RIENDS, who would have acquitted me, I would like to talk with you about this thing which has happened, before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then awhile, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened to me O my judges for so I may truly call you, I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance: select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare this with the other days and nights of his life; and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think this man-I will not say a private man, but even the great king-will not find I strove with none; for none was many such days or nights, when compared with others. Now if death is like this I say that to Nature I loved and, next to Nature, die is gain; for Art! Hitherto the famil- I warmed both hands before the iar oracle within me has constantly been in the habit of opposing me, even in trifles, if I was going to make fires of life; eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place It sinks, and I am ready to depart. and there, as men "I strove With None," by Walter Savage Landor a slip or err in any matter; and now, as you see, there has come upon me the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech; but now in nothing that I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this! I will tell you. I regard this as a great proof that what has happened to me is a good; and that those who think that death is an evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good. Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is no great reason to hope that death is a good. For one of two things either death is a state of nothingness; or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to say, all the dead are what good can be greater than this? If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there-Minos, and Rhadamanthus, and Eacus, and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life—that pilgrimage will be worth making. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge, as in this world, so also in that. And I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise and is not. What would not a man give to be able to examine the leader of the Trojan expedition; or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or numberless others-men and women, too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking questions!-in another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions; assuredly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said be true. Wherefore, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty that no evil can happen to a good man, either in this life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods, nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners or with my accusers. They have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them. Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons grow up, I would ask you, my friends, to punish have you trouble them. And I would them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches or anything more. than about virtue. Or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, then reprove them, as I have reproved ISSIPATIONS, vices, ....a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active life; a kind of mud bath, in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not dispute much with this class of philosophers; we A little work, a little play day! A little warmth, a little light taken; for Sin and Remorse so easily beset us at all Of love's bestowing—and so, good- stages of life, and night! A little fun, to match the sorrow And so A little trust that when we die "A Little Work," by George du Maurier you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are really something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands The hour of my departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows. -From Socrates' Talk to His Friends before Drinking the Hemlock. are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it can not be the training one receives in this Devil's service, but only our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly Action. We become men, not after we have been dissipated, and disappointed in the chase of false pleasure; but after we have ascertained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in through this life; how mad it is to hope for contentment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely finite world; that a man must be sufficient for himself; and that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy but striving and doing. Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.-Burns. God is the I of the Infinite.-Hugo. upon this modern way of reasoning"That petty crimes deserved death, and he knew nothing worse for the greatest.” His laws, it is said, were written, not with ink, but with blood; but they were of short duration, being all repealed by Solon, except one, for murder. An attempt was made some years ago to repeal some of the most absurd and cruel of our capi REASON, murder, rape, and To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope From its own wreck the thing it contem plates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and tal laws. The bill passed this house, but was rejected by the Lords for this reason: “It was an innovation, they said, and subversive of law." The very reverse is truth These hanging laws are themselves innovations. No less than three and thirtyof them passed the last reign. I believe I myself was the first person to check the progress of them. When the great Alfred came to the throne, he found the kingdom overrun with robbers; but the silly expedient of hanging never came into his head; he instituted a police, which was, to make every township answerable for the felonies committed in it. Thus property became the guardian of property, and all robbery was so effectually stopped that in a very short time a man might travel through the kingdom unarmed, with his purse in his hand... From "Prometheus Unbound," pleased, and take him from the jaws of death to the lips of matrimony. But so fatally are we deviated from the benignity of our ancient laws, that there is now under sentence of death an unfortunate clergyman, who made satisfaction for the injury he attempted: the satisfaction was accepted, and yet the acceptance of the satisfaction and the prosecution bear the same date. The Mosaic law ordained that for a sheep or an ox, four and five fold should be restored; and for robbing a house, double; that is one fold for reparation, the rest for example; and the forfeiture was greater, as the property was more exposed. If the thief came by night, it was lawful to kill him; but if he came by day, he was only to make restitution and if he had nothing he was to be sold for his theft. This is all that God required in felonies, nor can I find in history any sample of such laws as ours, except a code that was framed at Athens by Draco. He made every offense capital, by Percy Bysshe Shelley Even in crimes which are seldom or never pardoned, death is no prevention. Housebreakers, forgers and coiners are sure to be hanged; yet housebreaking, forgery and coining are the very crimes which are oftenest committed. Strange it is that in the case of blood, of which we ought to be most tender, we should still go on, against reason and against experience to make unavailing slaughter of our fellow-creatures. A recent event has proved that policy will do what blood can not do-I mean the late regulation of the coinage. Thirty years together men were continually hanged for coining; still it went on: but on the new regulation of the gold coin it ceased.... There lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to be burnt alive, a girl just turned fourteen; at her master's bidding, she hid some whitewashed farthings behind her stays, on which the jury has found her guilty, as an accomplice with her master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednesday; and the faggots all lay ready-no reprieve came till just as the cart was setting out, and the girl would have been burnt alive on the same day, had it not been for the humane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Sir, are we taught to execrate the incendiary fires of Smithfield, and we are lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child for hiding a whitewashed farthing! And yet this barbarous sentence, which ought to make men shudder at the thought of shedding blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason for more hanging and burning. -From Speech of Sir William Meredith in the House of Commons, May 13, 1777. VERY man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that 1 have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the country; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate☛☛ But, if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.-Lincoln, to the People of Sangamon, March 9, 1832. T is customary to say that age should be considered, because it comes lasts It seems just as much to the point, that youth comes first. And the scale fairly kicks the beam, if you go on to add that age, in a majority of cases, never comes at all. Disease and accidents make short work of even the most prosperous persons. To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes is tragical enough at the best; but when a man has been grudging himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival that was never to be, it becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy which lies on the confines of farce. . . To husband a favorite claret until the batch turns sour is not at all an artful stroke of policy; and how much more with a whole cellara whole bodily existence! People may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed mortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematic, nay, more than improbable old age. We should not compliment a hungry man, who should refuse a whole dinner and reserve all his appetite for the dessert, before he knew whether there was to be any dessert or not. If there be such a thing as imprudence in the world, we surely have it here. We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous waters; and to take a cue from the dolorous old naval ballad, we have heard the mermaids singing, and know that we shall never see dry land any more. Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. If there is a fill of tobacco among the crew, for God's sake pass it round, and let us have a pipe before we go!-Robert Louis Stevenson. DVERSITY is a medicine which people are rather fond of recommending indiscriminately as a panacea for their neighbors. Like other medicines, it only agrees with certain constitutions. There are nerves which it braces, and nerves which it utterly shatters. -Justin McCarthy. ELIUS LAMIA, born in Italy of illustrious parents, had not yet discarded the toga prætexta when he set out for the schools of Athens to study philosophy Subsequently he took up his residence at Rome, and in his house on the Esquiline, amid a circle of youthful wastrels, abandoned himself to licentious courses. But being accused of engaging in criminal relations with Lepida, the wife of Sulpicius Quirinus, a man of consular rank, and being found guilty, he was exiled by Tiberius Cæsar. At that time he was just entering his twenty-fourth It is not raining rain for me, rising to allow of the passage of a litter which was being carried along the narrow pathway through the vineyards. The lit The clouds of gray engulf the day ter being uncur And overwhelm the town; It is not raining rain to me, It's raining roses down. It is not raining rain to me, But fields of clover bloom, Where any buccaneering bee Can find a bed and room. A health unto the happy, tained, permitted Lamia to see stretched upon the cushions as it was borne nearer to him the figure of an elderly man of immense bulk, who, supporting his head on his hand, gazed out with a gloomy and disdainful expression. His nose, which was aquiline, and his chin, which was prominent, seemed desirous of meeting across his lips, and his jaws were powerful. From the first moment Lamia was convinced that the face was familiar to him. He hesitated a moment before the name came to him. Then suddenly hastening towards the litter with a display of surprise and delight A fig for him who frets! It is not raining rain to me, It's raining violets. "April Rain," by Robert Loveman Caius was raised to the purple, Lamia obtained permission to return to Rome. He even regained a portion of his possessions. Adversity had taught him wisdom... With a mixture of surprise and vexation he recognized that age was stealing upon him In his sixty-second year, being afflicted with an illness which proved in no slight degree troublesome, he decided to have recourse to the waters of Baix. The coast at that point, once frequented by the halcyon, was at this date the resort of the wealthy Roman, greedy of pleasure. For a week Lamia lived alone, without a friend in the brilliant crowd. Then one day, after dinner, an inclination to which he yielded urged him to ascend the inclines which, covered with vines that resembled bacchantes, looked out upon "Pontius Pilate!" he cried. "The gods be praised who have permitted me to see you once again!" The old man gave a signal to the slaves to stop, and cast a keen glance upon the stranger who had addressed him. "Pontius, my dear host," resumed the latter, "have twenty years so far whitened my hair and hollowed my cheeks that you no longer recognize your friend Ælius Lamia? " At this name Pontius Pilate dismounted |