The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The doctor said he could not live; Long said he was booked for Davy Jones;
the minister prayed for "our dying brother";--but Sally said he should
live, and he did. After weeks of patient care he knew her; after more weeks
he spoke,--words few, but precious; and when accumulating months brought
to the battlefields of America redder stains than even patriotic blood had
splashed upon their leaves,--when one nation began to hope, and another to
fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She
was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband
for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after
their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with
George and Long Snapps, George said, "Would you ever have come to take care
of me, Sally, if I'd 'a' been shot on the side of the reg'lars?"
Sally looked at him, and then looked away.
"I 'xpect she'd 'a' done her dooty," said Long Snapps dryly; and Sally
laughed.
THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION.
In a number of the "Illustrated News," not long since, there was what
professed to be a view of Manchester. It represented a thousand tall
factory-chimneys rising out of a gray mist, and surmounted by a heavy,
drifting cloud of smoke. And in truth a view not very different from this
was presented to any one who, standing at the entrance of the Palace of the
Exhibition of Art Treasures, turned and looked back before going within.
Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching
its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse
of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples,
now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous
warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination
can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world
before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of
labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot
call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the
most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like
qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the
city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to
keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of
forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which
waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and settling
down upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of the continual fires,
the throb of the engines, the heavy beat of the trip-hammers, and the
rattle of the spindles, by which the work of the world is done; and their
noises, blended by the distance into one monotonous sound, seem like the
voice of the restless, hard-working, unsettled spirit of gain. Manchester
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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