For oh! the future is as dark
As is the ocean’s barren plain,
Whose restless waters wear no mark
To guide his eyes, who seeks in vain.
True, reckless Fancy dares invade
The realm of time’s uncounted hours,
As fondly gay, as if she stray’d
In safety through a land of flowers.
And still doth hope shine bright and warm—
But oh! the light with which it cheers,
My darling one, but glows to form
A rainbow o’er a vale of tears.
[George Washington Cruikshank.]
George W. Cruikshank was born in Fredericktown, Cecil county, Md., May 11th, 1838. He received his early education in the common school of Cecilton, and was afterwards sent to a military academy at Brandywine Springs, in New Castle county, Delaware, and graduated at Delaware College in 1858.
He is among the very best classical and literary scholars that his native county has produced. Mr. Cruikshank studied law for about a year in the office of Charles J.M. Gwinn, of Baltimore, but was compelled by the threatened loss of sight to relinquish study until 1865, when he completed the prescribed course of reading in the office of Colonel John C. Groome, in Elkton, and was admitted to the Elkton Bar on September 18th, 1865, and on the same day purchased an interest in The Cecil Democrat, and became its editor, a position he still continues to fill.
In 1883 Mr. Cruikshank became connected with the Baltimore Day, which he edited while that journal existed.
Mr. Cruikshank, in 1869, married his cousin Sarah Elizabeth Cruikshank. They are the parents of five children—three of whom survive.
Mr. Cruikshank is one of the most forcible and brilliant editorial writers in the State, and the author of a number of chaste and erudite poems written in early manhood, only two or three of which have been published.