Newspapers / The Era (Raleigh, N.C.) / Nov. 27, 1873, edition 1 / Page 7
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the weekly. eraV V rJHiK I i V H he A FAMILY READING. .Letter lrom Dr. Mmisey. This communication was read, by order of Bishop Keener, to the Holstoa Conference, and the fol lowing resolution was unanimously adopted bv the Conference m . . . ijUri' liesoived, That this Conference do Hereby tender to Dr. Wm. E. Munsey their hearty Christian sym pathy in his deep affliction, and will earnestly beseech the Great Head of the Church to restore him speedily to his former health and usefulness. E. E. Wiley, Frank Richardson. Marion, Va., Oct. 18, 1873. r Mr. Editor: It is published ' from one end of this country to the other that I use stimulating spirits too freely I heir use 1 have en tirelv abandoned, preferring to be sick, or dead, than to lay myself liable any longer to such complaints. I used them by medical, and other wise respectable, advisement. Their use saved my life. I was a poor boy, and had to sup port, single-handed, for many years, a mother and five children. I did it most of the time by manual la bor, as a hireling. I had little time to go to school three months will comprise all the time which was of anv nroht to me. lhen 1 had to walk several miles to the school house, after cutting, and often car- rvinir upon my shoulders lrom a neighboring ridge, enough wood to supply the necessities of the family for h winter day returning at night, doing my work, and learn ing my hysons by the light of pine knots and chips. In the meantime God regenerated me, and six years afterward tailed of God to preach I started, without an education, to mv first and only Circuit, three hundred and forty miles away, on foot, with but So in my pockt. I was furnished some money by the llev. A. G. v oriey, ot the liolston Conference (God bless him !) to en able mo to get to my work. 15ut 1 had to deny myself the privilege of cutting, save ouee, lrom Bristol, Tenn., to Charleston, Tenn., and sovt ntv-fivo miles of the road was then travelled by the stage. Thus I started to preach study ing evt ry where, and under all cir cumstances, and sometimes nearly all niht, to try to make myself an approved workman. My record in the liolston Conference is well known. In 18G6 I was sent by Bish op Early to Alexandria, Va. Al ways having a feeble, nervous con stitution, and never flinching in my life from the post of duty and dan ger, my health rapidly began to give way. Exhorted to use stimu lants, I refused. During the eigh teen months I was stationed in Al exandria I tasted ardent spirits but a few times, and then in only a few cases of real illness never as a bev erage. At the end of my term in Al exandria I ought to have located for one vear, but 1 had a horror of such a step. I was then removed by Bishop Doggett to Baltimore. Baltimore was our frontier work. The membership was small. I had to make my own congregation. With such an inspiration I gathered up all my fetble powers and did my best, in the meantime helping other charges all I could. My efforts to preach at this time were succeeded by a kind of convulsive vomit, and this often followed by a severe at tack of cramp colic, which at sev eral times threatened my life. I was told by friends and among them the late Dr. Thomas E. Bond, M. D., and President of the Medi cal University of Maryland to use a small portion of whiskey or brandy after preaching, and it would prevent the vomiting. I had to do it or give up my station and stop preaching. 1 tried it, ef fected a cure, and counteracted, after a time, the tendency to colic. The amount used was small. The first summer 1 was in Baltimore, 1 was threatened with paralysis; my health seemed to give away almost entirely, and I was released from my work for nearly four months. I recommenced my work in Octo ber; but, to fill the pulpit, had to give up, in a great degree, pastoral visiting. The state of my health caused me to accept the position of Secretary of tho iioard of foreign Missions. During that summer, I was threatened with another attack, and lost about three months from my work ; but after that my health, for the first time, began to recuper ate in such a way that I thought I would have no more trouble and if I had not been put back into the regular work for a year more I would not have been ineffective, as I have now been for twelve months. Our troubles in Baltimore in 187 kept me at my post during the summer, till I fell there. 1 stayed, not because I was able to do th whole work, but to prevent a de moralization. I had to uesi imulants or desert my post. In addition to G. Byrd, M. D., of Baltimore, being one or the physicians who made the diagnosis). I have suffered hor ribly with neuralgia. My brain would not bear opiates; again I had to use whiskey or brandy. I ceased awhile last February, but wras com pelled to resume their use for awhile. I always used them against mv will; and one great purpose of my coming to the country was to get my nearves gradually relaxed from the tension of twenty years, so I could live without a stimulant. I was making a battle for life, and m me it was no sin, hence I never concealed it, my intense -borrow of paralysis may have caused me to exaggerate my danger; it threw a gloom over my soul, and the year to me has been one of darkness though I could feel the strong hand of God leading me through the shadows. But he knoweth the way that 1 take; when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.' I could have spared a leg, an arm, or even an eye, but my lault Jay not in them. God touched the point ot my ambition, and I will abide his time. He performeth the thing that is appointed for me, and many such thingsare with him.' Ineverdream- ed that I could and would be mis understood, and traduced as a com mon drunkard, or that any of my brethren would ever have believed it. Bur neuralgia or no neuralgia, paralysis or no paralysis. I have abandoned its use, in any quantity and in all circumstances, except the most extraordinary i.e., it must be a matter of immediate life and death, and never in the sense of a tonic, or to relieve pain, or in any continuous sense whatever. It would be well for all time to come, under God, after careful thought, to the same conclusion. In the end all stimulants are a yreat physical and moral curse. When I am able to work without a stimulant, I will work; when 1 am not, I will rest. I sacrifice myself to emergen- cies, without, navemg me power in all instances to meet them. 1 ought to have taken the advice of friends, and have gone to places where I would have had less respon sibility and a better support. Not being able to take work at the last session ol the Baltimore Conference; and being too young a man to take a superannuate! rela tion and a Hipernumerary relation would have -eft upon me some measure ol responsibility, which I wish to avoid I located and wept" like a child when the appoint ments were read. I will be in reg ular itinirancy when God gives me strength to meet fully its responsi bilities. My health is now better. Your Brother, W. E. Munsey. Jonesboro, Tenn., Oct. 17, 1873. Our Sunset on the Hill. The wind's low voice. was silent, The whispering trees were still, When last we watched the sunset, love, Our sunset on the hill. You said its glow was shedding Its crimson on my cheek, And that my hair was tangled in Its last, great golden streak. Then, in some sudden impulse, ion drew me to your heart. As if t' were heaven to hold me so. As if t'were death to Dart. Low sank the sun and lower, And dark began to creep ; It stole the gold from out my hair, Tho crimson from my check. Yet there together standing, With hand now clasped in hand, We watched the solemn night descend O'er all the quiet land. I called your eyes the starlight, Because the sun had llown (How selfish to be wanting, dear, A starlight ot my own.) And then, like happy children. Still clasping hands we went. With lovo's too slow, unwilling steps, Adown the hill's descent. O, life's one golden evening! I live to bless it still, When last we saw the sunset, love, Our sunset on the hill. An oild Xew England deacon of the olden time w'as one day ridi ng on horseback, when he was met by ! an old woman who had not so many or this worm's good things as he had. Taking out his wallet he handed hera quarter and rode on. lie had ridden only a short distance when he began to solilo- quize: thus "iow wouldn't l nave done letterto have kept that mon ey and bought myself something? Wheeling his horse rOund he rode back to where the old lady was standing, and said, "Give me that money! She handed it to him, won dering what it meant. Placing it in his wallet, and at the same time handing her a five dollar bill, he exclaimed, ' There, self, 1 guess you'll wish you'd kept still!" Carl Schurz has coma back from Europe, well satisfied with theael-. ative prosperity and discretion of America. He says that Austria is rotten, France haggard, Spain hopeless, and North Germany de bauched ;with the suddeo influx of money. That Bonnet. Goinsr alone the other day I saw how ever she could don it? A woman only rive feet lour. And one foot six of that was bonnet ! Her head had been a tidy head But for her big chignon upon it; Yet all was foiled, disfigured, spoiied, Anp swamped by said chignon and bonnet. On Sunday last she went to church. And took her book, as if to con it; And all the time that she was there She thought of little save her bonnet. Tho parson took a winning text, . A A. A. ' Ana triea to nx auemion on it; But all in vain, lor naught she cared. Except "the end of all" the bonnet! Yet stay! there is just one thing more. I must include isimssaa sonnet: She sometimes thought of women there Who envied her her mortal bonnet. Tlie luck less sermon, psalm, and pra3'er All went lr nothing out upon it! For every other woman there W;vs lost in hatred oi "that bonnet !" That morn her husband was non est His shirt neck had no button on it : For him she had no time to spare, Intent alone upon her bonnet. r Now mark we well, whom it concerns. And think ye humanly upon it : How could o make her such a "guy," Jiy recommending such a bonnet? The Moderate . Pulpit. Much of the effort of the modern pulpitis devoted , to showing that things which unregenerate man hood will persist in are not so sinful after all as Mother Church wou-fd have us think them. Thus trie devil is not more likely" to overtake a clergyman whose colt goes inside of two thirty-seven than the occu pant of that lumbering pulpit on wheels, which can only pull through at the rate of two forty. Again, if the deacon overtakes the Sunday school superintendent on the Brighton road, each feels for a mo ment the unhallowed carnal ambi tion to reach the hotel first, and in the end one of them is chastened in spirit and mortified in the flesh as one of them must be by getting there second, why talk about the "old man," and the slippery ways, and all that? There be speedy saints as well as sulky sinners. Morality must mix up with every day life and not keep aloof. Have we not already pastoral pastors, and church lotteries, and kitchens and services for feasting as well as fast ing? Have we not the namesake of one theological organ in the "Mambina Pilot ? Have , we not Flora Tempel and, the (Hiram) Drew thoologieal seminary ? Surely whatever is, is right; and if some muscular Christian preachers are less proficient in bowling tempta tions than ten-pins we must value them for the good they possess and not look lor what they have not. The centrifugal tendency of the contribution box may well be coun teracted by the centripetal. power of the church saucepan, and the ex cellencies of cookery supplement the short comings of preaching. Whatever well-conducted people wish to do they must be allowed to do, if not encouraged to do, and the pulpit's task to justify it. The day or asceticism ana severity, we are told, is past, and from reading some Florida v morning sermons we are inclined to think so. The higher moral influence of "seven up" may soon be Journal. descanted upon. Boston Is this the Heroic Age. That noble lives are lived by quite ordinary people, who sav no thing about it, is once in a while proved bv the noble deaths that suggest the story of the unheard of years preceding them. Such a life must have been that of James Marr, who recently, near the Australian coast, was washed overboard by a heavy sea, which at the same time carried away the mainmast of the schooner. Marr clung to the mast until he saw, with the quick eyes of an old seamen, that it hampered the vessel; then simply enough, and without a word, he gave up his only chance of life for his com rades sake. He motioned them to cut the mast adrift; they bade him good by, and he nodded for answer as he quietly sank hack in the waves. We have only to assail railroads and railroad securities for a very few weeks to bring every branch of industry to the verge of ruin, to fill every household with dismay, and to destroy abroad the credit or power of borrowing money to which so much of our past 'prosperity has lxe:i duo, and from which so much : of our future prosjierity must come. -The State. Squabbles, an old batchelor show ed his stocking, which he had just darned, to a maiden lady, who con temptuously remarked, pretty good for a- mart darner. . Whereuon Squabbles remarked "Yes, good enough for a woman, darn hrr.'? Upon this Plea Wo ask You to Pay the Printer. Printers are most patient and faithful toilers, and, therefore, we do not wish to be continuallv "blowing" about their hard, hard lots; nor do we at all mean this lit- . i .1 -III J j tie article as a uun enner uirecuy or inairecuy. nut printers ao serve the public laithiully, and we bespeak for them a generous return. From early morn to noon, and from noon to midnight, often, they strive. to tell you of the world. How quiet the compositors are, and yet how fast they pick up the tvDe ! There is a sort oi nervous stillness in these men, and it grates harshly on their feelings to have this stillness broken. There must De llOJOUU lairing, iiu wmsuuig, , 1 A no ainging, no mirin in a printing otiice. Occasionally, in some dark corner where ink kegs are, a "dev il," who has not quite forgotten the outside world, gives vent to a smother d lauerh. as memories of the clown loom up belore him ; but, with an awful frown and in a quer- -i r , uious tone, tne ureaueu luxeujau scares him into silence. The sun goes down, and the moon comes up; but still they work. Passers-by become less frequent, and the lights in the shop widows go out; but still they toil. Even the red oyster lights fade away at length.; but still they work. At last the pale moon, dvinsr away, sheds her light on a sleeping world ; but still the, An enterprising phrenologist printing press is rumbling, and the once wrote to the late Charles Dick editor is thinking and writing and ens, asking leave to make an ex- mailing, and the printers are "set tintr." and the devils are tired and drooping. Hale old farmer, you have striven hard today, and this sweet rest which you are taking now, in the quiet watches of the night, is good for your tired body. But away in a distant town nimble hands and active minds are plotting to render to you in its most attractive form tne papers, containing the very la test news. It has been said that "there is a Divinity that shapes our end, rough Hew them as we will." We accept this trite but true saying, and we blow our lingers on icy mornings with cheerful hearts, and We eat our light frugal meals with a keen relish, for we know that our Divinities have "shaped our end," to wear no gloves, to eat no fat, brown capons or veal cutlets. But we think differently concerning these -"printers ; we believe we know that their Divinities have intended them to wear gloves and eat capons, and we, therefore, urge vOu to bring in your names, with tne money, in order ihafcw may enable these men to carry out the d if tates of their Divinities. N. C. Gazette. A Sharp Repartee. The SDectators in a court-room always enjoy the retort, when lawyer, when badgering a witness, receives short replies at his own expense. Sympathy is always aarainst the lawyer. Even half witted oersons sometimes hit the weak point in the harness. "William Look Tell us, Wii liam. who made you ?" William, who was considered a fool, screwed up his face and looked - a. thoughtful, and somewhat newi: dered, answered, "Closes, l sup- no 3e." "That will do," said Counselor Gray, addressing the court. "Wit ness says he supposes Moses made him. That is an intelligent an swer: more than I thought hii eanable of invinir. for it shows that he had some faint idea of Scripture. I submit it was not sufhcient to en title him to be sworn as a witness canable of giving evidence," "Mr. Judge," said the fool, "may I ax the lawyer a question " "Certainly, " said the Judge. "Well, then, Mr. Lawer, who do you suppose made you "Aaron, I suppose," said Coun selor Grav. imitating the witness. After the mirth had somewhat subsided, the witness drawled out, "Willi, now. we do read in the book that Aaron once made a calf, but who'd a thought the critter had yot in here." The Judge ordered the man to be sworn. A Scotch parson had a farming neighbor who was in the habit ot shooting on sundays, but after a while this Sabbath-breaker joined the Church. One day the minister to whose Church he belonged, met a friend of the farmer, and said: "Do you see any difference in Mr. P. since hejoined"the Church.?" " Oh yes," replied the friend,.. "a rreat ditference. Before, when he went out to shoot on faunday, he carried his gun on his shoulder, but now he carries it under his coat." Mankind may have been learn ing six thousand years, and yet how few have learned that their fellow-men are as good as them selves,, and, that the "laborer is worthy or his hire" Hast thou now a sweet temper, whereas thou once wast passionate? Boast not of it; thou wilt be angry again yet if. He leaves thee. Art thou now pure, whereas thou wast once unclean? isoast not of'thv purity ; it is a plant, the seed of which was brought from heaven ; II. ! 1L! X 1 , t never was wunin my neart dv nature; ic is oi uocrsgntana uoa's alone. spurgeon. It is the wretched tendency of our times to base all calculations. all efforts, on this life only, to crowd everything into this narrow span, in limiting man's end and aim to this terrestrial existence, wo aggravate all his miseries by the terrible negation at its close. We add to the burthens of the unfortu nate the insupportable weight of a hopeless hereafter. Mctor Hugo. Religion is becoming as easy to wear as an ancient well ventilated shoe, and is to be kicked into one corner when it is in anvbodv's way. Beecher s says" he likes the custom of asking the blessing before meals, 'makes the . bread taste sweeter,' but for those who are in different 'there is nothing1 obliga tory about it.' That is an item for Professor Blot. Gratitude to God is no longer a Christian virtue, but no mean condiment for cruet. Interior. amination of his cranium. Dickens replied: "Dear Sir. At this time I require the use of my skull, but as soon as it shall be at leasure, I will willingly place it at your dis posal." The "hostile correspondence" be tween Ex-Governor Hertchel V. Johnson and Governor Smith, of Georgia, is still in progress, having been already conducted for the rise of a year. Which reminds us of the venerable lady of 80 years who admitted to her physician that coffee might be a poison; but in sisted that it had been a mighty slow poison with heri. A young man who was attending a night wnting-scnooi was capti vated bv the Charms of a lady present, and at the close of the school pressed forward and-asked if he might escort her home. " i es," said she, if you will carry my little boy." He is gradually recovering from the shock. - A-talkative man annoyed;'a-lady at a dinner party by constantly ar guing in favor of strong drink, and at last said to her, "You know, Madam, drinking drives away care and makes us forget what is d isagree able. Would you not allow a man to drink for that reason ?" "Well , perhaps so," said the lady, "if he eat next to you." s If we could find a man who had a heart sweet all through and a gen tle will ; without subtlely, yet of sound reason; at once wise and simple. He who has seen such a heart, has colors wherewith he may picture to himself what an angel is. George Eliot makes one of her characters say: 'Its poor work allays settin' the dead above the livin.' We shall all on us be dead some time, Ireckon--itud be better if folks ud make much on us beforeand, in stido' beginning' when we are gone. Its but little good you'll bewaterin the last year's crop.' Prayer is the peace of our spirit ; the stillness of (ur thoughts; the evenness of recollection ; the seat of meditation; the rest of cares and the calm of our tempest. Prayer is the issue of a great mind of un troubled thoughts; it is the daugh ter of charity; and the sister of meekness. Taylor . PobertE. Forsyth, who recently died at St. Louis, was a man of re markable memory. Housed to be a land dealer, 'and Abraham Lin coln, who was his attorney, related that he had at one time eleven law suits on hand, all the details and A Kentucky paper desires the. restoration of the franking privi-' leo-e. because it is a truly Demo cratic journal, and is "agin all abol ition doin's. The only paper which goes freely on the street is newspaper, it ai wavs offers sufficient interest to. make it desirable as an investment. fimifiral Jubal Early and M. Vic tor Hugo are both incensed beyond expression by the report that they exactly resemble each other. : Bret Harte's new Christmas story, in Scribner's monthly, will be en titled "A Monte Flat Pastoral; How, Old Man Plunket Went Home. i
The Era (Raleigh, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 27, 1873, edition 1
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