| | 1 | Author: | Flint
Timothy
1780-1840 | Add | | | Title: | George Mason, the young backwoodsman, or, 'Don't give up the ship"  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Widow, who weepest sore in the night, and whose
tears are on thy cheeks, because thy young children are
fatherless, and the husband of thy bosom and thy youth
in the dust, dry thy tears. Remember Him, who hath
promised to be the husband of the widow, and take
courage. Orphan, who hast seen thy venerated father
taken from thee by the rude hand of death, and whose
thought is, that in the wide world, there is none to love,
pity, or protect thee, forget not the gracious Being, who
has promised to be a father to the orphan, and remember,
that thy business in life is, not to give up to weak
and enervating despondence, and waste thy strength in
sorrow and tears. Life is neither an anthem nor a
funeral hymn, but an assigned task of discipline and
struggle, and thou hast to gird thyself, and go to thy
duty in the strength of God. I write for the young,
the poor, and the desolate; and the moral and the maxim
which I wish to inculcate is, that we ought never to
despond, either in our religious or our temporal trials.
To parents I would say, inculcate the spirit, the duties,
and the hopes of religion upon your children in the
morning and the evening, in the house and by the way.
Instil decision and moral courage into their young bosoms.
Teach them incessantly the grand maxim—self-respect.
It will go farther to gain them respect, and
render them deserving of it, than the bequeathed stores
of hoarded coffers. A child, deeply imbued with self-respect,
will never disgrace his parents. The inculcation
of this single point includes, in my view, the best
scope of education. If my powers corresponded to my
wishes, I would impress these thoughts in the following
brief and unpretending story. The reader will see, if
he knows the country, where it is laid, as I do, that it
is true to nature. He will comprehend my motive for
not being more explicit on many points; and he will not
turn away with indifference from the short and simple
annals of the poor, for he will remember, that nine in
ten of our brethren of the human race are of that class.
He will not dare to despise the lowly tenants of the valley,
where the Almighty, in his wisdom, has seen fit to
place the great mass of our race. It has been for ages
the wicked, and unfeeling, and stupid habit of writers,
in selecting their scenery and their examples, to act as
if they supposed that the rich, the titled, and the distinguished,
who dwell in mansions, and fare sumptuously
every day, were the only persons, who could display
noble thinking and acting; that they were the only characters,
whose loves, hopes, fortunes, sufferings, and
deeds had any thing in them, worthy of interest, or
sympathy. Who, in reading about these favorites of
fortune, remembers that they constitute but one in ten
thousand of the species? Even those of humble name
and fortunes have finally caught the debasing and enslaving
prejudice themselves, and exult in the actions,
and shed tears of sympathy over the sorrows of the
titled and the great, which, had they been recorded of
1*
those in their own walk of life, would have been viewed
either with indifference or disgust. I well know that
the poor can act as nobly, and suffer as bitterly and
keenly as the rich. There is as much strength and
force and truth of affection in cottages as in palaces.
I am a man, and as such, am affected with the noble
actions, the joys and sorrows, the love and death of the
obscure, as much as of the great. If there be any difference,
the deeds, affections, fortunes, and sufferings of
the former have more interest; for they are unprompted
by vanity, unblazoned by fame, unobscured by affectation,
unalloyed by pride and avarice. The actings of
the heart are sincere, simple, single. God alone has
touched the pendulum with his finger, and the vibrations
are invariably true to the purpose of Him who
made the movement. If, therefore, reader, you feel
with me, you will not turn away with indifference from
this, my tale, because you are forewarned, that none of
the personages are rich or distinguished. You will believe,
that a noble heart can swell in a bosom clad in
the meanest habiliments. You will admit the truth as
well as the beauty of the poet's declaration, respecting
the gems of the sea, and the roses that “waste their
sweetness on the desert air;” and you will believe,
that incidents, full of tender and solemn interest, have
occurred in a log cabin in the forests of the Mississippi. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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