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he could not go out to it, and many of the good people of the village began to whisper, though very respectfully, about a younger teacher, to whisper, I say, for so extraordinary a revolution did it seem to the villagers, that they could scarcely muster courage to propose it, though they felt its necessity, and it was affecting to see how every one who caught the whisper heard it with a fallen countenance, and shook his head significantly, until more thoroughly convinced the change was inevitable.

At last the school-committee were instructed to converse with the veteran teacher on the subject, and get him to retire. One of their number was appointed to perform the duty; but he reported at their next meeting that he had failed to do it that, when he called to see the aged man, he welcomed him so cordially, and ran on in the conversation so enthusiastically about the school, the "fair fame" which it had won, and his plans for its future prosperity, that no man who had a heart within him could have mentioned the subject, and he really feared it would kill the old man.

'Squire Hardy, a man who never had soul enough to understand old Tobias, hereupon rose up in the committee, and said he "hoped they would not be so chicken-hearted as to shrink from their solemnly responsible duties,—that the welfare of the village and posterity demanded of them firmness and energy, and, as for himself, he would not sacrifice the public interest for any man, even if he had to sacrifice his own in removing that man."

As none of the rest of the committee were found willing to communicate with the venerable teacher on the subject, 'Squire Hardy offered to do it himself, and manifestly felt the nobleness of true courage in assuming this "solemnly responsible duty!" On the next stormy day, when Tobias could not go to the school, the 'squire visited him, and bluntly made known the object of his visit. The grayhaired teacher looked at him with utter astonishment, and stood dumb before him for several minutes. "Give up the school! -give up the school!" at last he exclaimed, as the tears sprung from his eyes; 'Give up the school! Go sir, then, and cut down the old oak, whose branches have always shaded it, and whose roots hold its foundation-stones. Give up the school! Alas! has it come to this?"

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The 'squire advanced arguments, and insisted that it must be done. The old man, too much affected to discuss the point, requested him to call the next morning, and shut himself up in his room the whole of that day, declining his dinner, and seeing no one. Toward evening, however, he came down stairs, with a cheerful countenance, requested tea, and, rubbing his hands, said: "It is all right; it is all right; I ought to have expected it; but I forgot I was growing old. Just think, my old friend," addressing his aged hostess, as she poured out his tea, "just think how everything has changed since I came into your house; all my scholars of that time are dead or grown up; all the old people, except you, the deacon, and a few others, are sleeping in the churchyard, around the grave of our dear old pastor; why, my friend, we are out of our day, and yet I have been so much with the children, God provide for them! that I have forgotten that I was old, and have scarcely noticed that my head had grown gray. Give up the school! Give up the school! What a thought!" and a tear stood in his eye, but he hastily wiped it away, and said, "It is all right, my dear friend, it is all right; we can't expect to live forever; for, as Solomon says, 'There is a time to be born, and a time to die;' the school needs a younger teacher. I see the necessity, and shall be content and thankful to God that I have so long been allowed to occupy so useful a place."

Tobias Goodenough retired from the office of teacher, but his young successor soon admired so much the peculiarities of the old man, as to allow him a controlling direction of the school whenever he visited it.

A generous-hearted gentleman, who had been one of his earliest scholars, happened to revisit his friends in the village soon after, and proposed to raise, by subscription, a small fund for the retired teacher. Everybody seemed anxious to give toward it, and the letters, in behalf of it, which were sent to former scholars who had settled and prospered in various parts of the country, brought back answers containing generous sums. For the fund thus raised the good old man was overwhelmed with gratitude, and made to the gentlemen who brought him the news and the securities, a formal speech full half an hour in length, on the history and results of the

school, and his determination, while he yet lived in the village, to anxiously guard its fair fame. "And yet, gentlemen," he concluded, pathetically, "I can be of but little more service, for that time has come to me which Solomon predicted, 'When the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinders is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also, when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden."" The listeners would have smiled with their old school recollections of King Solomon, but a tear passed down the veteran's cheek, and they wept.

About a year after his retirement, I visited the village, and found that, though Tobias Goodenough was old and somewhat infirm, yet, owing to his temperate life and tranquil habits, he still had the prospect of some happy years. I loved the aged teacher, and, having three children old enough for simple studies, I proposed to him to remove to New-York, and reside with me as family tutor, not so much, however, for the instruction of my children, as for the comfort of my old friend, and the pleasure I expected from his company, for I confess a weak sort of fondness for original characters. As the fund settled on the venerable man was small, and he wished not to be dependent upon his friends, but to earn his living, he accepted the proposal, but it was hard for him to tear himself away from the village. We spent the afternoon preceding our departure in visiting old familiar places. As the evening lowered, we went into the church-yard. "Here they are," said the teacher, pointing to the graves; "here they are my old friends,-nearly all who welcomed me when I first came to the village. And there," pointing to the small "there are some of my little ones. graves, God took them from the school to heaven; but it was all right—all right—I shall see them soon,―soon." We passed into the church, and the hoary-headed teacher took his seat at the organ for the last time; tune after tune rolled from the glorious instrument, waking all the memories of the good old man, The sun had set, and still he played; the twilight passed, and still the grand melody rolled through the dark church; I spoke to him and hallooed in his

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ear, but still he played on, and stopped not till I grasped his arm, and drew him away, when he returned in silence. The next day we were on the way to New-York. The dear old man continued with us some four years. His daily life consisted of lessons to my children, uniform calls on two aged and congenial friends, and, when the weather allowed, a walk to the Battery, where his benign aspect, as well as his large nose, usually attracted the friendly glance of promenaders, especially of children, for whom he always had a pleasant word. He declined rapidly the last two years, but lost nothing of his serene and benevolent temper. An increasing but complaisant love of conversation, a growing but amiable vanity respecting his old school and the success of several of his pupils who were resident in the city, and a rather repetitious narration of his well-used anecdotes, were among the pleasant symptoms of his decay-his really enviable euthanasy. At last he took to his bed, suffering little, but conversing away in his old good-hearted style, and detailing his anecdotes down to the last day. That day was not a sad one in his chamber. He took his leave of us with several of Solomon's best counsels. "I. shall soon be among my dear little ones," he remarked, with a tremulous voice, recalling, doubtless, our last look at the small graves in the village burial-ground. His last words were a quotation from Solomon : "The dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." Peace to thy manes, and God bless thy memory, Tobias Goodenough.

LIFE WITHOUT LOVE. -We sometimes meet with men who seem to think that any indulgence in an affectionate feeling is a weakness. They will return from a journey, and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendor of an iceberg, surrounded by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of those families without a heart. A father had better extinguish a boy's eyes than take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature's scenery than be robbed of the treasures of his heart? Cherish, then, your heart's affections.

TREATMENT OF MENTAL DISEASE.

HAVING

pædist, a divine; but he had upon his mind the care of the whole body of " the people called Methodists," and who now bear his name. It was only by his sound common sense, his self-denial, and his sense of duty, that he was enabled to be "in labors more abundant." As an amusing instance of John Wesley's practical common sense, we extract the following from his advice to his preachers, whom he ruled as a preceptor as well as a father. Some of them were complaining, at a "Conference" held at Leeds, in the year 1778, of being " nervous," and suffering from nervous disorders. As to these he observes, (we quote from the published minutes :)

Q. What advice would you give to those that are nervous?

it.

A. Advice is made for them that will take

But who are they? One in ten, or twenty?

Then I advise :

[AVING so fully illustrated the consequences of unnatural toil of the mind, it is incumbent on us to point out the remedy. This has been long understood, and is obvious. In one word, it is REST. It is the removal of the causethe first step in the cure of all diseases. But it is not so easy to apply this remedy to the special cases under consideration, partly because in by far the larger proportion the toil is imperatively demanded by circumstances, partly because, as we have seen, the habit for labor of the kind has so fixed itself that it is all but irresistible. It is of far greater importance that the laborer shall so labor that he shall gather strength, and not weakness, from his toil, in accordance with the order of divine Providence. To this end there is only one way, namely, to labor in humble subjection to the laws of our mental and corporeal well-being. Intellectual labor need not necessarily induce the frightful ills we have described or catalogued; on the contrary, it is that by which the progressive development of mankind as a created be-ed to this quaint but sound advice. Daily ing can alone be secured. It is, therefore, not merely the privilege, but the duty, of every man to work his intellectual faculties to the utmost limit consistent with sound health, so that he may thereby not only add to the general stock of wisdom and knowledge, but also so act upon himself corporeally that some part of that improvement in his mental powers with which mental labor rewards him may be transmitted to a vigorous offspring.

In analyzing the histories of many victims to intellectual toil, we cannot but be struck with the general fact that a total disregard of their bodily health was as much a moving cause of their disasters as their prolonged mental efforts. The man who neglects the ordinary appliances of health, and the ordinary rules of existence, cannot fail to suffer. Nervousness, and melancholy, and low spirits, are as much the lot of the luxurious, the indolent, and the dissipated, as of the man of letters, the statesman, or the merchant. The prevention of the morbid results we have alluded to is comprised in the word SELF-DENIAL. A voluminous writer of the last century lived to be eighty-seven years of age. He not only was a great commentator, a philosopher, an encyclo

1. Touch no dram, tea, tobacco, or snuff. 2. Eat very light, if any supper.

3. Breakfast on nettle or orange-peel tea. 4. Lie down before ten; rise before six. 5. Every day use as much exercise as you can bear; or,

6. MURDER YOURSELF BY INCHES!

We do not know that much can be add

exercise, early rising, the total abnegation of spirits, fermented drinks, tobacco in any form, and tea, dinner in the middle of the day, are rules which any intelligent man must see are particularly applicable to those who work the nervous system

exclusively. Daily exercise must be taken to balance cerebral with muscular activity. Stimulants to the nervous system must be avoided, because it is already over-stimulated by thought. Repose for the brain and sensorial nerves must be secured by going early to rest, because nature has ordained that repose is necessary for their healthy action, and because the hours of darkness after sunset are universally the hours of repose of those animals that are not nocturnal in their habits. Abstinence from gross living is requisite, because the waste of the system is not in the muscles, but in the minor agent, as regards material extent-the

cerebrum.

It is, perhaps, as to the mode in which these habits can be practiced that there will be the greatest difference of opinion. It is very easy to prescribe daily exercise

Minutes of the Methodist Conference, ed. 1812, vol. i, p. 136.

to the hard-working statesman, or man of letters, or professional man; but how is he to secure it amid the hurry of metropolitan life, and in the wilderness of baked clay and granite of metropolitan streets? Early to rest may be most wholesome, but how is it practicable with the present arrangements of daily life in the larger towns? Strong tea may be "bad for the nerves;" but without it the jaded student truly says, “I should have no nerves at all! and as for avoiding tobacco, how could I exist without my delicious Havana, the solace of my studies ?" Thus, secondary circumstances, as well as the primary necessity, bind the intellectual laborer to a wearisome, health-destroying cycle of influences to which he is helplessly subject, and from which it is only by efforts almost superhuman that he can escape.

The prevention of disease, under circumstances like these, can only be attained by a united effort and a combination of all those interested. Thus made it is not surely quite an impossibility. The stimulus of emulation might excite to athletic exercises; and steady advocacy through the press of more rational hours for social enjoyment might do much in modifying the late hours of fashionable life; an earlier dinner-hour, morning operas, &c., would not be altogether useless. It is, however, quite in the power of the individual to do much for himself. Thorough ablution of the head once or twice a day with cold water, or even a slight shower bath, will do much service to the material organ. Extreme temperance in diet would also keep the head clear; but, above all, cessation from mental effort, so soon as the premonitory symptoms of overwork show themselves. Hot eyes, flushed face, irritable temper, despondency, uneasy slumbers, slight vertigo, or, during sleep, something like somnambulism instead of dreams, should be attended to instantly. If any of these supervene, a cessation from labor is strenuously indicated. From that moment, all head-work is out of the capital stock of strength; it is true wear and tear, and the loss thus incurred must either be speedily replaced, or disorder and disease will result. Physiological laws, it cannot be too well remembered, are as inexorable as the physical. The rest is comprised in two things:

GENTLE BODILY EXERCISE-SLEEP.

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No man who works his brain actively should work all the year round. Of all organs of the body it is that which most enjoys a holiday. The most practicable and the most useful is a pedestrian excursion, and upon this point we would again quote from the "British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review." "In this class of cases there is a more legitimate remedy than these empirical (the hydropathic) appliances, and that is, a pedestrian tour, such as Dr. Forbes enjoyed, and has described in his pleasant Physician's Holiday.' Let the man of refinement and imagination, who is pestered with thickcoming fancies, especially after reading The Fathers,' and feels that he has lost the healthy, noble feeling of self-reliance, which characterizes the true man, flee to the mountains for solace, rather than to an ascetic, enthusiastic priest. Let him defer the performance of what he thinks to be a duty, and the practice of what he yearns for, as a refuge from his gloom, until he has strengthened the organ of thought and enjoys a mens sana in corpore

sano.

Without this, his sacrifices and martyrdom are but the self-imposed evils of a foolish hypochondriac, and of no religious value whatever. If, after breaking away from all his engrossing studies, and holding converse with nature in her sublimest aspects - drinking nothing more potent than water-walking twenty miles a day, and every evening taking a warm bath-if, after a three months' pedestrian tour in the Tyrol, Switzerland, or Scotland, so conducted, he returns to the world and finds its aspect toward him unchanged, and he has no desire to do his duty-solid duties-actively and earnestly, then there is nothing for him but to 'retreat,' and live amid the phantoms and chimeras which are to his taste. 'Hellebore' will not cure him; Bath, the Brünnen, and Malvern will be alike useless; and even the false miracles of mesmerism will pale their ineffectual ray,' before those of another class, which to his morbid imagination appear real.”*

6

There is still another class of headworkers-those to whom no holiday comes, to whom a pedestrian excursion is too great a luxury to be even dreamed of, and who must work at all hazards. These may ward off many evils by a strict diet

Opere citato, vol. vii, p. 452.

and regimen, and by varying from time to time the subject of their studies. This is the great secret of safe continued headwork. It is a species of cerebral gymnastics, by which all parts of the organ of thought are equally worked. With this and a sedulous attention to the bodily health, by the simple means which common sense dictates, many have been enabled to work long and strenuously with comparative impunity, and, although the evil day must come at last, it is long deferred.

appear selfish guard well the

We have offered to the man of mind few other than what may motives to induce him to powers God has given him. We have not forgotten, however, that from him to whom much is given much also will be required. Unless this higher motive of duty direct the laborer in the field of intellect; unless he guard his gifts as things held only in trust, and use them as one who must render an account-he will spend his days in labor, and late take rest in vain. Too late he will learn by bitter experience that, in his case,

"Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

[For the National Magazine.]

THE DYING FLOWER.

From the German of Rüchert, by G. M. Steele.
HOPE thou! the spring will come again,
And thou shalt live to feel its heat;
Do not all flowers that bloom have hope,
Though blasting winds may o'er them sweep?
With hope bind they their silent strength
In tender buds, through winter storms,
Until their rising sap returns,

And verdure new hath deck'd their forms.

"Ah! I am not a sturdy tree

Of life a thousand summers long,
Which after dreaming winter's dream
Doth weave anew its vernal song;
Alas! I only am a flower,

Which May's warm kiss hath waked from sleep,

And of whose life no trace remains
When o'er my grave the snow shall sweep."

If then thou only art a flower,
O tender, trembling, modest heart!
Know this-to everything that blooms
God doth some certain seed impart.
What though the wasting storm of death
Thy scatter'd life-dust soon doth strew?
Out of that dust a hundred times
Shalt thou thy precious life renew.

"I know that kindred flowers will bloom
When I have wasted with decay;
The whole will be forever green-
The one must quickly fade away.
If they are now what I once was,
Then I myself shall be no more;
Now, only now, do I enjoy :
No former day, no future hour.

"If them the sun's bright glance doth warm,
Which flashes cheerly through me still,
It softens not my hapless fate
A cell of silent night to fill;
E'en now, O Sun! thine ogling eye
From far, on them, falls witchingly;
Yet why, with chilling scorn, art thou
From out thy cloud deriding me?

"Thy beam did kiss me into life-
Alas! that I should trust thy ray,
That in thine eye I dared to look
Till it had stole my heart away!
The scanty remnant of that life
Withdrawing from thy sympathy,
I will with sickly firmness wrap
Myself in self and hide from thee.

"Yet my unbending ice of wrath
Thou meltest into tears of love;
Take then, O take my fading life
Forever to thyself above.

Yes! thou wilt yet sun out my grief-
At last my tearful soul relieve;
For all which come from thee to me
My dying gratitude receive.

"The waving course of every breeze
In which all summer long I've sway'd-
Each merry flitting butterfly

Which round me in the dance has play'd-
The eyes my beauty has refresh'd
The hearts my fragrance caused to glow;
Of beauty and of fragrance mix'd
Thou madest me-I thank thee now.

"An ornament of this thy world—
A humble ornament I own—
Thou madest me in the field to shine
As stars around thy golden throne.
I utter now but one more strain,
And it shall be no doleful sigh-
One upward glance I cast to heaven
And to the beauteous world on high:
"Eternal flame-heart of the world!
On thee let me breathe out my last;
O sky! spread out thy tent of blue-
My faded tent is sinking fast!
Hail to thy light, O joyous spring!
O morning breeze! hail to thy reign!
Without a grief sleep I alone,
Without one hope to rise again."

SUPERIOR TASTE OF WOMEN.-Women have a much finer sense of the beautiful

than men. They are, by far, the safer umpires in matters of propriety and grace. A mere school-girl will be thinking and writing about the beauty of birds and flowers, while her brother is robbing the nests and destroying the flowers.

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