1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/cd9f424dd344d336c4fd172c3efb037c.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ubfGTnm0FtSIR4ReIbABvAR1zfeVjElGCMqn%7Et7jXQlHazDeLs5SeiFFW1-LY0brqLpkRPgbOwL8ZKWC-lWeZJrJy%7ETBQ1mA4qLBfTS6vDG-oOrwxRhcZUBgLEls4eBsXOGrMWpkur7SW2p9-0yR7UcVBLhzTVTJ0CV5CdBw6m0wmLttfc2TCiQ6cegqJwAZKDIkphQyZVedLf95X-yL0AepaoXzZD2HFG0WVlUGTRoXNffMgw842B5TMHGmNN2erPbHkMn42gjsiWw-qZG7tRo1mfhzywkpUoFLy2HSW4BxNIktzYddPjdLvyNw5vvzIZ6FIod5TPoyQiLvJsfsmA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
248e462a5ac55e7d3bf034ddd58b49da
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1848
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1848.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
"LIFE IS SWEET." BY MISS CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK. <br /><br />It was a summer's morning. I was awakened by the rushing of a distant engine, bearing along a tide of men to their busy day in a great city. Cool sea-breezes stole through the pine- trees embowering my dwelling; the aromatic pines breathed out their reedy music; the humming-bird was fluttering over the honeysuckle at my window; the grass glittered with dew-drops. A maiden was coming from the dairy across the lawn, with a silver mug of new milk in her hand; by the other hand she led a child. The young woman was in the full beauty of ripened and perfect womanhood. Her step was elastic and vigorous; moderate labor had developed without impairing her fine person. Her face beamed with intelligent life, conscious power, calm dignity, and sweet temper. " How sweet is life to this girl !" I thought, as, respected and respecting, she sustains her place in domestic life, distilling her pure influences into the little creature she holds by the hand! And how sweet then was life to that child! Her little form was so erect and strong — so firmly knit to outward life — her step so free and joyous! — her fair, bright hair, so bright, that it seemed as if a sunbeam came from it. It lay parted on that brow, where an infinite capacity had set its seal. And that spiritual eye — so quickly perceiving — so eagerly exploring! and those sweet red lips — love and laughter, and beauty are there. Now she snatches a tuft of flowers from the grass — now she springs to meet her playmate, the young, frisky dog — and now she is shouting playfully: he has knocked her over, and they are rolling on the turf together! <br /><br />Before three months passed away, she had lain down the beautiful garments of her mortality; she had entered the gates of immortal life : and those who followed her to its threshold, felt that, to the end, her ministry had been most sweet. " Life is sweet" to the young, with their unfathomable hopes — their unlimited imaginings. It is sweeter still with the varied realization. Heaven has provided the ever-changing loveliness and mysterious process of the outward world in the inspirations of art — in the excitement of magnanimous deeds — in the close knitting of affections — in the joys of the mother — the toils and harvest of the father — in the countless blessings of hallowed domestic life. <br /><br />"Life is sweet" to the seeker of wisdom, and to the lover of science ; and all progress and each discovery is a joy to them." <br /><br />"Life is sweet" to the true lovers of their race; and the unknown and unpraised good they do by word, or look, or deed, is joy ineffable. <br /><br />But not alone to the wise, to the learned, to the young, to the healthful, to the gifted, to the happy, to the vigorous doer of good. — is life sweet: for the patient sufferer it has a divine sweetness. <br /><br />"What," I asked a friend, who had been on a delicious country excursion, " did you see that best pleased you. My friend has cultivated her love of moral, more than her perception of physical beauty, and I was not surprised when, after replying, with a smile, that she would tell me honestly, she went on to say: " My cousin took me to see a man who had been a clergyman in the Methodist connection. He had suffered from a nervous rheumatism, and from a complication of diseases, aggravated by ignorant drugging. Every muscle in his body, excepting those which move his eyes and tongue, is paralyzed. His body has become as rigid as iron. His limits have lost the human form. He has not been lain on a bed for seven years. He suffers acute pain. He has invented a chair which affords him some alleviation. His feelings are fresh and kindly, and his mind is unimpaired. He reads constantly. His book is fixed in a frame before him, and he manages to turn the leaves by an instrument which he moves with his tongue. He has an income of thirty dollars! This pittance, by the vigilant economy of his wife, and some aid from kind rustic neighbors, brings the year round. His wife is the most gentle, patient, and devoted of loving nurses. She never has too much to do, to do all well; no wish or thought goes beyond the unvarying circle of her conjugal duty. Her love is as abounding as his wants — her cheerfulness as sure as the rising of the sun. She has not for years slept two hours consecutively. <br /><br />" I did not know which most to reverence, his patience or hers 1 and so I said to them. ' Ah I' said the good man, with a most serene smile, ' life is still sweet to me ; how can it but be so with, such a wife ?" <br /><br />And surely life is sweet to her, who feels every hour of the day the truth of this gracious acknowledgment. <br /><br />Oh ye, who live amidst alternate sunshine and showers of plenty, to whom night brings sleep, and daylight freshness — ye murmurers and complainers who fret in the harness of life till it gall you to the bone — who recoil at the lightest burden, and shrink from a passing cloud, — consider the magnanimous sufferer my friend described, and learn the divine art that can distil sweetness from the bitterest cup!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Life is Sweet
Subject
The topic of the resource
Youth, death, service, gratitude.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator reflects on the vicissitudes of life and moralizes about the benefits of suffering and giving to others.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Sartain's Union Magazine</em> (edited by Caroline M. Kirkland)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
August 1848
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
B. Beyer, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in <em>Tales of City Life.</em> Philadelphia: Hazard and Mitchell, 1850.<br />Collected in <em>The Gem of the Season</em>, edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis, 219-22, New York, 1850 (pub. 1849).<br />Collected in <em>The Thought Blossom</em>, edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis, 208-11, New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1855.<br />Collected in <em>Charlie Hathaway, or The City Clerk and other Stories,</em> New York, 1869.<br />"A Tale With a Moral." <em>Pittsfield Sun</em>.[Pittsfield, MA]. (9 November 1848): 1.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document.
charity
Death
gratitude
Sartain's Union Magazine
service
suffering
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/ea902f8862dd50ffcb0f7347d3ab0b4a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=LGKrckNrfGvIi82KBb5VzoFSiseEpkQz0W1hhouLEmZG5uPfLbiy7kYAiBpBHJL3hawperrQvhIt14Ejw4GytqExZNkqRzF2ZdQ0dM1PLiTtE3owErX7L4J3FkiO2nRlxAGt8x3uOP2CskIM5%7EYp8wVu6Stadpi0nkgq4KTQIyMlIhrnof7hZiaAMxo%7E97PfBpN20PSlErbKt1OSAm0if6uTMtGFNpVtZqIwUH0MeyrZV4f0yN8Cip343Jz%7EAJtl9fVTo7UcrnLmT7e2-AnlxgNC68bMQx-P%7EXyf7ZNUsMCJS%7E6NwOdJhc5z4b5zzl8tJbqrZTF377PqsgbRtRMYow__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
879b40d88edf66fde9c0c71135332670
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1843
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
COUSIN FRANK.
By Miss Sedgwick.
[p. 512]
Gray, in the most familiar of his exquisite Stanzas in a Country Church-yard, (“Full many a gem” &c.) has expressed most poetically the waste of a false position in life. The fond partiality of every village generation finds in its own burying-ground some “village Hampden,” some “mute, inglorious Milton,” or
“Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.”
It is a signal good fortune, when an individual has a right position in life. The office of President of the United States is one of the highest among men, and he who worthily fills it is the peer of kings and autocrats. Washington, the elected head of the American people, was truly king of kings. But if the nation put in that high place a man only fitted to be a clever ward politician, or a skillful overseer of a plantation, he is a mark in the pillory, not the light set on a hill.
We see every day men in a false position; in places as ill-fitting as a garment a world too wide, or perchance too narrow. Men are raised to offices of trust and honor, that are worthy neither of the one nor the other; and stout frames, which nature has built of muscle and sinew able to subdue the wildest of our wild land, are in places behind counters, that women of right and grace should fill. Do we not all know ladies in drawing-rooms, cumberers of that ground, who would have figured as first-rate milliners? And mistresses of our city palaces, who would have been inestimable market-women? And yellow, languid, fine ladies, who in the right vocation of chamber-maids, would have been brisk and blooming? And do we not know those in obscure and humble places, who, shuffled to their right position, would bring with them the graces so much wanted to give a zest to high life? There are men born to the inheritance and ministration of a princely fortune, who are only fit to keep a livery stable, or drive four in hand; and there are spiritual teachers, whose whole lives should be passed in the humblest class of learners. Bachelors there are, who would have been pattern husbands and idolized fathers; and husbands and fathers, who should have gone roaming and growling alone through life. It is this prevailing disorder and unfitness, that makes it so peculiarly delightful to see a friend in the right position—that gives to fitness the effect of harmony.
This felicity of the right position is most strikingly illustrated by a charming friend of mine, who, having an innumerable host of young cousins, is best known by his most common appellative, “Cousin Frank.” A discerning girl has tried to fix upon him the sobriquet of Pickwick, but there was a general outcry against this; we were too jealous of the originality of our friend, to blend him in any way with another. Perhaps, we did not all of us fully appreciate the gentle qualities—the romantic benevolence—the exquisite gentlemanliness of the Don Quixote of Mr. Dickens’s creation; and besides, the very sound of “Cousin Frank!” is a key-note to our affections. “Cousin Frank” is not too young—and I cannot remember that he ever was—for any kind office; and he never will be “too old” for any service of humanity. He is not rich, thank Heaven, for if he were, he would have cares of his own; nor is he poor, and thank Heaven for that, too, for then he would have sordid anxieties. If he were too tall, he might on some occasion (there is a universality in Cousin Frank’s occasions) be inconveniently conspicuous; and if he were too short, he might not always command the respect of those who measure dignity by feet and inches; so he is just right—just as high as all our hearts.
Again, “Cousin Frank” is not in the dilemma of one of Mr. Bulwer’s heroes, “too handsome for anything,” but were you to question his beauty in
[p. 514]
a certain circle, any one of a dozen fair young creatures would exclaim, “Cousin Frank not handsome!—I wonder then who is!” He certainly has what our English friends call “a nice countenance;” just that amount of good looks that makes a young lady who has his arm in a company of strangers, feel very complacent.
We have said there is a universality in “Cousin Frank’s occasions of benevolent usefulness”—we cannot enumerate them. He is the dear and privileged friend of a half-a-dozen families, and the mainspring of three. If there be a pleasant party on foot, “Cousin Frank” must come to make it pleasanter; if a dull one, he must come to make it endurable. If an agreeable dinner is planned, “Cousin Frank” is the guest to make sure all its pleasant little hilarities; if a heavy one is apprehended, he must do its dull honors. A perilous winter’s journey can only be encountered with “Cousin Frank: “ an enticing pic-nic would still be nothing without him. If there be an awkward secret that must be confided to some one. “Cousin Frank” is the chosen recipient; he never tells, and if help be possible, help will come from him.
“Cousin Frank” is no amateur of music, real or pretended. I doubt if he could distinguish an air of Bellini from a sonata of Beethoven. Yet he goes to more concerts than any man in town; for Grisi or Lablache would sing in vain to any of our score of girls, if “Cousin Frank” were not there. The lectures—we must confess it—sparing neither sex nor ate, they have well nigh exhausted even “Cousin Frank’s” patience, and he was once seen looking grave and doubtful when one of his prettiest cousins asked him to attend her to the “Tabernacle.”
For himself, “Cousin Frank” eschews parties; but if there be a timid womankind among us, who fears to go alone in a carriage, he is called upon to attend her; or if there be a frugal one who would fain save coach-hire, he is again called upon, and “Cousin Frank” is that good, that “dainty spirit,” that “does always come when you do call him.” But he is not merely the preux chevalier of young and pretty girls—most bachelors are willing servants of these; he is the visiter of the neglected, the prop of the old, the cheerer of all. He has that true chivalry which Charles Lamb said he would believe in when he saw the best seat in a coach given to a forlorn old woman.
As to country commissions, scarce a mail arrives without bringing a flood of them for “Cousin Frank.” The tide never ebbs. For example by the last: “Poor B. is getting deafer and deafer every day. It is a sad sight to see the tears in his eyes when he perceives his little boy’s lips moving without hearing the accents that come from them. Ask your Cousin Frank to look in at the new-fangled instruments for the deaf, and send us a report of them.” “G_____’s eyes are getting worse again;” then comes a statement of the case, and the unfailing conclusion, “Ask your Cousin Frank to step into Elliott’s and consult him about her going to town.” Again: “We are impatient to see Stephens’s new work; ask your Cousin Frank to forward it by the first opportunity.” And once more: “Ask your Cousin Frank to send me a couple of dozen of good Port and a half-box of the best cigars; he knows how to choose both.”
But we forbear, lest through our dull medium our readers may be—as no one ever yet was—tired of “Cousin Frank.” This is not the place to speak of his blessed part in the domestic tragedies of his friends; that memory is cut in to their hearts, and its memorial is written down in the book of which the angel of life keeps the record. Such a character as “Cousin Frank” is a rare social blessing, and its felicity is to have fallen into the right position—upon a family where there is an alarming and most inconvenient preponderance of womankind.
Every now and then we have a rumor that “Cousin Frank” is about “to give to a party what was meant for mankind;” and his cousins look jealously on certain of their charming friends on whom he seems to them to smile to benignly. The cloud passes off. The statue has found its true niche—the picture its best light. “Cousin Frank” must not be married. This would be like giving to an individual an exclusive right to the sunshine—allowing to one family the monopoly of the Croton water. No: all crowns but the crown matrimonial to our dear “Cousin Frank!”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cousin Frank
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bachelors, vocation, benevolence.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator offers a sketch of a bachelor who is loved by family and friends for his generosity and benevolence.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Vol. 12, May 1843, pp. 512-513.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Edited by John L. O'Sullivan
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1843
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Matt Burton, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in New World (6 May 1843): 537-38. Collected in Sedgwick, Catharine, Tales and Sketches, Second Series, 163-168, 1844.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1843
bachelors
benevolence
Charles Dickens
cousin
Croton Aqueduct
Don Quioxte
Edward Bulwer Lytton
George Washington
Giulia Grisi
John Milton
Ludwig van Beethoven
Luigi Lablache
marriage
Pickwick
service
single life
Tales and Sketches - Second Series
Thomas Gray
United States Magazine and Democratic Review
Vincenzo Bellini
vocation