ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND. 189 tion to principle and to purpose, the unwavering confidence in itself of the army of the Cumberland, scarce stood it in braver stead, even on the scorched and splintered field of Chickamauga. Then came the wearisome marches through the mountains and gorges of Tennessee, with their ceaseless skirmishing and strategy. During all the glad spring-time and golden summer, our advance kept pace with the feathery fringe of the skirmish smoke, and the thunder of our guns rolled southward continuously. And when August had languished into the lap of autumn, and the simmering heats of its sultry lingering began to go out with the falling leaves and the fading year, we followed the guiding lights of our banners into the mad havoc of that death-grapple at Chickamauga. Next came Lookout and Mission Ridge, when we wiped every stain of defeat from our shredded and riven banners, and crested, with a halo of triumph, the cloud-capped brows of the mountain. After a brief breathing-spell we pushed onward, keeping step with our brothers of the army of the Tennessee, the veterans of Vicksburg, and the Mississippi. Every day the smoke-cloud of battle kissed the heavens, and each night flamed and flashed with the lambent lights of our blazing guns; and we followed that smoke-cloud and those blazing guns over a hundred fields of strife, until the old flag floated in exultation over the great "Gate City of the South. At Atlanta our legions parted, many never to meet this side the "dim waters" of death; and the old army of the Cumberland was never again together as a constituent whole. WE 89. HOBBIES. It is folly to expect us E all ride something. always to be walking. ride is a hobby; it eats no oats; it demands no groom; it breaks no traces; it requires no shoeing. Moreover, it is safest; the boisterous outbreak of the children's fun does not startle it; three babies astride it at once do not make it skittish. If, perchance, on some brisk morning it throws its rider, it will stand still till he climbs the saddle. For eight years we have had one tramping the nursery, and yet no accident; though, meanwhile, his eye has been knocked out, and his tail dislocated. When we get old enough to leave the nursery, we jump astride some philosophic, metaphysical, literary, political, or theological hobby. Parson Brownlow's hobby was the hanging of rebels; John C. Calhoun's, South Carolina; Daniel Webster's, the Constitution; Wheeler's, the sewing-machine; Dr. Windship's, gymnastics. For saddle, a book; for spur, a pen; for whip, the lash of public opinion; for race-course, platform, pulpit, newspaper office, and senate chamber. Goodyear's hobby is made out of India rubber; Peter Cooper's, out of glue; Townsend's, out of sarsaparilla bottles: De Witt Clinton rode his up the ditch of the Erie Canal; Cyrus Field, under the sea; John P. Jackson, down the railroad from Amboy to Camden; indeed, the men of mark and the men of worth have all had their hobby, great or small. We have no objections to hobbies; but we contend that there are times and places when and where they ABUSING A HORSE. 191 If it should not be ridden. Let your hobby rest. will not otherwise stop, tie it for a few days to the whitewashed stump of modern conservatism. Do not hurry things too much. If this world should be saved next week, it would spoil some of our professions. Do not let us do up things too quick. world is too big a ship for us to guide. This I know, from the way she swings from larboard to starboard, that there is a strong Hand at the helm. Be patient. God's clock strikes but once or twice in a thousand years; but the wheels all the while keep turning. Over the caravanserai of Bethlehem, with silver tongue, it struck One. Over the University of Erfurt, Luther heard it strike Nine. In the rockings of the present century, it has sounded Eleven. Thank God! It will strike - Twelve. 90. THE WICKEDNESS OF ABUSING A HORSE. HE sins which we commit against the brute creatures of God, when we subject them to unnecessary sufferings, are sins against God, their Creator. Shall we believe that a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, and not believe that a righteous God will regard it? He heareth the ravens cry; and shall he not hear, and will he not avenge, the wrongs that his nobler animals suffer wrongs that cry out against man from youth to age, in the city and in the field, by the way and by the fireside.? Look out into the street. See that cartman! What has thrown him into such a passion? The street 192 ABUSING A HORSE. echoes with the crack of his whip. His horse, stung almost to madness, springs forward to clear himself from his confinement - to disengage himself from his cruel thraldom. He is met by a blow with the loaded end of the driver's whip! Whence comes this dreadful struggle between that manly spirit of a brute, and that brutal spirit of a man? Whence comes it? horse beyond his strength. The man has loaded the Every ounce of the gen erous creature's weight has been thrown forward again and again, but in vain; and now comes the reproach, and now the lash, and the curse, and the staggering blow. Righteous God! who gavest that noble animal his strength and his spirit, is that monster, that is thus beating him, a man? the man whom thou madest him to serve? God of battles! who hast kindled the fire in the horse's glorious eye, hast “ clothed his neck with thunder," and hast made him to mock at fear, and to turn not away from the sword, that he might help man to maintain his rights, and defend a righteous cause, - is it to such a creature as this that thou hast made him to be in subjection? But, perhaps, the man in form is no longer a man. He has thrown away the only thing that had raised him above the brute. He has drowned his reason in a cup. He is drunk, and his generous horse must suffer! How much nobler is the brute that is beaten than the brute that beats him! Stop, degraded wretch! you shall not thus abuse your horse!" But, hark he replies, "It is my horse; and have I not a right to do what I will with my own?" FIRST VIEW OF THE HEAVENS. 193 I answer, It may be your horse; but he is yours for use, not for abuse." I answer again, “You have not a right to do a wrong, either with what is your own, or with what is not." The Maker of this horse is your Maker also, and your Judge. He sees the suffering which you inflict upon the faithful and defenceless subject of your power; and, although he has sealed up the dumb creature's lips, so that he cannot plead for himself against you, yet what he meekly and patiently suffers from your cruelty will plead for him, and, if more mercy is not shown to you than you show to your beast, it will bring down upon you the righteous judgments of the Lord. 91. THE FIRST VIEW OF THE HEAVENS. FTEN have I swept backward, in imagination, six OFTEN thousand years, and stood beside our great ancestor, as he gazed for the first time upon the going down of the sun. What strange sensations must have swept through his bewildered mind, as he watched the last departing ray of the sinking orb, unconscious whether he should ever behold its return. Wrapt in a maze of thought, strange and startling, he suffers his eye to linger long about the point at which the sun had slowly faded from view. A mysterious darkness creeps over the face of Nature; the beautiful scenes of earth are slowly fading, one by one, from his dimmed vision. A gloom deeper than that which covers earth steals across the mind of earth's solitary inhabitant. He |