Lamentation of the Lungs.
Alas! has winter come again? Oh, how we dread the day!
The sufferings we undergo the bravest might dismay.
It is not that we fear the cold: had we a good supply
Of proper nourishment, the blasts of Greenland we’d defy;
But these poor bodies where we dwell have so impatient grown
That, heedless of the common good, they’ve learned to slight their own.
Not thinking that with fuel we our office would perform,
And take in oxygen to keep the blood and all the body warm.
So down the window-sashes go and up the stoves, until
We starving lungs must labor hard our duty to fulfill.
Perhaps our tabernacle moves to pitch its roving tent
Within some crowded hall or church—no doubt with good intent;
But little good the sweetest songs or best of sermons do
To those who vainly strive to keep awake within their pew.
For in that place of peace a deadly conflict we must wage,
And friends sit calmly while their lungs in fiercest war engage.
We struggle for a little air, while clamoring for more
The surging flood each moment rolls like waves upon the shore.
Clogged by impurities, in vain to us for help it cries,
And then the brain and nerves grow dull, and dim the drooping eyes.
But should a sufferer chance to rise and from the topmost raft
Let in a little air, forthwith somebody feels a draught.
And so we’re forced to get along the very best we can;
Nor do the good that we might do for blundering, headstrong man.
Phrenological Journal.
To read the English language well, to write with dispatch a neat, legible hand, and be master of the first rules of arithmetic, so as to dispose of at once, with accuracy, every question of figures which comes up in practice—I call this a good education. And if you add the ability to write pure grammatical English, I regard it as an excellent education. These are the tools. You can do much with them, but you are helpless without them. They are the foundation; and unless you begin with these, all your flashy attainments, a little geology, and all other ologies and osophies are ostentatious rubbish.—Edward Everett.