HOUR-GLASS THOUGHTS.
The bride stands waiting at the altar; the corpse lies waiting for burial.
Love vainly implores of Death a reprieve; Despair vainly invokes his coming.
The starving wretch, who purloins a crust, trembles in the hall of Justice; liveried sin, unpunished, riots in high places.
Brothers, clad “in purple and fine linen, fare sumptuously every day;” Sisters, in linsey-woolsey, toil in garrets, and shrink, trembling, from insults that no fraternal arm avenges.
The Village Squire sows, reaps, and garners golden harvests; the Parish Clergyman sighs, as his casting vote cuts down his already meagre salary.
The unpaid sempstress begems with tears the fairy festal robe; proud beauty floats in it through the ball-room like a thing of air.
Church spires point, with tapering fingers, to the rich man’s heaven; Penitence, in rags, tearful and altarless, meekly stays its timid foot at the threshold.
Sneaking Vice, wrapped in the labelled cloak of Piety, finds “open sesame;” shrinking Conscientiousness, jostled rudely aside, weeps in secret its fancied unworthiness.
The Editor grows plethoric on the applause of the public and mammoth subscription lists; theunrecognizedjournalist, who, behind the scenes, mixes so deftly the newspaporial salad, lives on the smallest possible stipend, and looks like an undertaker’s walking advertisement.
Wives rant of their “Woman’s Rights” in public; Husbands eat bad dinners and tend crying babies at home.
Mothers toil in kitchens; Daughters lounge in parlours.
Fathers drive the plough; Sons drive tandem.