Conscience has well been called the tell tale of our breasts.
How does it harrow up the mind at the still hours of midnight, when
all nature sleeps around, and depict crimes that no eye has witnessed
but God and their perpetrators; how does the murderer toss from side
to side beneath her lash, and see his victim for the thousandth time
in the agonies of death; over and over again, she acts the bloody
scene, and, while he turns restless and feverish upon his pillow,
still holds the picture bleeding fresh to fancy's wearied gaze, and as
in Macbeth, presents the dagger, while "on its blade and bludgeon are
drops of blood that were not so before." Crimes of dye not so deep,
are conjured up to harrow up the breast and rack the brain, and render
the victim of a disapproving conscience a miserable wretch indeed.
Truly she is placed within us as a friend, warning us of danger and
pressaging good. If we would listen to her dictates, we must be happy,
for she never argues wrong. And superlatively happy are they who can
lay calmly down on the bed of death cheered by her approving smiles,
for a "death bed is a detector of the heart;" here tired dissimulation
drops the mark that through life's grimace has kept up the scene.
Lines, Written in an Album.
The autumn winds are sighing loud,
And wither'd leaves come flitting by,
And slowly sails the gath'ring cloud,
Across the bleak November sky.
The flow'rs have perish'd on the stem,
Their brilliant beauty all decayed,
And many golden hope like them,
In disappointment's tomb is laid.
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