Yankee Gypsies by John Greenleaf Whittier
page 21 of 22 (95%)
page 21 of 22 (95%)
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life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might
be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:-- "Other hands may grasp the field and forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine, . . . . . . . Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."(2) (1) Alexander Gordon Laing was a major in the British army, who served on the west coast of Africa and made journeys into the interior in the attempt to establish commercial relations with the natives, and especially to discover the sources of the Niger. He was treacherously murdered in 1826 by the guard that was attending him on his return from Timbuctoo to the coast. His travels excited great interest in their day in England and America. (2) From a poem, *Why Thus Longing?* by Mrs. Harriet Winslow Sewall, preserved in Whittier's *Songs of Three Centuries.* But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a |
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