tree
Loaden with fairest fruit, that hung to the eye
Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite

To pluck and eat: whereat I waked, and found 7 Before mine eyes all real, as the dream

Had lively shadowed. Here had new begun
My wand'ring, had not he who was my guide
Up hither, from among the trees appeared,
Presence divine. Rejoicing, but with awe,
In adoration at his feet I fell

Submiss he reared me, and "Whom thou sought'st
I am,"

Said mildly,

"Author of all this thou seest

Above, or round about thee, or beneath.
This paradise I give thee, count it thine
To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat."

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LESSON LXX.

Uses of Water.-ANONYMOUS.

How common, and yet how beautiful and how pure, is a drop of water! See it, as it issues from the rock to supply the spring and the stream below. See how its meanderings through the plains, and its torrents over the cliffs, add to the richness and the beauty of the landscape. Look into a factory standing by a waterfall, in which every drop is faithful to perform its part, and hear the groaning and rustling of the wheels, the clattering of shuttles, and the buzz of spindles, which, under the direction of their fair attendants, are supplying myriads of fair purchasers with fabrics 2 from the cotton-plant, the sheep, and the silkworm.

Is any one so stupid as not to admire the splendor of the rainbow, or so ignorant as not to know that it is produced by drops of water, as they break away from the clouds which had confined them, and are making a quick visit to our earth to renew its verdure and increase its animation? How useful is the gentle dew, in its nightly visits, to allay the scorching heat of a summer's sun! And the autumn's frost, how beautifully it bedecks the trees, the shrubs and the grass; though it strips them of their summer's verdure, 3 and warns them that they must soon receive the buffetings of the winter's tempest! This is but water, which has given up its transparency for its beautiful whiteness and its elegant crystals. The snow, too-what is that but these same pure drops thrown into crystals by winter's icy hand? and does not the first summer's sun return them to the same limpid drops ?

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'The majestic river, and the boundless ocean, they? Are they not made of drops of water? How the river steadily pursues its course from the mountain's top, 4 down the declivity, over the cliff, and through the plain, taking with it every thing in its course! How many mighty ships does the ocean float upon its bosom! How

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