Robert Merry's Museum, Vol. VIII, July to December, 1844Various
General
Robert Merry's Museum, Vol. VIII, July to December, 1844
Various
Children's literature -- Periodicals
Do you say, “We knew all this before?”
No doubt of it. Yet we are apt to think there is not only _time
enough_, but some to spare.
But this is an error, and should be corrected.
The different length of different lives is nothing against our
position, that life is just long enough. The oldest person has enough
of duty and enough of pleasure too, if he lives aright, to occupy
his threescore years and ten, while he whose sun goes down at noon,
has time enough, if he will but improve it, to make his life here a
blessing to others, and that hereafter blessed and glorious to himself.
----“That life alone is long,
Which answers life’s great end.”
* * * * *
THE FOLLY OF WAR.--A few days since a farmer in the town of Jefferson,
heard loud talking and angry words bandied about among his dunghill
fowls, and being a man of a pacific disposition, no ways inclined to
countenance family quarrels, and withal being a little curious to know
the cause of the disturbance, and who was in the right, and who was in
the wrong, with divers other causes him thereunto moving, he leisurely
bent his course towards the scene of cackling and confusion,
aforesaid, which, as is recorded in the case of Bullum _vs._ Boatum,
was “very natural for a man so to do.” Arrived in the vicinity of the
disturbance above particularly referred to, he observed his dunghill
cock, who is a great pugilist, and in the enjoyment of all his
physical strength, engaged in mortal combat with a striped snake of
about eighteen or twenty inches in length, the cock to all appearance
having the decided advantage over his more wily, though less nervous
adversary, dealing his blows in quick succession, employing
alternately his bill and spurs with true pugilistic skill and science.
But the cunning serpent, well aware that the victory must declare
against him by fair combat, brought into requisition a portion of that
innate cunning for which that reptile has been celebrated from the
beginning of the world to the present time; and seizing his antagonist
by the thigh, in the rear, he completely secured himself from any
further danger from him. Thus situated, the cock very naturally
thought his only “safety was in flight,” he accordingly “cleaved the
air majestically with his wings,” the snake keeping fast the hold, and
dangling like a taglock, underneath, until the cock, overcome by
fatigue, alighted on a neighboring apple tree. The snake immediately
coiled his tail around a branch of the tree--the cock again attempted
flight, but he could scarcely clear the limb, from which he hung with
his head downwards, making every effort to escape, but all in vain,
until the farmer came to his assistance--killed the snake and set him
at liberty.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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