HOLLAND, JOSIAH GILBERT, an American journalist and novelist, born at Belchertown, Mass., July 24, 1819; died at New York, October 12, 1881. He studied medicine, was engaged in practice for three years, then went to Springfield, Mass., where for a short time he edited a literary periodical. He then went to Vicksburg, Miss., where he was for a year Superintendent of Public Schools. Returning to Springfield he became in 1849 an associate editor of the Republican newspaper, and soon afterward one of the proprietors. In 1866 he sold his interest in the Republican, and, after travelling in Europe, became in 1870 the editor and part proprietor of Scribner's Magazine, which was then established, and of which he remained the editor until his death. He was also a very popular lyceum lecturer. His principal works are: History of Western Massachusetts (1855); The Bay Path, a novel (1857); Timothy Titcomb's Letters (1858); Bitter Sweet, a poetical tale (1858); Gold Foil (1859); Miss Gilbert's Career, a novel (1860); Lessons in Life (1861); Letters to the Joneses (1863); Plain Talk on Familiar Subjects (1865); Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866); Kathrina, a narrative poem (1867); The Marble Prophecy and other Poems (1872); Arthur Bonnicastle, a novel (1873); Garnered Sheaves, a collection of poems (1873), and The Mistress of the Manse, a novel (1874) Speaking of Timothy Titcomb's Letters, when the little volume appeared in 1858, the London Literary Gazette said: "We have never read a work which better inculcates the several duties and responsibilities of young men and women, married or single." THE HUMAN LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS TRACK. Go with me, if you please, to the next station-house, and look off upon that line of railroad. It is straight as an arrow, out run the iron lines, glittering in the sun-out as far as we can see-until, converging almost to a single thread, they pierce the sky. What were those rails laid for? It is a road, is it? Try your cart or your coach there: the axle-trees are too narrow, and you go bumping along upon the sleepers. Try a wheelbarrow : you cannot keep it on the rail. Now go with me to the locomotive-shop. What is this? We are told it is a locomotive. What is a locomotive? Why, it is a carriage moved by steam. But it is very heavy; the wheels would sink into a common road up to the axle ; that locomotive can never run on a common-road, and the man is a fool who built it; strange that men will waste time and money that way! But stop a moment. Why, wouldn't these wheels just fit those rails? We measure them, and then we go to the track and measure its gauge. That solves the difficulty: those rails were intended for the locomotive, and the locomotive for the rails. They are good for nothing apart. The locomotive is not even safe anywhere else. If it should get off after it is once on, it would run into rocks and stumps, and bury itself in sands or swamps beyond recovery. Young man, you are a locomotive; you are a thing that goes by a power inside of you; you are made to go. In fact, considered as a machine, you are very far superior to a locomotive. The maker of the locomotive is a man; your maker is man's Maker. You are as different from a horse or an ox or a camel, as a locomotive is different from a wheelbarrow or a cart or a coach. Now, do you suppose that the Being who made you-manu factured your machine, and put into it the motive power -did not make a special road for you to run upon? My idea of religion is that it is a railroad for a human locomotive; and that just so sure as it undertakes to run upon a road adapted only to animal power it will bury its wheels in the sand, dash itself among rocks, and come to inevitable wreck. If you don't believe this, try the other thing. Here are forty roads. Suppose you choose one of them, and see where you come out. Here is the dram-shop road; try it; follow it, and see how long it will be before you come to a stump and a smash-up. Here is the road to sensual pleasure: you are just as sure to bury your wheels in the dirt as you try it; your machine is too heavy for that track altogether. Here is the winding uncertain path of frivolity: there are morasses on each side of it; and, with the headway you are under, you will be sure, sooner or later, to pitch into one of them. Here is the road of philosophy; but it runs through a country from which the light of heaven is shut out; and while you may be able to keep your machine right side up, it will only be by feeling your way along in a clumsy, comfortless kind of style, and with no certainty of ever arriving at the heavenly station-house. Here is the road of scepticism: that is covered with fog, and a fence runs across it within ten rods. Don't you see that your machine was never intended to run on those roads? Don't you know that it never was; and don't you know that the only track under heaven upon which you can run safely is the religious track? Don't you know that just as long as you keep your wheels on that track, wreck is impossible? Don't you know that is the only track on which wreck is not certain? I know it, if you don't and I tell you that on that track, which God has laid down expressly for your soul to run upon, your soul will find free play for all its wheels, and an unobstructed and happy progress. It is straight and narrow, but it is safe and solid, and furnishes the only direct route to the Heavenly City. Now, God made your soul, and made religion for it, you are a fool if you refuse to place yourself on the track. You cannot prosper anywhere else, and your machine will not run anywhere else.-The Titcomb Letters. |