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; the unrecognized journalist, 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.