Orphans’ Friend. Price, $1 a year.) OXFORD, N. O., APRIL 20, 1883. (VOL. VIII. NO. 47 EVEEY YBAE. The spring has less of bri Jitness Every year; And the snow a ghastlier whiteness, Every year. Nor do summer blossoms quicken, ;Nor does^ajutumn frnitage thicken As it did—the seasons sicken 1: v:. V, Every year. lilt is^growire^ darker, colder, '■ Every year; AnS’th'b heart and soul grow older, Every year. I care not now for dancing, NoCtfor eyes with* passion glancing, Love is less and less entrancing Every year. ’Tii becomiiig bleat and bleaker*, Every year; And my hopes .are waxing weaker, Every year. Yea, my limbsAre le^ elastic, And my fancy not so plastic, E'en my habits grow monastic, "-J Every year. Of the loves and sorrows blended, Every year; Of.the charms of friendship ended, Every year. Of the ties that still might bind me, 'U^ti^'Mme.cb'death resigned me, My infirmities remind me ‘ ' Every year. Oh I 'tis sad to loolc before us, Wittf ^i»e' shadows darkening o,er us, Every year. When we see each blossom faded, That to bloom we might have aided, And immortal garlands braided ■ Round the year. Many a spectral beckoning finger, ' Year by year, Chides me that so long I linger, Year by year. Bfirly’Cchbrades there arc sleeping jf^ip-i^hyard,' :’frhither, weeiping 1—alone unwept—am creeping, Every year. T'o ttie past go more dead faces, Every year; As the loved leave vacant places. Every year. Everywhere the sad eyes, meet us, In the evening's dark they greet us, A^.to.cotoe to. them entreat ns^, •Every year. “Yovi are growing old,” they tell usj 'iiw ’ ' year. ^an win no new affection You have only recollection, Deeper sorrow and dejection, Every year. Yes r the shotes'of life are shifting Every year..; And we are seaward dritting, Every year. Old places changing fret us, The living more forget us. There are fewer to regret us, Every year. But the other life draws nigher, Every yearj And its morning star climbs higher, Every year. Earth’s hold on us grows slighter, And the'heavy burden lighter, And^Chg tdayn injinortal brightef, r ■'— - -Evety year. ‘Cifrlailiiient of an obit- uary iwit^c^ is ’a Tery delicate matter, and we g0ii,erally find; th^ tljie p^:ts we cut out are tbo'se^-'specially dear to the wriljer; Tlie Messenger, edited by qiar pleasant friend, Dr. P. S. says the same of his experienc^j And, adds: “ We once a- brother h}'’ changing a . sentence, and yet ^ the only thing we cut out was the announcement that some. ol(| in Israel had died of cholei^a mfantym.-—N, Y. THE CONTRAST. “He’S such a little fellow!” “Little or big, the boy’s been stealing, and prison's the place for theives.” “I didn’t mean to steal; 1 only just took two rolls cause I was so hungry,’’ sobbed the boy. “But didn’t you know it wrong to take them?” said ’ a gentleman who nad looked quietly on while the constable grabbed little Jake Melborne by the collar and shook him. till the little fel low’s teeth chattered in his head. Perhaps they shook from cold also, for the snow lay thick upon the ground and roofs, and the old clothes which covered him let the north wind in through many a hole. “Don’t know,’’ said the boy doggedly; “can’t-starve.*-' “Why, he’s Mary Fellowes’ boy,” said the • baker’s wife, coming out pf the, shop, “and she lying dead , and cold in her grave. Sure he’s welcome to a bite from me at anytime. Constable, let him go; I’ll See that he’s taken care of.’^ And the kind-hearted woman took the frightened little fellow away to warm and comfort him as his. mothet ,m%ht have ddhe! ^ But across the street stood another miserable docking ob ject, a man with blear eyes and slouching gait, who only a few years ago had held Jake, then a fair little haby,| in his arms while the baby’s mother looked 'on with de', light and thought of the time when her boy would be as fine a fellow as his father. Now she was dead, and her poor little boy, with ho one-to care for him or teach him any better, wandered about the streets and stole his bieakfast when he could not stand his hunger any longer. “Do you know what makes the difference?” said the gen tleman, who had before spo ken to his own two warmly- dressed boys at his side. “Drink,” said one of them, with an expression of con tempt. “John Fellowes is a regular old sot.” “Yes, but there was a time when he was as fine and well* dressed a boy as either of you. 1 went to the same school with him, and there wasn't a staarter fellow in the class. But he thought it manly to stQoke cigarettes and to drink cider,, and then, when these were not. strong enough, as he greW'older, cigars and juleps. After he was married and had a boy of his own, he couldn’t make money enough 'to sup port his wife and baby and pay for smoking and drinking top, so he first broke his wife's heart, and now lets his boy go found the streets neglected while he gets more and more worthless every day. Do you wonder, when I look 'round my-pleasant home and note the contrast, I am very un willing that my boys should learn to smoke cigarettes or drink cider?”—Youth's TerU'^ ^erance Banner. ONE-IEEA MSN- It is usual to sneer at what are called one-idea men; the popular view is, that such men are out of balance, aud are more to be pitied than cnticised, that they are nar row minded and therefore cannot be depended upon as leaders. It is worth while to notice that these views are confined to men of unworthy, unimportant, impractical and few ideas. The men who have been most successful in tlieir callings have been of the same species with the men of one idea. They have had one great, worthy, practical and all-controlling idea ; they have made a hobby of it, and have rode it to mill, to market, and to meeting; they have talked, laughed, wept and prayed about it; they have spent and been spent lor it. Columbus rode a hobby from court to court until he found a patron, and then he rode his bobby westward over un known seas until he found a new world. Palissy, 'the dis coverer of the glaze upon por celain, was counted by his neighbors as a wild enthusi ast, when, by his experiments, he ‘impoverished his family, and finally threw his furniture into the kiln where he was baking his pieces, because Ite had neither fuel, money nor credit. Edison, spending tens of thousands in experiments, would have been called still more Wild had he lived in the times of Palissy. What would Henry Bergh accomplish for the suffering dumb animals, and for the suffering little hu man animals that are not dumb, were it not for.bis un- abating application of his one idea? And what would Wes ley have accomplished had he lost sight of his purpose, expressed in his saying, “Let me be a man of one Book?” And what cannot the man ac complish who does his work as if there were no other work to do?—Northern Advocate. A TUREISS LOVE LETTER. Lii.h Men who have money to loan take the greatest possible la (heir business. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when in Turkey, sent a friend a Turkish love letter, in the shape of a Small box containing a pearl, a glove, a jonquil, a piece of pa- !per, a pear, a cake of soap, a bit |of coal, a rose, a straw, a piece lof cloth, some cinnamon, a match, a gold thread, hair, a grape, a piece of gold wire and a pod of pepper. Taken out of the box in the above order, these articles signified : ^^Fairest of the young thou art as slender as this clove j you are an unblown rose. I have long loved you, and you have not known it. Have pity on my pa^ion; I faint every hour. Give me some hope; I am sick with love. May I die and all my years be yours.May you be pleased and your sorrow mine. Suffer me to be your slave • Your price is not to be found. But my fortune is yours, I burn, I burn; my flame consumes me. Do not turn away your face. Crown of my head, my eyes; I die, come quickly!” The pepper pod standing for the postcript; ''Send me an answer,” A statistician has estimated that courtships average three tons of coal each. THE FORESTS OF NORTH CARO LINA- The world is generally finding out something about the marvelous forests of North Carolina, and we have to re peat what we have often said before to our people—hold on to your timber as long as pos sible. There is untold wealth in our forest lands, and time will surely prove it. The Bhiladelphia Record has to say on the subject; For variety and luxuriance of growth there are no forests like those in North Carolina. The State despite the ravages of the wasteful turpentine industry, still contains nearly 40,000 square miles of woodland, in which are to be found about all the tree species of the country. The white pine and hemlock of the North are found side by side with the palmetto and magnolia. Nineteen of the twenty^two species of oaks found east of the Rocky Mountains grow in North Carolina, and the State contains twice as many arborescent species as the en tire continent of Europe. There are all the magnolias, seven in numher^^and the five maples. All the North Amer ican pines, except those of the Pacific slope, are found here. For arboriculture it is proba bly the most favored spot on the globe. All trees, more over grow with a riotous lux uriance that indicates unusu al vitality. Hickories, beech es and chestnuts attain to huge dimensions, while in the same localities may he found tulip trees over one hun dred feet high and measuring thirty feet around. In some exceptionally favored sections there are wild cherry and sassafras trees which have reached a diameter of six feet. The people of this country have not yet begun to com prehend the treasures that are still fast locked in North Carolina'*s almost untrodden forests. “Gentlemen, this universe, up to the edge of the tomb, is not a joke. There are in this life serious differences between the right hand and the left. Nevertheless, in our present career, a man has hut one chance. Even if you come weighted into the world as Sinbad was with the old man of the sea you have bat one chance. Time does not fly in a circle, but forth and right on. The wandering, squandering, dessicated moral leper is gifted with no second set of early years. There is no fountain in Florida that gives perpetual youth, and the universe might be searched probably in vain, for such a spring. Waste your youth; in it you shall have but one chance. Waste your middle life; in it you shall have but one chance. Waste your old age; in it you shall have but one chance. It is an irrever sible natural law that charac ter attains final permanence, and in the nature of things final permanence can come but once. This world is fear fully and wonderfully made, and so are we, and we shall es - cap© neither ourselves nor these stupendous laws* It is not to me a pleasant thing to exhibit these truths from the side of terror; but, on the oth er side, these are the truths of bliss; for, by this very law through which all character tends to become unchanging, a soul that attains a final per manence of a good cliaracter runs but one risk, and is de livered once for all from its torture and uurest. It has passed the bourne, from bo- hind which no man is caught out of the fold. He who is the force behind all natural law is the keeper of his sheep, and no one is able to pluck theui out of his hand. Himself without variableness or shad ow of turning, he maintains the irreversibleness ot all nat ural forces, one of which is the insuflerably majestic law by which character tends to assume final permanence, good as well as bad.”—Joseph Cook. A DEATH PICTURE. Extract from the Address of Hon. A. M. Eeiley Before the Medical College of Virginia, “Come with me, you who be lieve that there is nothing in this human entity save the gases and fluids and earth which respond to chemical analysis—come with me to the chamber whore a lit tle child, an only one, lying on its mother’s lap, is fighting with wasting fever or fatal croup the battle—oh, how unequal—for its little life. Let us cross the threshold without knocking or bidding, for the conventionali ties of life have no place herOj, and out of the gloom of night into that deeper gloom of swift coming death, softly step. How loud the tick of the clock! How spectral the light! Scattered about the floor are the toys with which a mother’s love sought to wean the baby's thought from' the painjthat racks its tiny frame —all useless now, for the gilded sands are hastening to their end. Look down into the mother’s face, homely it may be when measured by the painter's stan dard or the sculptor’s, but radi ant through all its anguish with a divine loveliness which the chisel of Phidias or Raphael's brush would vainly seek forever. Watch her, as with yearningi love, whose mute eloquence ‘ shames all the witchery of words, he answers the sad appeal of those fast dimming eyes—turn ing to her in pathetic wonder— w onder why that tender mother, who failed it never before in trouble or suffering, helps not now. Look down through those brimming eyes, whose gushing tide she stays for baby’s sake, in to that riven heart bursting with the thought that the iragile threads are breaking—swiftly breaking—that soon those eyes, whose radiance outsparkles all the gems of earth, will be dim, di m, forever dim—that soon the prattle which to her fond ear was sweeter than hymns of choir ing seraphs will soon be forever hushed—that soon the little pat tering feet, that only yesterday made sweet melody throughout the house, will move no more ; and a silence which is akin to no other silence known on earth will cast its pall upon that smit ten habitatign.—Hush! the end has coii:e. Let us wait until the first burst of nature’s grief is over—past. Measured by rea son’s standard wo should now only expect rage or vengeance or fear to find expression here; but of these scarcely a trace is seen. Anew and totally distinct group of emotions gather around this tiny form, raising and softening and dignifying this awful scene. Calm-eyed Faith stands there gazing down the ages with look serene, and from Hope’s white wings supernal light floods all the darkness, and Resignation with^teadfast front, and Forti tude with outstretched arm, bearing up this bruised heart and you feel it is not the grim skeleton with scythe and hour glass, nor Atrapos in robe of black who sits despairing at this couch of death, but an angel with tearful byes and compas sion limitless whose baud has soothed even while it smote-” The prospects for cutting the Panamii canal are said to be better than formerly re ported. Seven thousand men are at work upon the canal, and scarcely a dozen laborers are sick in the hospital ; the bills, which were said to be of rock, turned out to he of solt dirt, and the completion of the canal appeara'tp be nearer at hand than the previous ac counts gave reason to expect. - -News and Observer. A Little girl accompanying her mother on a visit to an old lady, the latter showed the child her parrot in a cage by the window, ^framing her at the same time ' not to go too n ear,' lest he should bite her. “Why would he bite me?'" she asked. “Because, my dear, he doesn’t know you.” “Then please tell him that I am Mary Ann.*' & Fiinm, OXFORD, N. C. PURE DRUGS. All STANDARD .Preparations. PRESCRIPTIONS ACCURATELY COMPOUNDED. • ALL NEW ! NO OLD STOCK ON HAND! WARRANTBDg THE BEST I ALSO Clover and Orchard Grass Seeds, and Seed Irish Potatoes. A Fresh Lot ofApplea and Oranges Candies and Confectioneriesj Generally, which are VERY PINE! A large supply of School Books, Stationery, &c., on hand. Any article not in stock will be ordered. ^’Call and see us, we ENOW we can please you. WILLIAMS & FURMAN. MitakelPs old^Stand,