The Continental Monthly, page 139 by Various Authors
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his world as a place in which to attain to the good and to shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life.
His daughter wondered what caused his tone to be so tender that night; the next day his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor, struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what has turned their former oppressor into such a provident friend.
I only wonder that so old and selfish a man could have had so bright and heavenly a dream.
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A SENSIBLE EPITAPH.
'Reader, pass on: ne'er waste your time On bad biography or bitter rhyme: For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures, And what I was, is no affair of yours.'
THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH.
'Fair clime I where every season smiles.
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There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's check Reflects the tints of many a peak Caught by the laughing tides that lave These Edens of the Eastern wave. And if, at times, a transient breeze Break the blue crystal of the seas, Or sweep one blossom from the trees, How welcome is each gentle air That wakes and wafts the odors there!'
It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found ourselves, at about half-past four o'clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy morning, March fifteenth, 18--, rolling slowly along the uneven road that leads from Athens to the Piraeus. Our guide was Dhemetri, of course--who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri? An excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings of figs. Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking apparatus, and baggage, to