THE BIRDS’ HARVEST.
BY MRS. J. D. CHAPLIN.
IF “Restwood,” the little country-house to which we fly from the heat, and dust, and toil of the great city, were only large enough, we would invite all the young “Wide Awakes” to gather there. We would show them such scenery; we would wander with them through the deep pine-forest, whose whisperings are mingled with the wild roar of the dashing sea, and take them to sail in our fairy-like boat, over a bay that cannot be outshone by even the lovely Italian waters.
Near us are rich country squires, in great, square, white houses, where their fathers lived and died; farmers, who fight manfully against what inlanders call sterility, making fruitful the very sands by their energy; and a few retired city gentlemen, who fish, and sail, and hunt, and read, and ride, and eat, and sleep.
But the greatest among all these, a few years ago,—he may prove in the coming day one of the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,—was a tall, frail young man, whom his neighbors regarded as deficient in intellect. Everybody is weak in some direction. A wise man has remarked, that no one since the fall, when all humanity lost its balance, has been perfectly sane. It is sometimes very hard to tell who, taking all things into account, are the “weaker;” but there is little doubt that a jury of wise men would have counted our friend Jotham Belden among them.
What little balance-wheel was missing in that mind, He who made it only knows; but we rejoice that, while He withheld some powers common to most men, He also bestowed on him what He withholds from many—a powerful memory, and a delicately refined taste, and a strong sense of right.
Jotham was no pauper weakling. He was the cherished son of an honorable widow, who had ample means to gratify all his innocent desires; who speaks of him now with a sigh as well as a smile, and tells how he was the fairest and brightest of her fold, till the blight fell on him, and he rose from his sick bed shattered in body, and with a cloud over his mind. “He was never again the same Joe, whose bright speeches and merry pranks had been the pride of the farm-house, and the amusement of the village,” she tells you.