Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

It is this: All men have weak sides. This humbug knows; and hence he approaches them-mark this-not for their good, but for his own. This gives rise to the great variety of character and profession which humbug assumes. Let us see:

There are many persons weak in body, and so humbug turns doctor. Let no one ask to have a history of his practice-a hundred almanacs and a thousand columns of newspapers, fail to tell all his wonderful cures, from the baldness of the head to the corn of the toe! "Be sure to take six bottles-look well to the signature." "None genuine without my signature!"—and thousands believe it all.

Millions have been made, not only by those who manufacture, but also large and liberal dividends have gone to editors for advertising, and to retailers for retailing. Palaces have been built from the proceeds. But are we justifiable in regarding these quack medicines as humbug? There are those who have tried them, and advocate them. Their very popularity seems to be proof that they are true. This seems plausible; and yet how general is the sentiment that they are a humbug. How then do we account for their popularity? We answer thus: You will find, by close observation, that nearly all who buy and try, do so as an experiment. Their feeling is, If it will do no good it can do no harm. The advertisements are so fair, the certificates so many, and the poor invalids' pains have been so keen and so long! What is money compared with health. I will try it.

Now, suppose there are only five such in the circle of every postvillage in the United States-that adds up already 100,000. But now the first bottle is used up; and the invalid feels slightly better, of which there can be no doubt. Hope has cheered him; the very idea of taking what even the remotest probability may regard as a certain cure, has a tendency to draw the brooding mind from the malady, and give to soul and body a degree of cheerfulness and vigor. Besides this, all these quack medicines act temporarily upon the stomach, and blood, and nerves, which, without touching a seated disease, gives a hopeful tone to the system. Thus prepared, he reads again, "Do not stop under five or six bottles." It must have a fair trial. One dollar is gone; there is hope in my present feelings. He takes the six!-there multiply, and you have 600,000 bottles, and as many dollars. This, on the supposition that, on an average, there are but five such invalids in every five miles square!

Besides, in how many cases is this medicine taken just at the point where previous treatment, or perhaps the rallying power of nature, has laid the foundation for a favorable change, or an entire cure. Thus, how easy for the most candid to be deceived into the giving of a certificate, which will cause another circle to swarm around humbug.

That the disposition to make the experiment is, to a great extent, at the foundation of the success of these medicines is confirmed by the fact, that they always run their course in a few years. But it takes a time sufficiently long, till all have experimented, to fill the pockets of the quack. When the public once moves in a certain direction, it takes a good deal of time and reason to stop the current and exhaust the

momentum.

Then this quack medicine is always pleasant to take; this is an item.

No restriction in diet-another item. Then the programme covers a host of diseases, among which every person in the least diseased will be sure to find his own; or, if he has none, he will find some symptom mentioned; and is it not also a preventive? This is even better than cure; "one bottle will do it! Delay is dangerous!" If it be asked how one medicine can cure so many diseases, it is all plain, "it purifies the blood!"

Then, too, these quack advertisements always appeal to the lowest prejudices of men, to the disparagement of regular physicians. These humbugs are always the friends of the patient, against the "oppressions" of their own physicians! This appeal is food to a very large class of prejudices. There is a disposition natural to undervalue and suspect what is near them, in favor of what is at a distance. "No prophet has honor in his own country." The bosom of strangers seems warmer and pleasanter by its flattery. They know what cord to touch to feed this feeling. "This medicine is purely a vegetable compound. It does not contain a grain of any kind of mineral poison. It is free from calomel and quinine!"

Considerations like these, we are firmly of opinion, will explain the success of any quack medicine without attributing to it any virtue beyond a soother of the throat, or a cleanser of the stomach.

THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.

A wonderful stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realms of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep, and surge sublime,
And blends with the ocean of years.

There's a musical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing!
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the tones with the roses are staying.

And the name of this isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there;
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow-
There are heaps of dust, but we loved them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair.

There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
And a part of an infant's prayer;

There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings ;
There are broken vows, and pieces of rings,

And the garments she used to wear

There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air;

And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
Sweet voices we heard the days gone before,
When the wind down the river is fair.

Oh! remembered for aye be the blessed isle,
All the day of light till night-

When the evening comes with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,

May that "Greenwood" of soul be in sight!

THE LOST LITTLE GIRL.

BY SELDOM.

"IT always makes me feel badly to hear that bell," said a mother one day as a ringer passed along the street with a hand-bell, swinging it up and down in rapid motion, to make the loudest noise.

"Your city noises," we replied, "are not very pleasant; but why do you dislike that above others?"

"Oh, that is the saddest of them all." We understood not till she went on to say: "That is the signal that a child is lost, and some poor mother's heart is torn with anxious grief."

Just then, the ringer, at the top of his voice, called out: "Lost! lost!-a little boy, three or four years old, named Willie; parents live at No-" and he turned the corner while the sentence died away amid the confused Babel-like din of the city's bustling throng.

So frequent are such scenes, they become so common to the unfeeling crowd, that few stop their hurry and inquire into the case. The sad and disconsolate parents, and the misrable lost one, have no place in the heart of selfish trade and number-one-minding gain. Children often get lost in large cities, in more respects than one. In the country the case is vastly different. A case is just called to mind, which will always have a place in our memory.

In the fall of 1850, we were living in a mountainous district of one of the southern States. The usual quiet of our village was broken one morning in October, at day-break, by the ringing of the church bells; and the astonished sleepers were awakened from their slumbers only to be filled with consternation and alarm at being aroused in so unusual a manner. Gaping wonder was soon told that a little girl, six years old, was lost in the mountain! This case was as follows:

The children of a worthy farmer had gone the previous day into the mountain for chestnuts. The little girl was sent by the rest to find the wagon, no great distance off, but got bewildered and took the wrong direction, and so was lost. Immediate search was made by her brothers, which continued till night without success. With anxious hearts they then suspended their vain efforts, and sent off one to tell the sad news to the parents at home.

As soon as the melancholy state of the case was known, the father and family servants, together with some of the nearest neighbors, set out with lanterns for the mountain. The whole night was spent in fruitless search and hallooings. Still the fate of the child was unknown. The chill frost, lone terror of a benighted small child, wild beasts, and a thousand imagined horrors-and the child! oh, who knew its anguish, and the harrowing fears of the parents! Certain death would be easier borne.

Heart-rending and distressing as these facts were to the towns-people, when they were alarmed by the ringing bells, yet what were they to the suffering parental heart! Earnest solicitude for the fate of the child,

and deep heartfelt sympathy for the sorrowing parents was manifest in the expression of every countenance. Some swallowed a hasty breakfast, and others without any, soon started for the High Knob, near to which the little wanderer had last been seen.

On horseback or on foot, the merchant, mechanic, minister, teacher, farmer, all joined earnestly "to seek and to save that which was lost." Brighter Indian summer morning never dawned upon the world, but it was a sad day there. By eight o'clock two hundred persons were in the mountain, scouring it for miles around. Every ravine, glen and nook was thoroughly explored. After some hours the companies under their leaders one by one came straggling in, wearied and disheartened, to the place appointed at the Knob. Their looks plainly enough told their ill A general council was held. Give it up in despair, was advocated by some whose ardor and sympathy died away as their strength had wasted.

success.

I never can forget that group of men. A few seemed to take the matter lightly. But nearly all looked as if in earnest. All the speaking that was done was eloquent. The minister urged them to renew the search. One man there was, I well remember him-his name was Moore -a simple mountaineer, whose eye may never see his name in print, and if he does, may not know what it is unless it be told him he had withal a noble heart-he had been out all the night and morning, "but would never give the hunt up till the little gal was found." His earnest plea inspired new strength and hope.

Dejected there, the brothers of the little lost one stood, and self-condemned for having let her stray, seemed to plead with imploring eyes to "try once more to bring our sister home; oh, try again!"

Yonder, from the thicket, came the father of the lost child-a large and noble-looking man but yesterday. How that night of anxious care and toil has changed him! Haggard in looks, and with his stalwart frame bending as it were under the weight of his grief, he stood before the company, still grasping in his left hand the lantern he had used in the dark night, now gone from the world but not from his heart.

"Men !" said he, "let us take one look more!" To that simple, eloquent stirring, irresistible appeal, all hearts earnestly responded, "we will!" New companies were formed and the search again commenced. Sad and desponding hearts longed for a joyful issue. Hark! that signal: yes! it is the blowing horn-THE CHILD WAS FOUND! Soon, from mouth to mouth, was caught the sound-alive? and the reply was given along the extended lines, yes, alive!

Then did the "welkin ring." Instantly there arose a simultaneous burst of joyful shouting, blowing of horns and firing of guns. The long reverberations echoed among the hill-tops and far down into the vallies. A party of us on horseback brought the child down to the main road, while all the others were gathering to a common point nearer the town. A distance of five miles from where the child left her brothers, over a mountain path, through laurel thicket, the little wanderer's feet were directed by kind Providence to a habitation in the forest--where kindhearted people found her at night-fall by the barking of the dogs, which had driven her into the woods again-and "took her in."

I saw the overjoyed father press his lost, and now found child, to his

heart. The joyful news was sent to the mother-the procession was formed, and in triumphant shouts entered the village, paraded the streets, and then dismissed with cheers, while the little one was carried to her home and waiting mother, a short distance from the town. The rest of the day was spent in thanksgiving.

Our western frontier settlers could tell many a similar story. It has its moral.

If one little girl was worth so much effort, why are multitudes that are in danger of being lost, never cared for? How many are lost, in the country and in the cities! If the body, and this life cause such anxiety, why are the souls and the life to come neglected? Oh, what infinite difference in their value and importance!

If a whole town and country can be aroused to search for a child, why can they not be brought to act for the salvation of their own and others? When first efforts fail, why not try once more! Refuse to eat and sleep till the object is gained. Why not be in earnest, as those men were? How far one can stray in a short time!

Who can feel like a parent for a lost child? So our heavenly Father feels for us. If others would give up, He does not-His love fails not. Oh, that the lost ones might hear the voices, and see the lights that are in the mountains in search of them! Then might angels and men in triumph rejoice that the lost are found, and the dead are alive!

JOY.

BY THE EDITOR.

Seek not the joy that warbleth,
Like an airy sportive song;
The joy that lightly danceth
Like the laughing rill along:
But seek the joy that swelleth
Like the organ's gravest notes;
That like a river rolleth,

Which heaviest burdens floats.

Not joy that post-haste rideth
Along like latest news;
It but a moment shineth,
Like morning's transient dews:
The deep heart never feeleth,
Nor owns its passing power;
But seek the joy that calmeth,
Like evening's thoughtful hour.

Seek not the joy that flasheth
Like a crazy meteor light
Along the dark empyrean

In the solemn dead of night;

But seek the joy that kindleth
Like morning's glowing sky;

That lights the dreary earth beneath-
The glorious heaven on high.

« ForrigeFortsæt »