The Argosy — page 340: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Dream from Fleaven. 319 “TI know,” cried the dancing Cary. ‘‘ Papa was run over.” ‘No, Caroline, I was not run over. I think you stand most chance of encountering that calamity, if you fly about so heedlessly. You are dancing now.” “Papa, I expect it was during the time we were so poor. How very poor we were! You don’t remember much about it,” added Algernon, turning to his brother and sisters. ““T do,” said Isabel. ‘¢ Ay, children, many’s the morning I have got up, and did not know where to get you a bit of bread. Give me your hands, dear children, and listen tome. J am about to speak to you very seriously, and I must request you never to forget my words. You have spoken, Alger- non, of the poverty we were in, but you cannot understand half its misery, half its embarrassment. It lasted so long that I rashly con- cluded I was forgotten by God: my heart, crushed with misery and wearied out, was almost broken, my spirit quite. I was tempted to abandon all, to—to "here he placed his hands upon his temples— “to abandon you my children; but a singular event showed me my error, and led me to better thoughts. I no longer imagined I could not bear any ill which might be my lot, but resolved 70 do so, and I found that this resolution took away half its hardship. I recalled one of the Promises your mamma has often read to you, which I had chosen to forget—that, as our day is, so, if we will it, shall our strength be. From that time I no longer gave way to despair, but struggled on, doing my very best in reliant trust and hope. And—you see, my children, you know how we have been brought through—we have regained all we had lost, even former friends; content, plenty, and peace are ours, and those dark days are remembered but as a dream.” That these words of Adam Grainger, this true tale, could be read by all who, like him, feel tempted to believe they are abandoned of Heaven ! Oh! let the would-be suicide remember them to his comfort, and stay his hand. ‘Though his spirit be faint and weary and his health shattered ; though hope has flown far away, and he looks around him, and finds nowhere, under the four winds of Heaven, to turn to for comfort or rest, and so despair has laid hold upon him, and he seizes in his madness the fatal weapon that will end his woes in this life; even at that last dread moment, LET HIM STAY HIS HAND. He knows not what an hour may bring forth; what God’s compassion may have in store for him. CoOnniclooolkKks mM