Decatur Eagle, Volume 1, Number 35, Decatur, Adams County, 9 October 1857 — Page 1

THF DF r a Tii d r a r r r 1 n F IH.IAI I n FA. bF F

VOL. 1.

THE DECATUR EAGLE, PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY MORNING. Offico, <> n Main Street > in the old School House, one Square North of J.& P Crabs’ Store. Terms of Subscription : For one year, $1 50, in advance; $1 75, v ithin 6 jx months; $2 00, after Ihe year has expired if?" No paper will be discontinued until all arrcrages are paid, except at the option of the Publisher. Terms of Advertising: One Square, three insertions, JI 00 Each subsequent insertion, 25 XJ*No advertisement will be considered less than one square; ever one square will be counted and charged as two; over two, as three, etc. JOE PRINTING. We are prepared to do all kinds of JOB WORK, in a neat and workmanlike manner, on theanost reasonable terms. Our material for the completion of Job-work, being new and of the latest styles, we arc confident that satisfaction can be given. Law of Newspapers. 1. Subscribers who do not give express notice ( to the contrary, are considered as wishing to j continue their subscriptions. | 2. If subscribers order the discontinuance of their papers, the publisher may continueto send them until all arrearages are paid. i 3. If subscribers neglect or refuse to take their papers from the office they are held responsible till they have settled the bill and ordered the paper discontinued. 4. If subscribers remove tootherplaces without informing the publisher, and the paper is still sent to the former direction,they are held , responsible. UTThe Court have decided that refusing of ! take a paper from the office, or removed and | leaving it uncalled forisruiMA FAClEwidcnce of intentional fraud. A WALK BY THE OCEAN. BY .MRS. L 11. SIGOURNEY. — Hail, Ocean wide! with surging tide That round the light-house breaks, In conflict with yon frowning Rock, That fierce rejoider makes. — In conflict with the shrinking shore O’er which, with blending spray, Thou hurl’stthe shell and sea-weed back In cold, contemptuous play. What dost thou say?—l own thy sway As thy deep deeps thunders roll, And listen to thy solemn lore With subjugated soul. Bnt Ocuan’s tide, w ith acorn replied, •■Be silent—go thy way; I hold no fellowship with those. The born earth and clay. “With ships they aim my power to tame— I toss them to and fro— I break their navies like a reed, Down to my depths they go. Hence!—speed thy way!—lest wild with spray Some billows seek the shore, And lightly sweep thy wandering feet Whence they return no more.’’ Oh, thou most proud!—whose menace loud Would bid the world take heed , Who rules thee, wiih His line of sand, Like an o’ermastered steed? Even as a felon from his doom Shalt thou recoil with dread, At the strong Angel’s mighty voice, “Thou, Sea! give up thy dead.” Then opening wide thy casket's pride, Shalt thou its prey restore— The beauty and the wealth of earth— From rifled heart and shore; And yearning o’er the spoils that long Lock’d in thy bosom lay. Shall feel beneath a weight of shame Thy life-tide ebb away. The Beauties of Autum. Every person, perhaps, has a favorite | season of the year —some preferring the summer, others the spring, others the winter and others, like ourself, the golden autumn. The zest of our pleasure is Lightened by an infusion of melancholy. I ■Few things are more melancholy than music—none so melancholy as love, which is ■in fact, nothing but the consciousness of a ( desire never to be wholly gratified here 'below. Love is the eager yearning of the soul after the beautiful, which is but another expiession lor the infinite. Doubfiess the fresh green of spring, when the trees stand in genteel half-drcss before the modest sun, is highly refreshing to the mind as well as the eye. But autumn comes to us decked in a thousand colors, painted partly by the hand of decay. It is beauty on the threshold of the tomb, rendered more beautiful and fascinating by the air breathing upon it from beyond. We fancy we never discovered all its loveliness till then. Death itself is marvelously beautiful, in is eternal silence and composure; it Lints the mystery it dares not speak; it seems to have closed its eyes, only that it may indulge in delicious dreams forever. ' All realities seem nothing compared with the ideal creation which throngs upon the soul in death. An autumn is the threshold of death —nature, soft, balmy, like the thoughts of old age, illuminated by the light of heaven. For this reason we love the autumn, and appear to think and feel in it with greatest ease and delight. It is like the diminutive mummy of an Egyptian feast, bidding us viijoy ourselves rapidly, before we depart hence, and are no luvr 1 ' -vet;

THE SECOND WIFE. BY CLARY SYDNEY. “O’re her clay pale and still, What though he mourueth? Soon from his sorrow chill Wearied he turneth. Soon o’er her buried head Memory’s light setteth, And the true-hearted dead Man soon forgetteth.’ 'And must I leave you—the dearest, sweetest, most tender husband that wo-1 man ever had? Oh, Henry, Ido not want to die! and the large emploring eves of the pale, death-struck wife were fixed upon the husband, whose muscular frame was convulsed with an ogony which seemed ! second only to that of death. He could make no answer to thathopeless wail, but he bent lower over the wasted yet still beautiful one, and pressed his burning brow between her cold, pale hands. ‘You poor, dear Henry! You are sorry to lose your loving wife. You cannot save me. I know that if your love could'. help me, I should not die; but it cannot now avail. The voice of the chill waves j has reached my ear. Ob, my husband — dearer than the life blood of my heart —I! must leave you, and my little ones; you j will miss me sorely, Henry; youwill grieve 1 sincerely. 1 know your loving and tender heart; but you will be comforted, and it may be, soon. I ought not to wish it otherwise; but oh, my husband, when there is beside you a younger and a fairer bride, forget not utterly her whose true heart lies cold beneath the ground; and for her sake, because she prayed it of you with her dying breath, deal always kindly and affectionately with her motherless children.’ ‘I will! I will, dear wife—so help me God.’ Thus groaned the husband. A little longer, and, clinging to the last to the strong hands of her husband, the true wife went down into the river; and the voice that had been Henry’s music never fell on his ear again. She bad been the love of his youth, and of his manhood: he thought that her life was entwined with the life of bis heart. — That he could ever again find joy in love of woman, he did not once dream; the | thought was sacrilege. Yet, ere eight i months bad passed over his head, he was | rejoicing in the possession of a new bride! I She was young and handsome, gay and I selfwilled. She had married a rich and handsome man, and she was higly delighted because of her good fortune. There were three children, to be sure; three poor little, wild, shy creatures, that ‘made one nervous only to look at them;’ and some of her friends had warned her to beware how she put herself into the hard and thankless position of a step-mother; but she had laughed at their fears, and assured them that her lover was sufficiently i devoted to her to keep the children all out of her way. He’d send them to a boarding-school, or even drown, them all, if she only said the word. She loved her Hue-looking husband with a sort of selfish, sensual passion, and by her caresses and cajoleries, she acquired such ascendancy over his reason and will, that he was ready to do anything and everything she desired. He packed the children all off, to board and go to school in the country; he tore down partitions in the house, and tore up trees out of the house, to suit the whims of his Dido. After one had lived a month in the house with these two persons, he would never again wonder at the folly of Samson. Celia, (that was the name of new wife,) was exceedingly fond of expensive clothing. The garments of her predecessor were very elegant and costly. They had been purchased with her own money; for unlike Celia, the first Mrs. Severn had not come a dowerless bride to her husband’s arms. Celia ransacked every chest, trunk, and drawer in the entire house, and every- ' thing that she fancied she took for her \ own use; all that remained of the raiment of the first wife was then given to the sisj ters of the second. When Amy Severn, the motherless ' daughter of Henry, came home for a vtsit I she could find nothing that had been her mother’s save as she saw it transformed I into some garment for the strangers with whom her father’s house was overun.— Elegant velvet-faced wrappers were rig- ■ ged°on by the solvently sisters of Celia, and with them switching here and there, I those genteel young ladies would go into J the kitchen and make cake or bread.— I Amy, child though she was. felt her blood boiling with indignation at the sight; but not a word did she dare to say. It did not take the child long to discov j er that neither she nor her twin brothers, Alfred and Albert, had any longer an efficient friend or protector in their father’s ! house; and when the time came for her I denarture, she made no objection to goling back tc the ..•tu.'-ry

“Our Country’s Good shall ever be our Aim—Willing to Praise and not afraid to Blame.”

DECATUR, ADAMS COUNTY, INDIANA, OCT. 9, 1857.

Her brothers were rejoiced to see her, |< and were anxiously hoping that she would 11 bring them news of a call to go home. ‘For this man does whip us so, sis; we can’t please him, any way we can fix it. | We have tried to be good, bnt he scares I us so that we can't learn our lessons, to save our lives. Won’t father let us go back home?’ ‘You havn’t got any home, boys; nor I haven’t Father’s house won’t ever be our home any more. Our roems are all I taken up. Everything mother left has been changed; all her clothes are used up;! and nobody in the whole house wants us I there. Oh, dear! oh, dear, dear,! what! a dreadful thing it is to have the mother’. die!’ And the poor little girl dropped upon the grassy earth, and began to weep sorely, while her brothers cried from sympathy. ‘Then have we got to stay here always, sister? asked Albert, in a piteous tone. ‘I don’t know, dear brother, I’m sure I don’t know, at ail, what is going to be-1 come of us. But one thing I know-—1 I wish that we had all been buried up with I mamma, when they put her in the ground. ! And the child rocked io and fro, with her I small hands covering her face. The bitterness of elder years was waking in the heart of the child of fourteen, it was true as she had said about her home. It was no more the same place. Celia had coaxed, and flattered, and teased, till she had brought about a complete alteration of all the household appointments. Could the spirit of the sleeping Amy have returned to the house and the chamber in which she died, it would hardly have known where it was. And would Amy have known for her dignified J and self-possessed husband, the figure that was upon its knees at the feet of a ] pouting beauty seated on a crimson i lounge? ‘Get up, I tell you. It is no use ’ for you to go on your knees to me. I’ll nev- 1 er say I love you, and I’ll never let you kiss me again, as long as you live, unless you solemnly promise to keep those young one’s away from here for two years longer.’ Not to spend time to repeat more of that conversation, it shall suffice to say that the promise was given, and peace restored. A letter of complaint and entreaty from the children had caused their father to make an effort to obtain permission torecall them. Mr. Severn had taken it from the office the evening before; and as he rode homeward through the bright moonj light, he read it. Il troubled him as he icad thus, in the hand-writing of his daughter, ‘We are very unhappy here, dent father; we are afraid that even you do not love us; and we fee] as though we I had not a single friend in all the world.’ His horse stoped; Mr. Severn looked up: ■he was just opposite to the grave of ! s wife. The cold, white marble that stood i above the heart that had so worthily and ! truly loved him, looked like a spirit standI ing there to reproach him. The memory, almost the sound, of Amy’s parting charge came suddenly upon him—‘For my sake, because 1 asked it with my dying breath, deal always kindly and affectionately with my children.’ A shudder shook his frame, and a sharp arrow of remorse shot quickly through his heart. He gathered up his reins, and lode away resolving that he would hearafter be true to his vow. But sunlight and a loving wife proved stronger than moonlight and a dead one, and the result has been seen. Mr. Severn thenceforward carefully avoided the path that led by the grave of Amy. He would not listen to any reproaches from memory or conscience.— He had enough of present joy, and he was determined to be happy. Celia was pet and plaything for him, and ho did not miss his children while she was good-natured, or in loving mvod.— But l,yn-and-by*» J>« begun to learn that this was not at'all times. When she had got things all pretty well suited to her mind, she began to relax in her efforts to amuse her husband. She had a very violent temper, and this now asserted itself more and more frequently. Not a few times, when Henry would fain have had her, with the enticing ways which she could so well assume, charm away some trouble from his mind she had angrily driven him from her presence, saying she was ‘perfectly sick and tired of the sight | of him.’ Then, indeed, did his heart look backward with a painful yearning; and he thought longingly of his children. < It was on one of these occasions that, Severn walked resolutely to the stable, and ordering his carriage to be made ready, drove off to the place where his poor children had passed their long exile The ways of transgressors are, even in this worldl apt to be heard ways; and , poor Severn arrived at the farmhouse on the banks of the L. river, in time to see his twin sons lying still and pale, their j bright curls yet damp from the river where they had died. The Utt 1c fellows had gone down to bathe, and one, losing | Lis foulirg,- h ; -d. called fei help to .Leoti;-1

er, who had hastened out to his own 1 death. When Celia next beheld her husband ho came bearing the dead bodies of his sons, and accompanied by his poor, desoL.te, and weeping daughter. The sweet little boys were buried in one coffin, and in their mother’s grave. They had been loving and lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not devided. it was long ere the effects of this shock wore i off from the mind of Henry; but it went ■at last—at least all outward effect; and with it went his resentment against his | wife; and his manifested affection towards ' his daughter. Celia was jealous of every g\.rk of love shown to Amy, and it was the surest way to displease her, to show kindness or generosity to the lone child - So Amy shrank away as much as possible from sight. The birth of a fine ! young son; and, then, in due time, another, seemed to fill up the father’s heart; and he almost forgot bis first born child. The house was gay, and generally over- ; run with company, but few were they who ' ever got speech with the pale, pensive- | looking Amy. Many supposed her an ; adopted child, or some dependent relative. Amy was one of those strangely adhesive creatures, who cling through life to whatever or whoever they once fully love.— She mourned for and missed her mother and her brothers, just as much when she entered her eighteenth year, as she did when they first left her. She had no disposition to seek for friendship and love out \ of her family; and could not have it in, she lived, or rather suffered, on without it. Little pains had been taken to cultivate her moral nature. She had | been sent to good masters of intellectual I knowledge; but was almost a young I heathen with respect theology, and all I its attendent truths and duties. When the voice ofZoce sung to her its first low song, Amy was intoxicated by i its sweetness. That there was refuge and support for her poor neglected heart was a strange, bewildering joy. She had not dared to hope it—could it be possible that she was taken as one beloved to the heart of him upon whom she had long looked as a prince among men. Amy knew nothing of the art of concealing joyful or loving emotions—aud when the man who had for many months been weaving his net about her, at length, with words of tenderest pity and wormestlove, won her to his arms, she could not do other than reveal to him the measureless delight and gratitude of her ardent nature. He received this confidence with exultation and self-reproach: exultation—for he knew now that she was his irrevocably—his, in all her youthful and unborrowed charms: self-reproach—for ho had won her to repose within a villain's arms.— Poor Amy! she disappeared from her , father’s house; and no where could he ever find her. His efforts were long continued and earnest; for bis mind misgave him regarding his unnoticed child. He feared how it was—that missing the love that home should have given her, she bad been lured away by what she deemed was a better and truer love. Years passed by, and when six had gone there came a letter to Henry Severn. It ran thus:— “My dear Father: —When you read this letter, your wicked and lost Amy will be where reproof and shame can not reach her —deep in the grave. Nobody at home seemed to love me. — I never had a cheerful, happy day there after mamma died. Dear Father, I always loved you; but I knew that you did not care about having me with you —so 1 kept alone till I got afraid of my own ! shadow. I spent hours and hours in the ' arbor near the river. Once when I was there a gentleman —who was your friend —found me. 1 had always admired him. I felt a great awe of his beauty, his knowledge nud biouji*© ‘-ft/r he was ninny years older than 1. That be should speak to or notice me I had not thought; but he did. Ho came into the arbor and sat down to talk with me. He made a wreath of flowers and put them on my head, and said that I was as sweet and lovely as the flowers. No one had ever said such a thing to me till then. His talk was all strangely pleasant, and when the next morning 1 saw him stand again before me I was very glad; yet very much confused. He came every day, and my life grew bright and happy.— That arbor was the birth-place of ail my j joy—it was my Eden, —I wish that in its dear shade I could be laid to die—but I shall never see it more. My friend took me to his breast and called himself my lover; and told me that I must consent to go away to a happy home with him. I looked backward on the darkness; and forward on the blessedness of a life with him 1 loved; and all things else retljed from my sight aud thought. Then I confessed that for his love 1 was ready and glad to give up all things. He bore I me hither —.’tis a sweet, secluded spot—l i will not tell you -there, so; you w;l! net

care to look upon a grave of infamy; and j you must not know his name who was my I ruin, (or you would feel that you must: avenge your child’s and your own wrongs. Yet he has been ever most kind to me. True, in all things to which he pledged himself, he has been—and 1 have been happy —happier than 1 had ever hoped to be. But it is almost over—my life is spent, and I go—l know not wither. 1 have asked him to bring me a bible, bu’ he only says: — ‘No, no, my Amy. That is a book that would do you only harm. It would distress you, sweet, with its grim terrors. I Have faith in nie. Who else has loved you so? I tell you that one so gentle and so lovely as you are need not fear to die —if die you must. In me your trust’Sliall be, and you shall sleep beloved and comforted upon my breast.’ Such has he ever been to me; yet he j lias made me yield in all things to his will ! ruling most tenderly, but absolutlv. It I had wished to leave him I never should have had power to depart—and oh! Fath - : er, I never have wished it. [f ever you! should discover him, harm him not; for,! though he made me wliat 1 am, he loved me far better than you did. Forgive him for that love’s sake, and for the kindness with which he has cherished me. I will not reproach you, but if you are tempted to curse your child remember that you might have s yed her—remem ■ her that she was a motherless, neglected, unloved girl; and that she, at the first was guilty of no greater sin than to love dearly the only one who ever cared for her. llej member that her life is finished, and that her poor, senseless clay sleeps, to know ! no more joy orsorrow—and remember that while dying she still still thought of, and loved, her father. Dear Father, I can write no more—farewell, a long farewell. From your unworthy, but ever-loving I daughter, Amy. Henry Severn read this letter with haggard look and when it was finished he rose up and went to the grave of his wife —that lost one’s mother. There was a grief now planted in his breast, that all the arts and blandishments of the selfish Celia could not wile away. A blow had struck him whose smart he must carry to his grave. How the Devil Lost. We heard a few days ago, an old story told that was as good as new, and here is the substance of it. It should be dedicated “Delinquent Subscribers.” We have a good many ‘friends who we hope, will read it with tears in their eyes: A young man who ardently desired wealth, was visited by his Satanic Majesty, who tempted him to promise his soul for eternity, if he could be supplied on this | earth with all the money he could use.— The bargain was concluded—the devil was to supply the money, and was at last to have the soul, unless the young man could spend more money than the devil could furnish. Years passed away—the young man married, was extravagant in his living, built palaces, speculated wildly—lost and gave away fortunes, and yet his coffers were always full. He turned politician, and bribed his wav to power and fame without reducing his pile of gold. He became a fillibuste*’, and fitted out ships and armies, but his banker honored all his drafts. He went to St. Paul to live, and paid the unusual rates of interest for all the money he could borrow, but though the devil made a wry face when he came to pay the bills, yet they were all paid. One expedient after another failed—the devil counted the time —only two years—that he must wait for the soul, and mocked the efforts of the despairing man. One trial more was resolved upon—the man started a newspaper. The devil growled at the bills at the end of the first quarter—was savage in siv months-—njoJanoLoJJy in nine and ‘broke’ ‘dead broke,’ at the end of a year. So the the paper went down, but the soul , was saved. ---Atliteral Point Dem. I Jokes by Transposition.— Con— What is the difference between the Pope’s bar1 ber and an insane showman? j Ans— One is a shaving Roman and the j other is a raving showman. 1 Con— What is the difference between 'an earnest clergyman at a campmeeting land a gluttonous man? Ans.— One dins at sinners and the other sins at dinners. Con.— What is the difference between ■ the look out in the city Hail steeple and a j schoolsmaster’s switch? Ans.— One rings a bell and the other ! brings a yell. Con.— What is the difference between ( a horse and a postage stamp? -One you lick with a stick, and I the other vou stick with a lick. — ~ Bus; to kiss. Re-bus; to kiss again. ! Blunder-bus; two girls kissing each oth- ’ er. Omni-bus; to kiss all the girls in the : room. Bus-tcr; a general kisser. i btr. "cum; a thousand kisses in juc

Napoleon nt Waterloo. Napoleon, when be had seen his Old Guard recoil, felt his great heart sink.— Several times he changed color, and looking on the field with tliat wondering gaze dial seems to expect to banish some hideous vision, lie panted for breath, and caught at his words for utterance. ‘The guard! the guard!’ said: he ils sont >»eles!’ (they are mingled in ahaep)! It is said that at this awful moment the officers around him obsetved such a gloom coming over that expressive face of passion that they expected him every moment to yield to some sudden burst of fury and desperation. He bad measured himself with Wellington, and, like the too daring Hotspur, his long career of glory had been frustrated in .a single field. They even say that he wanted to plunge with his horse amidst the crumbled guard, and perish with his glory. But Bertrand, or Boult—for the trait is attributed to both alternately by different writers—-laid hold of the bridle, and turning the Lorso around, exclaimed: ‘Your majesty must not go there; the enemy are already forI lunate enough.’ Those who say ihat he tlid from the field do him injustice; they forget the man they are speaking of.— When he had seen the bailie lost, his ar|my in a tangle of confussion, not a regiinent not a company together-what had he to do but to return witii the wind to Paris? But before he flees look at that terri- ! Lie ground! Can it be possible that it is | lie, Napoleon, the conqueror of kingdoms, the worlds hero, greatest of men since i Caesar, who has been defeated, crushed, ! annihilated in one baltle? Is he the fugitive? Is that routed army his? What, his? Where are the proud eagles that seemed to live themselves ns they gave life to , those stalwart grenadiers whose long gray arms lifted them up into the air? What is the drum doing now to inflate the solddiers heart? It is torn and silent on tbu [ field, so is the arm that used to beat it so ! gaily. Where are the close columns that i formed a rampart about their leader as he moved along? Where is that solemn, measured tread that shook the earth as I ten thousand feet came down upon it in harmony and awe? Look at the mighty spirit as he contemj plates the scene of desolation. Is this ! the end of so many battles aud campaigns? lls this the result of so many vigils, schemes and enterprises? Has he wasted a long life of action for this? Is it for this I he perverted the revolution, and bartered i the liberties of mankind? Oh, it was a terrible fall to soar so high, and then to | drop down suddenly like a wounded bird i shot by the fowler! Who shall paint that ! maddened look of grief and woe as he sits crumpled half up on his charger, ! whose pride of glory is gone, like his masiter’s? Noble animal! look, look how be 1 stands up in the air paralyzed with shame! \ for he carries Napoleon, and has never learned to flee! The Lilly and the Rose. j Tell me, ye lovely daughters of the rough dark earth, who gave you your beautiful shapes? Surely, by dainty fingershave you been formed! Wliat race of tiny spirits rose from your petals, and j what was your delight when they rocked themselves on your leaves? Tell me, ye ' peaceful flowers, how they arranged themselves fortheir joyful task, and how they ! nodded and beckoned to each other when in such various forms they spun their finest ! threads, so manifold, and so adorned?— You are still, sweet children of bliss, and enjoy, in silence, your existence. The I instructive fable shall relate what your lips withhold: —In days long past, when ! the earth was yet a naked rock, a friend- ! ly group of nymphs bore upon it the vir--1 gin soil, and favoring master-spirits stood I ready to plant with flowers the hitherto ! barren ground. Variously they scpcrated for their employment. Already, under the jnow, upon the small, cold grass, modest Humility ventured forth and wove tho self-consealing violet. Hope stepped lon behind her, and filled with cooling I balm the little cups of tho refreshing hyacinth. Now advanced a proud and shining troop of many-colored beauties; | the Tulip raised high her head: the Narcissus, with languishing eyes, glance smiling around. Other kindred spirits busi- ! ed themselves in various ways, and adorned the earth, rejoicing over n great part , of their work, faded and departed, Venus ■ spoke thus to her Graces: —’Why tarry you, sisters of loviness? Rise, and weave I also from your charms a mortal and visible flower.’ They sank to the earth beneath, and Aglaja, with innocence; formI ed the Liily; Thalia and Euphrosj ne with sisterly hand, wove the flower of joy and love—the virgin Rose. Many flowers of the field and garden envied each other; the Lilly and the Rose envied none, but were themselves envied by all. The sister Graces had formed them inseparable, and, sister-like, they bloomed together, nourished by the seasons, and shedding J beauty on each other. Upon thy cheek, • also, O maiden! blooms the lily and tho ■ rose; may also the graccs--Innocence, Joy, I .uid Love,, ever dwell there, united.

NO. 35.