But no help came. There he lay, wasted by fever, his dark hair threaded with untimely gray; poor, penniless, overwhelmed with difficulties, but to the last writing songs, which won him no remuneration then, but which are now recognized as the choicest wealth of the nation which let him die uncomforted.
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See Unrewarded Invention.
NEGLECT OF OPPORTUNITY
James Buckham is the author of the following:
The day is done.
And I, alas! have wrought no good,
Performed no worthy task of thought or deed.
Albeit small my power, and great my need,
I have not done the little that I could.
With shame o'er forfeit hours I brood,—
The day is done.
I can not tell!
What good I might have done this day
Of thought or deed that still, when I am gone,
Had long, long years gone singing on and on,
Like some sweet fountain by the dusty way,
Perhaps some word that God would say—
I can not tell!
(Text.)
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NEGLECT OF THE LIVING
On the 13th of July, 1816, occurred the funeral of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Many noblemen were present to pay a tribute to his extraordinary talents.
What a strange contrast! For some
weeks before his death he was nearly destitute
of the means of subsistence. Executions
for debt were in the house; he passed
his last days in the custody of sheriff's
officers who abstained from conveying him
to prison merely because they were assured
that to remove him would cause his immediate
death! And now, when dead, a
crowd of persons, the first in rank and station
and opulence, were eager to attend
him to his grave. . . . His death had been
rapidly accelerated by grief, disappointment,
and a deep sense of the neglect he had experienced."
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Neglect Overcome—See Rank, Obsequiousness to. NEGLECTED LIVES What is sadder than a ruined house and a deserted farm? Last summer, in Maine, I looked upon such a one. The gate was broken down, the entrance was a mass of thorns. Weeds had ruined the roses, for ten years the apple trees had gone unpruned, the curb at the well had fallen in, the windows were out, the ceilings were wet, vermin crept under the floor. Decay was everywhere. Wild growths had sprung up in meadow and pasture and ruined the fields. Desolation was everywhere. At the gate one might have written this legend: "A place where man has ceased to work with God." Sadder scene there is not than a ruined rose-garden and a deserted house, given over to mice and rats, where once there was laughter and the shouts of children, and good talk between brave men. One thing alone is sadder—the deserted spiritual life. Lift up your eyes and look around on men. You find the multitudes who are neglected harvest-fields. Selfishness in them is rank. Self-aggrandizement is an unpruned growth. Pleasures run rampant. Like the green bay-tree, they flourish. And yet, their prosperity is a sham, their happiness an illusion, their influence a bubble.—N. D. Hillis.
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NEGLECTING THE HARVEST It seems a very strange proceeding when a farmer plows and plants and cares for his crop through the summer and then lets it stand all winter in the fields, to be eaten by mice, pelted by storms, and go to waste; and yet he is quite as wise as the pastor who toils hard to persuade people to give their hearts to God and come into the Church, and then allows the converts to lapse into religious ruin through neglect.—Western Christian Advocate.
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NEGRO EXCELLING
Estelle E. Gibbs, a negro girl, fourteen
years old, living with her parents at No. 512
First Street, Hoboken, received to-day (Feb.
4, 1910), the first prize, a gold medal, at the
graduating exercises of the Hoboken public
school pupils, in the Gayety Theater. She
had the highest average of any public-school
scholar in the city—99-1/3 per cent. in six
subjects. The medal was presented by Mayor
Gonzales.
There are 10,000 white pupils in the schools and only 15 negroes. Only eleven negro families live in Hoboken. Estelle is the daughter of a Pullman car porter on the
