The swamp doctor is gathered unto his fathers 'neath the greenwood tree, couched on the yielding grass, with the soft melody of birds, the melancholy cadence of the summer wind, the rippling of the stream, the sweet smell of flowers, and the blue sky above bending down as if to embrace him, to soothe his spirit, and give his parting soul a glance of that heaven which surely awaits him as a recompense for all the privations he has endured on earth; whilst the pressure on his palm of hard and manly hands, the tears of women attached to him like a brother by the past kind ministerings of his Godlike calling, the sobs of children, and the boisterous grief of the poor negroes, attest that not unregarded or unloved he hath dwelt on earth: a sunbeam steals through the leafy canopy and clothes his brow with a living halo, a sweet smile pervades his countenance, and amidst all that is beauteous in nature or commendable in man, the swamp doctor sinks in the blissful luxuries of death; no more to undergo privation and danger, disease or suffering. He hath given his last pill, had his last draught protested against; true to the instincts of his profession, he, no doubt, in the battling troop of the angels above, if feasible, will still continue to _charge_. MY EARLY LIFE. |Upon what slender hinges the gate of a man's life turns, and what trifling things change the tenor of his being, and determine in a moment the direction of a lifetime! Who inhales his modicum of azote and oxygen, that cannot verify in his own person that we are the creatures of circumstances, and that there is a hidden divinity that shapes our ends, despite the endeavours of the pedagogue, man, to paddle them out of shape? Some writer of celebrity has averred, and satisfactorily proven to all of his way of thinking, by a chain of logical deductions, that the war of 1812, the victory of New Orleans, the elevation of Jackson to the presidency, the annexation of Texas, General Taylor's not possessing the proportions of Hercules, and a sad accident that occurred to one of the best of families very recently, all was the inevitable effect of a quiet unobtrusive citizen in Maryland being charged some many years ago with hog stealing. Were I writing a library instead of a volume, I would take up, for the satisfaction of my readers, link by link, the chain of consequences, from the mighty to the insignificant; also, if time and eternity permitted, trace the genealogy of the memorable porker (upon whose forcible seizure all these events depended), back to the time when Adam was not required to show a tailor's bill unpaid, as a portent of gentility, or Eve thought it a wife's duty to henpeck her husband.