gcls_courant_025 1

The Courant
A Southern Literary Journal

HOWARD H. CALDWELL EDITOR.] "Sic vos non vobis." [WM. W. WALKER, JR., & CO., PROPRIETORS
VOLUME 1 COLUMBIA, SC., THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1859. NUMBER 25

For the Courant
"OUR GRAVES."

BY MONOS, JR.

She promised, when we parted, years ago,
To love me ever dearly, e'en as then,
And that Hope should cherish Love, she whispered—
"Her love should one day make me prince of men."

She said she loved me, and I trusted her,
And madly staked my heart upon the trust:
How could I tell that one so formed for Heaven,
Would stoop to write her vows upon the dust?

"Tis sweet, tho' sad, to linger near the spot
Where hopes once flourished that are buried now;
To dream that all the past is but a dream,
To seal again the oft-repeated vow:

To chear the reason, and in fancy cling
To that fiar form with all the joys it gives—
To shut the heart against the cruel truth,
That tells us rudely Love no longer lives:

To lose for aye the griefs that weigh us down,
And never more the woes of life to know;
But see again, with fond, prophetic eyes,
The wealth of joys the future will bestow.

Oh, for some potent drug, whose magic power
Could banish from my heart its bitter truth,
Roll back the clogging cares that wait on age,
And give me once again the joys of youth.

I will not curese her, tho' the scalding tears
Of outraged love, in spite of reason, start;
Tho' they should leave their furrows on my cheeck,
And, never ceasing, drain at length my heart.

The Night enshrouds her, yet she stands
A sweet memento of the purest Day;
Yes, Day in Night, as stands the sinless soul
A jewel in its tenement of clay.

The sweet memory of a happy time,
That I shall cherish as the absent, home,
While I sit gazing yet, with tearful eyes,
At that far coming light that does not come.

WEARING ORNAMENTS.—An immense business is
done merely in preparing ornaments for the person,
and many people make up dismal faces as they mention personal
ornaments among the frivolities of life. Used
according to the dictates of taste and judgment, they
greatly enhance personal attraction; but when used
merely for the sake of display, they take from the effect
of the personal and become merely a pecuniary consid-
eration--a glittering bait to temper some covetous
gudgeon, or to dirve to depair some rival, whose dia-
mond mine has not yielded fo proligically. A correct
taste sees in the simpler adornment more grace than in
the profuse, and never exceeds the propiety of decora-
tion; and, though her jewel-box sparkle as richly as
Golconda with diamonds, she who possesses this tase
will never endanger the effect of beauty, if simplicity is
its best adornment, to display a fortune in gems that a
princess might covet. The vulgar shine in the ostenta-
tion of decoration--they blaze in the quanity of mag-
nificence, like a decoration of a temple for a fete day by
one who believes that in the amount of bunting and
Chinese lanterns is the summum bonum of decorative
art. -- Knitting Work.

A KEEN REPROOF. --Did our readers ever hear the
dry bon-mot of Talleyrand, which so too the conceit
out of a young coxcomb at some table in Paris, where
he canched to be dining. "My mother," said the dandy,
"was renowned for her beauty. She was certainly the
handomest woman I have ever seen." "Ah!" said
Talleyrand, looking him through, and "taking his mea-
sure" at once, "it was your father, then, who was not
good-looking!"

To speak harshly to a person of sensibility is like
striking a harpsichord with your fist.

THE PINE WOODS.

"While the sunbeam shines upon
The guilty and the guiltless one." --MOORE.

THE Piny woods! the piny woods! nothing but one
continued series of perpendicular lines, terminating far
above your head, with big distorted limbs, in figure the
very paragon of mis-shapen nondescripts--while here
and there your sandy pathway is intercepted by huge
black masses, fallen trunks and shattered limbs, com-
pelling the traveller to turn, howsoever reluctant, some
thurty or forty paces from his direct route. Reader, are
you fond of solitude? Here you can enjoy for many
hundred miles, even from the Brassos river, in Texas
(and I cannot say how much farther westward) to the
shores of Carolina, one unvaried scene of sand and pine,
sometimes for fifty or sixty miles, without one solitary
house, or any thing like a human being, --human? I
may say living thing, --appearing to your view, unless
some solitary crow croak out of spite, lest you exult in
the idea that this indeed is solitude. At the first view,
nothing can be more sublime thatn these immense high-
towering stems, with their green plumage nodding to
the sky. The scene appears somewhat like the ocean,
whose grandeur consists in its vast uniformity. Hill
after hill presents the ensuing vale covered with the
same dark verdure; and never did I more satisfactorily
feel the truth of an old saying--"variety is the cream
of life" --than when travelling through the piny woods.
At sea you have a change of weather--the delights of a
breeze after a long calm--a calm after a severe storm--
each of which posesses a seaman. Here
you may travel all day, and when night comes on, should
you chance to be weary, cold and hungry, without shel-
ter or shade, you may light your fire, and while the
fierce flame blazes around you, lay you down to sleep.
In two or three hours the cold, freezing wind will wake
you up, benumbed, cramped, and in the dark, nothing
benefitted by your rest, and the wolves howing their
doleful dirge around you. Why do they howl? How
I do hate their savage grinning. Long, thin jars; their
bones half bursting through their skin; their fiery eyes
and dismal tone of voice--perfect pictures of war and
famine combined--which, while they prowl around your
camp-fire at night, have not the courage to attack you,
unless they hunt in numbers; craving your blood, the
food they lice upon--and when they fail to catch their
prey, curse the moon for giving the light by which it
has escaped, and the darkness because they cannot see
to find it; and thus yiu may sit waiting for the morning
stary, with all such luxuries around you. Is not this food
for a philosopher? Day breaks. Now and then a rat-
tle-snake's shrill sound warns you that this is no place
for human foot to read. Or, should you chance to have
a horse, weary and faint for want of food, the poor beast
fags along; anon he pricks his ears, raises his head, and
as small break in the forest--some dead and withering
trees still standing there--announce a dwelling. What
next?--the ruin of an old log hut, the miserable home
of some poor wretch, who, to avoid the law, has fled into
the forest merely to find out that the prison he has
chosen is far worse than the one he has fled from; for
here, after toil and anxiety, nature refuses to pay the
industrious. He exclaims, "This is no place for man!"
and leaves the ruined forest to become a forest once
[Piece spans column 2 and 3] again. Here the traveller cannot rest, but disappointed
man and beast pursure their weary course.
What should Madam Trollope or Basil Hall know of
America ? They have, indeed, told many truths, but
they have left the main truths untold--selecting all the
bad, which they have highly coloured through preju-
dice. The one wrote for money, and the other to please
his country, and obtain promotion by gratifying that
letty petty jealousy which still remains unextinguished.
There must be good and bad in all countries; but the
man who travels from stage-house to stage-house, can
give no idea of the manners and customs of a private
family. None but a prejudiced man would presume to
condemn that which he had not seen, because he had
seen that which he disliked. I would not, therefore,
wish my reader to consider all America as piny woods,
for there are some good spots of land, just as sure as
there are some strange people, in the United States.
The lands, however, which I am now speaking of are
poor--miserably poor.
I had wandered some two or three hundred miles
through this part, from the banks of the Mississippi
through Alabama and Georgia, when I lost my horse,
and was, consequently, compelled to continue my jour-
ney on foot, having determind on going, unlike all
other movers, from west to east-- meeting the rising
sun, rather than chasing him as he sets. It was late in
the evening, and as I had become weary, being unaccus-
tomed to my new mode of travelling, I resolved on stop-
ping at the first resting-place. In these thinly settled
countries there are but few, if any, houses of entertain-
ment or taverns, and the traveller seeks a welcome at
almost every house he meets with. Some, however,
dread the approach of strangers-- not lacking hospitality,
but fearing lest a writ or warrant should be the remu-
neration of the kindness shewn-- not on account of
kindness, but some little previous affair. It was my
misfortune to find such an one, the very first I met with;
and as I entered, after my first salutation was answered
by a sullen reserve, I asked if I could remain that night,
at least.
"No!" was the abrupt answer.
"But I am on foot, and the night is dark."
"Can't help it!" was the surly reply, "arn't pre-
pared to accommodate vagrants."
" How far is it to the next house?" I asked.
"Not more than a mile or so."
This, at least, was cheerful news, for now, as the fire
blazed up, I discovered a countenance but little, if any
thing, more pleasing than the manners of its possessor.
My task seemed but a short one, which appeared in some
measure to excuse the surly conduct I had met with. It
did not, however, prove to be so, for the road led through
a swamp, and I had partly to feel my way on my hands
and knees--now sliding from the slippery logs up to my
middle in the water--now catching it at the briars to save
myself from falling altogether into it; and more than
once I could have cursed the fellow's lack of hospitality.
Those little stinging pains will often make good men
forget themselves. I thought I never should get out.
Sometimes the branches of a tree came poking in my
face. Once, thinking to put my foot on a stump, I sank
up to my knee in a mud-bank. I grasped a branch-- it
broke; I grasped another, hastily drew out my leg, and
left my shoe behind it. It was some five or ten minutes
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