The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

OR 1:0RN LEAV.E8 FRO1\( LIFE HISTORY. 177
ing forward to the mysterious portals of untimely death;
or, it may be, the doom of dragging a mutilated form
through the penance of a suffering life, impressed the kind
heart of, the young soldier with the tenderest sympathy.
" Would I could die for them!" he murmured; "or
rather, would it had pleased the great Dispenser of life to
. teach men what a sacred thing it is ! This frame, so wonderfully
and fearfully fashioned, with such skill, ingenuity,
and beauty, - why should this be torn and rent by tiger
men, destroying what God has designed so well and
nature has outwrought so patiently, - and all for the possession
of a few feet of earth in this particular section of
the globe? What vast waste lands are yet unclaimed
which these greedy ones could possess! What wealth
within the giant bosoms of yet unwrought mountains,
with which they might enrich themselves, without this
cruel butchery of each other - and all to satisfy the avaricious
yet sluggard spirit which would rather steal another's
possessions than toil to obtain them himself! Where are
the spirits, too, of the slaughtered dead? 0 starry homes!
they cannot enter you; they arc not ready; earth has not
yet done with them, nor they with earth. Their mission
unfulfilled, some vast mid-region must receive them, the
poor, unresting dead! Your tranquil, peaceful rest, 0
stars and suns! where happily spirits dwell; may not
receive the waifs whom God has sent to earth to grow,
unfold, and become fit blossoms for the gardens of eternity,
but which rude man cuts down before the fruit is
ripe, and crushes out of life ere half the work is done.
Murder, - thou last, worst crime! thou greatest wrong
the undeveloped soul of man can e'er suffer! - what
sophistry can gild thee? what law of man's contrivance
redeem the stain of foolish, useless, but irreparable wrong?