hand, and demand a still larger portion of my earn- ings, — and above all, that intellectual privileges were entirely denied me; but as I imprinted a parting kiss upon the lips of my faithful wife, and pressed to my bosom the little darling cherubs, who followed me saying, in their childish accents, "Father, come back soon," I felt that life was not alla blank to me; that there were some pure joys yet my portion. O, how my heart would have been riven with unntterable anguish, if I had then realized the awful calamity which was about to burst upon my unprotected head! Reader, are you a husband, and can you listen to my sad story, without being moved to cease all your con- nection with that stern power, which stretched out its piratical arm, and basely robbed me of all dear to me on earth!
The sun had traced his way to mid-heaven, and the hour for the laborers to turn from their tasks, and to seek refreshment for their toil-worn frames, — and when I should take my prattling children on my knee, — was fast approaching; but there burst upon me a sound so dreadful, and so sudden, that the shock well nigh overwhelmed me. It was as if the heavens them- selves had fallen upon me, and the everlasting hills of God's erecting, like an avalanche, had come rolling over my head! And what was it? "Your wife and smiling babes are gone; in prison they are locked, and to-morrow's sun will see them far away from you, on their way to the distant South!" Pardon the utterance of my feelings here, reader, for surely a man may feel, when all that he prizes on earth is, at one fell stroke, swept from his reach! O God, if there is @ moment when vengeance from thy righteous throne
