PETERSON'S MAGAZINE.
THE OPEN HAND.
___
BY A. J. WHITTAKER.
“How wonderful the common street,
Its tumult and its throng,
The hurrying of the thousand feet
That bear life's cares along.”
“For the love of Heaven, good friend, a penny,” said a feeble beggar, one bitter night, to a wealthy. merchant in Chestnut street, But the proud man, ‘wrapping his rich mantle about him, turned scornfully away: and the beggar passed on.
You would scarcely have noticed the ecene, yet there wes in it a whole history of life: the calm, unfeeling coldness of an ishuman apathy, and the great agony of a breeking heart. The one went to his lordly home, where mosic and gladness, and the bright faces of bis happy children were around the hearth-stone: the other tovered along with trembling tops to the wretched hovel, where his pele-faced wife awaited his retarn. ‘The light flashed forth from the rich man’s mansion; but the beggar’s home was desolate.
Follow now snd tell me which of the two was Messed above the other; the one in his wealth, or the other in his rage!
‘Throngh the whole of that weary night, did the beggar and his wife sit musing over the past, and looking for some light in the future. Above, around them, on aif sides they beheld nothing but the gloom which no ray might penetrate; nothing but the impenstrable obscurity which is ever resting upon the wretched and the outcast. For God knows, God Knows if 10¢ do not, that at all times, even at this ‘Moment, in many a desolate home, by many a cheerless hearth, there are sirong men bowed beneath the weight of an overwhelming despair; trembling ‘Women, pining away in their great despondency; and bright-eyed little children growing pale and Shastly from the want of bread!
God knows, God knows, that even upon our neighbors and our friends, possibly upon the one next door, there ia resting the cold, relentless hand of poverty, that poverty of which we can form no (rue couception, until we shall fiad ourselves bending like them over te last dead ember, and famishing tike them for food.
God knows that in the crowded city thousands
die and are baried without an epitaph, whose path
through life wos one of sorrow, who struggled on,
and struggled on, bravely perheps and cheerfully,
and’ yet never came up from the darkness about
them, but died of a weary heart,
Conld we but enter into the homes #0 near us; go. like the angele, into every haunt of wo and grief, and tonch the lips of the wretched ones gathered there, whet talea of agony should we hear. One would teil us sweet dreams of his sinless boyhood; tell us how he started in life, etl gladly and geily, and with no fear of the unknown future; how, for e time, the breeze was fair, and the sky blue, and the ocean calm, and with his flag thrown out upon the gale, he sped along bravely and rapidly, unlil bis voyage was nearly over, when, just as he caught sight of the desired port; saw its temples and spires glittering in the sanlight; heard the mosic of the barp, and the voices of the singers watted from its atreete—juat as the test dillow was bearing him in upon its bosom to hin destined anchorage—just then, just then, alsa! alas! the storm came down and the billow dashed him back, and the rudder gave way, and his gullant vessel was carried out again, all crushed and broken, a thousand leagues into the angry sea, He would tell ua, perhaps, how that storm pasted by, and the sun shone out as brightly as befére, and the sea became calm again, and that once more with the blue sky above hie he ped along toward the haven. But again the ttorm came down, and again, and again, until at length his brave and beautiful barque was thrown high ap upoo the rocky reef, and left, a solitary hulk, to moulder in the sua.
Another would tell his tale of love. How the sweet, being whom ke worshipped, the idol to which his yearning heart gave homage, loved him avd blessed him for many @ long aud pleasant year; but that before long het check grew pate, and her eye dim; and that now bis only solace in life is to go at the �
