Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1859 — A STRAY MISSIVE. [ARTICLE]

A STRAY MISSIVE.

Chicago, Jan. 2, 1859. f'yiend Davies: Your Indianapolis correspondent, hss evidently never been a sojourner in this wooden Babel, wherein your negligent correspondent has become a permanent dweller, or he would not complain of the muddy streets of your State .Capital. As far superior as the supposed Eden, of the primitive days is above Cairo of the present, is your capital above our windblown and youthful city—that is, as regards conifer’. I have no desire, however, to say one word iii actual disparagement of my present and future home, so long as I continue to fight life’s battle; yet, like humanity generally, I am disposed to find fault, but I hope only where there is cause. Chicago is muddy, and the mud is like that of no other place, it is peculiar; it is often a foggy city; we have all the seasons in twenty-four hours, sometimes; thej wind blows here as it does nowhere else, and when it rains one is reminded of the forty days shower of long ago. Still, Chicago, is healthy; and there is, too, a friendly echo in the wooden sidewalks, familiar and home-like; the exercise of mounting and descending stairs is healthful; there are noble hearts here, too, if one can only find time to get. off for a moment from the commercial Juggernaut and look through quiet streets and stop at genial firesides. And should there not be noble hearts here as elsewhere, even if every man has to plan and work out his own course! I believe there is not one of the many I meet daily, be he who he may, but has some fresh, green ; spot’in his heart, and though it be hid deep i down, and corroded and seared over with what is termed selfishness, there is a way to it. Why not then seek to discover the redeeming traits in humanity, as experience tells up they afford the most permanent gratification, even though the way be rugged as | a mountain defile, and the reward should chance to be small] Yet likQ a small jewel, which is worth m re than a ton of granite, if the gem lie beneath the seemingly immovable rock, we consider it not worth the trouble it may cost to obtain it, so men possessing an innate knowledge that goodness dwells within the human heart, prefer to remain in passive blindness, and breathe curses upon each other rather than use the lever of Charity ar.d discover the hidden treasure.

I agree with Shelley, that could men be taught to love one another this earth would realize Paradise, but Ihe thought is so visionary that even Hope must be sustained on chamelion diet. Men philosophize, moralize, satirize, eulogize. The philosophy is seldom good for anything save to make n misanthrope of the man who indulges in it, and sometimes to engender a little pity for human frailties; it not unfrequently is like the donations of rich relatives, it touches but one faculty faintly—the ear. The basis upon which morality is preached is fear and a threatening of “ills that we know notof;’’ a rotten foundation at best, and one that serves to rob the superstructure of that pureness inspired alone by love, and unattainable save through its influence. To satirize, is to climb to eminence upon a brother’s infirmities, compared to which the red-hot plow-shares of a batbarious age were a light penalty for a misfortune brought about not even by a fault, To eulogize, is frequently to tell the few friends of some great poor man who has starved under the cold shelter of a winter’s sky, that which they always knew; thus to the world reversing the now axiom of Avon’s Bard, “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Metaphysically yours, 1 Quiz.