Volume 3 (1858-1859) (592 pages)

° THE NEGLECTED DEAD, 253 stranger, and winged its flight away ‘nto the beautiful, the boundless sea of futurity, where, with kindred spirits, in God’s presence, it shall float from sphere to sphere, in its stage of progression, rowing more beautiful unto the perfect ay; for who can deny the immortality of the soul? “To die is but to be born again; and the tomb is a temple of apotheosis—a chamber, into which the seraph retires to put on its beautiful wings. See ye not yonder beautiful little flower ; it with the vermilion petals, waving in the breeze, on its slender stem of gold? The butterfly lingers around it, and the bee drinks honey-dew from its crimson cup. It looks like a sweet little star just dropped from the zenith. Soon the winds of winter will shake it from its stem, and the stem, too, will loose its coating of gold, and fall down, crushed on the plain, like a withered weed! Tell me, is it dead? The yellow-haired child deems so; for there is a tear in her little blue eye, as she gazes where her pretty flower lies, like a dead beauty on her bier. Weep not bonny maiden, the fair May-queen of the morning meadows has not perished. Its electric life has crept down, and gone to sleep in its rootbed of fibrous feathers; but the first sun of April shall awake it again, and it shall come in a loylier body, and richer robes, and its velvet lips shall again drink the silver-singing rains of the young year, and its starry-eye shall greet the everlasting light once more! Thus God renews the youth of the world! But he renews it with the incarnation of the same undying souls. How then shall matter remain and the mind perish? Yon star, that wanders in its elipsis, tracing a parabola of light on the azure planetarium, cannot solve the equation of its own bright curve. But my geometry can solve it, and weigh that star in scales, and determine the eccentricities of its orbit for a million years to come. And for millions of millions of ages that celestial watcher shall look down on ‘the new heavens and new earth;” for the Creator is not like a child, to build and tear down castles of chrysolite; and, all that while, the science of the eternal mathematics shall hold. And shall I, a spirit who can comprehend all its sublime theorems, and resolve its knottiest problems, and measure the sun, and balance all the stars ;—shall I, the especial favorite of Nature and the Deity, the darling little one of Creation, to whom the winds minister song, and the flowers odor, and the depths of heaven light ;—I, whose thought wanders through eternity, and sounds the abysses of all space, foaming with innumerable worlds, and streaming with galaxies, like Auroras in the panorama of an Arctic sky,— say,—shall I die forever and ever, and my Father and my Sister Nature still live on?” Thus we see that for the humblest of the neglected dead there awaits a bright, beautiful future; then weep not for loved ones lost, for in eternity there shall be a happy re-union of friends long separated. CALIFORNIA PICTURES: BY MRS. E. 8. CONNER, Drawn from Life, by “ Pen and Ink.” PICTURE THE FIRST. Eyes we have not, yet we see; Tongueless, but not dumb, are we; Artists are not, yet we draw Pictures true, and free from flaw; Straying not beyond your chair, Yet we travel voyages rare ; ’Spite of distance, wind, or weather, We bring absent friends together ; Pardon, happiness, or woe, We deny,—and we bestow: Charity we oft withhold,— Oft give wealth more rich than gold; We can satirize the vain, Censure vice in wholesome strain: Thoughts that else would have no trace, Find, through us, a dwelling place; Joined, we labor ceaselessly ; But, when severed, useless we. Mortals! friends! we toil for you, Patient, humble, silent, true: Long as ye can speak and think, Love your servants, “ Pen anp Inx.” Proversrauty reckless as we Americans are said to be of human life,—phrenologically, as a people, deficient in veneration,—and above all, actuated, it is supposed, in California more especially, by a thirst for gold,—for these very reasons no circumstance makes a greater impression upon the traveler inthe remote mining districts, than the respect manifested for the dead. The season may be most propitious for labor,—the brown and gold-encumbered rills may be yielding their treasures,—the quartz may lie

° THE NEGLECTED DEAD, 253 stranger, and winged its flight away ‘nto the beautiful, the boundless sea of futurity, where, with kindred spirits, in God’s presence, it shall float from sphere to sphere, in its stage of progression, rowing more beautiful unto the perfect ay; for who can deny the immortality of the soul? “To die is but to be born again; and the tomb is a temple of apotheosis—a chamber, into which the seraph retires to put on its beautiful wings. See ye not yonder beautiful little flower ; it with the vermilion petals, waving in the breeze, on its slender stem of gold? The butterfly lingers around it, and the bee drinks honey-dew from its crimson cup. It looks like a sweet little star just dropped from the zenith. Soon the winds of winter will shake it from its stem, and the stem, too, will loose its coating of gold, and fall down, crushed on the plain, like a withered weed! Tell me, is it dead? The yellow-haired child deems so; for there is a tear in her little blue eye, as she gazes where her pretty flower lies, like a dead beauty on her bier. Weep not bonny maiden, the fair May-queen of the morning meadows has not perished. Its electric life has crept down, and gone to sleep in its rootbed of fibrous feathers; but the first sun of April shall awake it again, and it shall come in a loylier body, and richer robes, and its velvet lips shall again drink the silver-singing rains of the young year, and its starry-eye shall greet the everlasting light once more! Thus God renews the youth of the world! But he renews it with the incarnation of the same undying souls. How then shall matter remain and the mind perish? Yon star, that wanders in its elipsis, tracing a parabola of light on the azure planetarium, cannot solve the equation of its own bright curve. But my geometry can solve it, and weigh that star in scales, and determine the eccentricities of its orbit for a million years to come. And for millions of millions of ages that celestial watcher shall look down on ‘the new heavens and new earth;” for the Creator is not like a child, to build and tear down castles of chrysolite; and, all that while, the science of the eternal mathematics shall hold. And shall I, a spirit who can comprehend all its sublime theorems, and resolve its knottiest problems, and measure the sun, and

balance all the stars ;—shall I, the especial favorite of Nature and the Deity, the darling little one of Creation, to whom the winds minister song, and the flowers odor, and the depths of heaven light ;—I, whose thought wanders through eternity, and sounds the abysses of all space, foaming with innumerable worlds, and streaming with galaxies, like Auroras in the panorama of an Arctic sky,— say,—shall I die forever and ever, and my Father and my Sister Nature still live on?” Thus we see that for the humblest of the neglected dead there awaits a bright, beautiful future; then weep not for loved ones lost, for in eternity there shall be a happy re-union of friends long separated. CALIFORNIA PICTURES: BY MRS. E. 8. CONNER, Drawn from Life, by “ Pen and Ink.” PICTURE THE FIRST. Eyes we have not, yet we see; Tongueless, but not dumb, are we; Artists are not, yet we draw Pictures true, and free from flaw; Straying not beyond your chair, Yet we travel voyages rare ; ’Spite of distance, wind, or weather, We bring absent friends together ; Pardon, happiness, or woe, We deny,—and we bestow: Charity we oft withhold,— Oft give wealth more rich than gold; We can satirize the vain, Censure vice in wholesome strain: Thoughts that else would have no trace, Find, through us, a dwelling place; Joined, we labor ceaselessly ; But, when severed, useless we. Mortals! friends! we toil for you, Patient, humble, silent, true: Long as ye can speak and think, Love your servants, “ Pen anp Inx.” Proversrauty reckless as we Americans are said to be of human life,—phrenologically, as a people, deficient in veneration,—and above all, actuated, it is supposed, in California more especially, by a thirst for gold,—for these very reasons no circumstance makes a greater impression upon the traveler inthe remote mining districts, than the respect manifested for the dead. The season may be most propitious for labor,—the brown and gold-encumbered rills may be yielding their treasures,—the quartz may lie