I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as well as most persons do. But the Capitalist’s economy in rags and his liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of his curious parsimony in old linen.
I do not know where our Young Astronomer got the notions that he expresses so freely in the lines that follow. I think the statement is true, however, which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, that “the non-clerical mind in all ages is disposed to look favorably upon the doctrine of the universal restoration to holiness and happiness of all fallen intelligences, whether human or angelic.” Certainly, most of the poets who have reached the heart of men, since Burns dropped the tear for poor “auld Nickie-ben” that softened the stony-hearted theology of Scotland, have had “non-clerical” minds, and I suppose our young friend is in his humble way an optimist like them. What he says in verse is very much the same thing as what is said in prose in all companies, and thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody that will say it for them,—not a few clerical as wall as “non-clerical” persons among them.
Wind-clouds and star-drifts.
V
What am I but the creature
Thou hast made?
What have I save the
blessings Thou hast lent?
What hope I but Thy
mercy and Thy love?
Who but myself shall
cloud my soul with fear?
Whose hand protect me
from myself but Thine?
I claim the rights of
weakness, I, the babe,
Call on my sire to shield
me from the ills
That still beset my
path, not trying me
With snares beyond my
wisdom or my strength,
He knowing I shall use
them to my harm,
And find a tenfold misery
in the sense