WAITING AT PANAMA FOR THE STEAMER.—The Sun going down on their Hopes.
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WAITING AT PANAMA.
The sad effects of an insane haste to grow rich by chasing gilded shadows, instead of taking the secure path of industry, are exemplified in the fact, that hundreds of our countrymen who have abandoned places of profit for the dazzling placers of speculation, and business, which afforded a decent competency, for wild and uncertain adventure, are now crowding the shore of the Pacific at Panama, with exhausted means and dissipated hopes. The all-absorbing desire for speedy fortune precluded even the common and most ordinary caution as to probabilities. At the first sound of the horn, the hunter was off, regardless of obstacles, defiant of fate, and with a recklessness unpardonable, the comforts of home were sacrificed, and all the dangers of a doubtful, hardy, and perilous enterprise were imprudently braved. The sad uncertainty of fortune—the more than doubts of her existence for them—has been cruelly thrust into their faces, and impressed upon their hearts. The return of that tremendous tide, which seemed to sweep wise men and madmen together resistlessly upon its bosom, comes freighted with the first fragments of hopes wrecked, and wealth, and perhaps health dissipated and lost. Time and opportunity here—more valuable than gold—are gone, and the adventurer comes back with unstrung nerves and faded visions of greatness, to battle again in the busy and uncompromising marts of trade, for bread. The illusion has vanished!—the cheat is transparent! “The sober second-thought” has come with its impressive lesson. The blanks turn out in this, as in all lotteries, the most numerous and certain—the prizes equally few and unreliable. When the voice of that vaster multitude now filling the streams and plains of California shall have been heard, we shall have a sonorous echo of the despairing wail of the impoverished and deluded at Panama. Mark it!
“Be sure you are right, and then go ahead” is a maxim so universally current in this country, that one would suppose that its practice would be more common. But no! in the rush of excitement, the go-ahead spirit takes the lead, leaving at home old father Caution to play with his thumbs, and to wonder at his relations. “Get out of the way!” “Take care!” “Clear the track!” “Off she goes!”—whiz! and the young generation is cut from leading-strings, and half-way on the road to fortune before Grandfather has rubbed his eyes, and opened them to the true state of affairs around him—no, not around, before him, but completely out of sight. Talk of Rome not having been built in a day, old Graybeard! You are behind the times. Kingdoms shoot up in a night, and nations are born between two breakfasts. Don’t speak of the ingratitude of relations, old man; the thing is absurd. While you are hunting genealogies, the parties have belted the world, and are walking with their heads down directly beneath you, or are half-way to the Pacific on an air-line in the light that marks the horizon—skimming through the clouds in a flying machine. “Friendly ties.” “Home affection!” Poh! you are in your dotage, old fellow! We have no time to waste on silly abstractions! Good bye! Take care of yourself! Will write you from the other side! So we go!
But are we happier for all this fiery impetuosity of disposition—this ginger-beer effervescence of intellect—this fussing, fretting, fuming wrath of haste to get on, to get off, to be going? Is this the true enjoyment of LIFE! after all, to go whirling along in a state of high excitement without a moment’s pause, with a sort of insane heat and fierceness of intellect, restless, roaming, and parched up with the fever of desire for wealth—to be enslaved by the eternal, all-absorbing all-engulphing I—the monster self, grown Colossal, insatiate, and fiend-like. Is there nothing worth loving, that we may pause to cherish? No enjoyment worth a cool moment, in which the fevered lust of money may be forgotten? Pile up your gold, young man! Give your imagination its most boundless desire! Spread the base of your pyramid over an area of acres! Pile up!—pile high! oh, avarice and pride! Let its peak touch the skies! ay, higher still! And now we point you to that little cluster of bleached bones, whitening but a spot beside the gigantic god you worship, and to that young, pale face, sitting sighing by yonder fire-side, thousands of miles away—would the wealth that might cover the Cyclops, compensate her for the chilled heart, the desolate days which are hers. Ah no! with but a crust to break with you, in a home of humbleness and peace, how that heart would bound with pride, those sad eyes sparkle with pleasure, and those pale cheeks regain their roses and bloom with health. And if all the wealth of India and Peru were hers, how poor a gift would she esteem it to clothe those bones of yours once again with manly beauty, and to sit once again confidingly by your side, her hand in yours, her eyes lifted to your dark gaze, as to the heaven of her dreams. Ah! but you will not die, you will take the risk. Pause awhile! think of it wisely! think of it well!
We are not talking in the language of statesmen. Ah, no! statesmen and warriors estimate men in masses—marshal them in squadrons and platoons; they form a State—they fill a list of 10,000 killed and wounded. Ours is the humbler view—the domestic ties lacerated—the friendships dissipated—the few hearts broken. The dead of the ten thousand slain upon the battle-field return no more—the thrice ten thousand hearts that mourn, bleed on, but form no part of the estimate of war’s disaster. The thousands of brothers, young, impetuous, adventurous, are gone! they are the State’s, and of it. The sister weeps—the mother droops and dies, as the long years roll on, and the lost ones return no more; and the proud page of history swells with the triumph, the pen grows eloquent as it records the foundation and the growth of empire, and bright names live and flash along the glowing line; but the desolate heart, and the desolate hearth, are forgotten and unknown. These are the sadder views of conquest—the inevitable results of adventurous migration. “And yet,” cries the brawling patriot who is never self devoted, “you oppose the march of empire—the growth of nations!” By no means, good friend! If the thousands who are now pouring as a flood into California, or even a tythe of them, were whole families, with farming utensils, and domestic implements, seeking a far off and productive soil, where they might again erect their household gods, and live happily to a green old age, under their own vine and fig-tree, extending rationally and naturally the benefits of civilization, we should wish them God speed, and give them joy at their going. But how is it? Reader, we ask you—how is it with the adventurers, who are now rushing thoughtlessly, desperately from home? How few, even with the best success, will realize their dreams? and of those few, how many will really be personally benefited by the wealth thus achieved? But the vast army of the disappointed—what of them? With morals contaminated, hearts sickened, hopes crushed—how many will return useful members of society? How many settle quietly down as hardy tillers of the soil? We fear, oh, most wise politician! that this last is a work to be done by another class of emigrants, and by but few of the gold hunters, and desperate land speculators who now crowd the vessels of the Pacific. Our advice, deeply pondered, and calmly given, to those who have a longing for that far-off and fertile region, is, to sit earnestly down to business here, and amass a few hundreds, or a few thousands, and when the scorn of that boiling, seething cauldron shall have passed off—when the thousands which have been made—on paper—in land speculations and gold mining, shall be no more heard of—you will find a few quiet acres still untilled, a population improved, and a certainty of comfort and happiness awaiting you there. Until then, we think, you may make life bearable here, by diligent application to business, a devotion to your family, to home duties and affections, and to careful improvement of your mental capacity, and of such opportunities as God may furnish you for doing good. Think of it, reader!
G. R. G.