DURING A pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the
river counties of New York, I found myself, as the day declined,
somewhat embarrassed about the road I was pursuing.
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will
pervading all things by nature of its intentness.
I AM now growing in years, and- since I understand that
Shakespeare and Mr. Emmons are deceased- it is not impossible that I
may even die. It has occurred to me, therefore, that I may as well
retire from the field of Letters and repose upon my laurels.
The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways;
nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness,
profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in
them greater than the well of Democritus.
THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal
--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and
sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with
dissolution.
I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article which I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than I do myself. It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the "Toughkeepsie Seer") of an odd-looking MS.