Yankee Energy.—A few days since, a gentleman of the city of New York was standing near the canal, at Albany, when he saw a small yawl-boat approaching him, propelled by a lad about seventeen years of age. The boat contained also the boy’s mother, six sisters, and a small brother. Our friend asked him where he was from, and where bound, and was answered, in substance, as follows:
“We are from Ohio. My father died there, and as we were nearly destitute, mother thought we had better go back to Saybrook, Conn., where we used to live; so we raised money enough to get this boat, and started from Ohio last fall. We came through Lake Erie, and got into the canal, where we were stopped by the ice. During the winter we hauled our boat up by the side of the canal, where we remained till the ice broke up. Sometimes we were considerably cold, and at times were sick a little, but on the whole we all got along right smart. We shall go down the North river, and up the sound to Saybrook.”
During this conversation, our friend was walking along the margin of the canal; our noble Yankee boy, being unwilling to lose any time, kept constantly propelling his boat forward, the younger brother, a lad of only seven or eight years of age, steering the craft. It was Sunday morning, and the mother and daughters were clad in their Sabbath suits, and engaged in reading. A small furnace was standing on the deck of the boat, and a sail, snugly stowed, was lying fore and aft. The few cooking utensils, bedding, and clothing belonging to this poor family, were securely placed under the deck.
Here is an instance of industry and perseverance, which commends itself to the notice of the rising generation—ay, and the present one too. No doubt, if this boy lives, he will yet make a stir in the world; and if we knew his name, we would publish it.
Who Made Man?—Look at the foot—how ingeniously is this contrived! Look at the arm: what piece of mechanism can compare with it? But of all parts of the body, the eye is perhaps the most wonderful. It has in it a lens, like that of a telescope, through which the rays of light pass; and at the back of the eye a little picture of whatever comes before the eye is formed. This picture falls upon a nerve which lines the interior of the eye, and thus it is we see. All this contrivance is very ingenious. And observe how the eye itself is placed in the head. See how easily it turns this way and that! Consider these things, and tell me, who but a Superior Being, one who contrives, one who thinks, could have made man?
Power of God.—The sun is as large as three hundred and thirty-seven thousand of our worlds. Jupiter is as large as one thousand two hundred and eighty-one of our worlds. Mercury flies along in its path at the rate of twenty miles in a second. Uranus is seventeen times as large as our world, one billion eight hundred milions of miles from the sun, and flies along at the rate of two hundred and forty miles every minute!
Here, then, is the power of God! A world, with all its mountains, and oceans, and kingdoms, is but a pebble in the hands of the Almighty!