Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1880 — The Romance of Death. [ARTICLE]

The Romance of Death.

It is not a little singular that the Greeks have scarcely ever failed to make the deaths of their literary heroes as marvelous as their lives. Homer, they tell us, died of a broken heart, because he could not guess a riddle. As Horace had been warned by a witch that a chatterbox would be his death, so had Homer been warned by an oracle that he f ould be killed by a riddle. And his lt>y came. Seeing, or rather hearing, fe the tradition of his blindness is too universal to be discredited—some young fishermen in a boat, he asked them what sport they had ..si Fhey replied: “As many as we we left; as many as we could not ca’ct * e carried with us.” This was too much for the author of the Iliad. He guessed and guessed, till he could guess no longer, and finally died of sneer vexation. According to Gregory Nazianzen, Justin Martyr, and Eustathius, Aristotle went off in precisely the same way, because he could not understand a more interesting riddle set by nature, namely, the cause of the ebbing and flowing of the Eurfpus. “Since,” he indignantly exclaimed, “I can not conceive the Euripus, let the Euripus receive me.” Dlodorous, the ingenious inventor of the "horned” and “veiled” sophism, having met with his match in onq Stilpo, who “caught” him with anqfher sophism, which he was unable to solve, went home, wrote a book about it, and died of despair.

There is no trait more valuable than i determination to persevere when the •ight thing is to be accomplished. We ire inclined to give up too easily in try. njjor unpleasant situations, and the ftoint I would establish with .myself, if ftie choice was again within my grasp, Would be never to, relinquish my hold on a possible success if mortal strength or brains in my case were adequate to the occasion. That was a capital lesson which a learned professor taught one of his students in the lecture room after some chemical experiment The lights had been put out in the hall, and by accident some small article dropped on the floor from the professor’s hand. The professor lingered behind, endeavoring to pick it up. “Never mind,” said the student, “it is of no consequence to-night, sir, whether we find it or no.” “Thatjs true,” replied the professor, “but it is of grave consequence to me, as a principle, that I am not foiled in my determl nation to find it.” Perseverance can sometimes equal genius in its results. “There are only two creatures,” says Eastern preverb, “who can surmount tte_ pyramids —the eagle and the snail 1”

William Buckley, .a British soldier, convicted of receiving stolen property, or of being concerned in an attempt upon the life of the Duke of Kent, was sentenced to transportation to Australia for life. lie escaped, and fellin with a tribe of natives, with whom he resided thirty-three years without meeting a white man until he discovered a party of tourists, and saved them from a treacherous attack by a wandering band of native warriors. It is believed that he owed his safety to his gigantic size and ferocious appearance. .A more romantic explanation is that, having taken a spear from the grave of a dead chief, he was supposed by the natives to be. their leader come back to life iu a new* body. Buckley says that these people imagined the world was supported by props, which were in charge of a man who lived at the extremity of the earth, and that unless the props were renewec from time to time, the whole fabric would tumble to pieces.

Robert Burns’ nieces, Agnes and Isabella, reside near Ayr, Scotland. “They live,” says a tourist, “in a little low stone cottage with thatched roof. Everything idicates a lack of this world’s goods, yet is neat and artistic, with flowers and pictures all about the room. They entertained us with talks about their uncle, and showed us some letters which have never been published, and with true Scotch hospitality ottered us some cake of their own make —made of Australian flour which they had had in the house two years; and three kinds of wineone of their own make from grapes grown in their own little yard.” Many persons, when they find themselves in danger of shipwreck in the voyage of life, throw their treasures overboard, only to fish them up again when the storm is over. [CiacinnaU Iriah OtttMn. ] Mr. O. O’Oallahan, of 171 Sycamore street, is another grateful witness to the infallible power of St. Jacobs Oil, which he tells us has made a new man of him.