The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

LAMENT FOR SUMMER

BY J. W. LEEDS

Like an argosy deep laden
With the wealth of Indian sands,
Sailing down a summer ocean
To far-off Northern lands,—

Like a golden-visioned story—
Like the hectic's bright decay,
Dying in the painted glory
Of the autumn sere and hoary,
Fade the summer days away.

Persons who insist that 'after all, the Rebels are slandered as to waging warfare in a barbarous manner,' will do well to cast their eyes over the following from the Richmond Dispatch of September 24:

"The Yankees are about to send their army captured at Harper's Ferry against the Indians. Has the Government no means of retaliating for such a breach of faith?'

'A breach of faith!' So, then, we are to understand that the latest uprising of the Indians, as well as that led by that brutal Falstaff, Albert Pike, the Southwest, are all in the service of the Confederacy? For where is there a breach of faith unless the Indians in question are the allies of our Southern foes? This is, we presume, a part of 'the defensive policy of exhausting in detail the superior numbers of the invading North,' which has been proposed as forming a portion of the Confederate policy—other items of which consist of killing prisoners by neglect, and having torpedoes and mines in abandoned villages. We commend this admission of alliance with savages to the special consideration of the London Times.

We observe that a new planet has been discovered at Bilk, in Germany. Well, we have no doubt of the fact, but we don't like the name of the place where they found it. A Bilk planet is extremely suggestive of a Moon hoax. And, talking of hoaxes, has anybody with a sharp stick been as yet deputed by the government to look after the man who gets up proposals of peace for the Philadelphia Inquirer? Ancient friend of ours, such yarns (unintentionally) do harm. They are reprinted in Dixie, and the Dixians say that we are frightened, while Northern doughfaces grasp at them, and get to thinking. Excellent Inquirer! this is not a good time to set people to thinking over peace proposals and compromises.

Does our friend know, by the way, what sort of fowl are hatched from mares' nests'? They are canards. Don't let there be too many of them hatched in serious times like these.

A lady friend, who has brothers in the war, has kindly suggested that, in these days of patriotism, the songs of the Revolution should have more than usual zest, and has kindly copied for us a number, from which we select the following:

TO THE LADIES

[Published in the Boston News Letter, in 1769.]

Young ladies in town, and those who live 'round,
Let a friend at this season advise you,
Since money's so scarce, and times growing worse,
Strange things may soon hap to surprise you:

First, then, throw aside your top-knots of pride,
Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning;

This do without fear, and to all you'll appear
Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,
And love you much stronger than ever,

Well! that song is as good now as ever it was; and the next is not far off from it:

WAR SONG.—1776

Hark, hark! the sound of war is heard,
And we must all attend,
Take up our arms, and go with speed,
Our country to defend.

Husbands must leave their loving wives,
And sprightly youths attend,
Leave their sweethearts and risk their lives,
Their country to defend.

May they be heroes in the field,
Have heroes' fame in store;
We pray the Lord to be their shield,
Where thundering cannons roar.

These compounds make available to the people the higher attainments of medical skill, and more efficient remedial aid than has hitherto been within their reach. While faithfully made, they will continue to excel all other remedies in use, by the rapidity and certainty of their cures. That they shall not fail in this we take unwearied pains to make every box and bottle perfect, and trust, by great care in preparing them with chemical accuracy and uniform strength, to supply remedies which shall maintain themselves in the unfailing confidence of this whole nation, and of all nations.

AYER'S CHERRY PECTORAL

is an anodyne expectorant, prepared to meet the urgent demand for a safe and reliable antidote for diseases of the throat and lungs. Disorders of the pulmonary organs are so prevalent and so fatal in our ever-changing climate, that a reliable antidote is invaluable to the whole community. The indispensable qualities of such a remedy for popular use must be, certainty of healthy operation, absence of danger from accidental over-doses, and adaptation to every patient of any age or either sex. These conditions have been realized in this preparation, which, while it reaches to the foundations of disease, and acts with unfailing certainty, is still harmless to the most delicate invalid or tender infant. A trial of many years has proved to the world that it is efficacious in curing pulmonary complaints beyond any remedy hitherto known to mankind. As time makes these facts wider and better known, this medicine has gradually become a staple necessity, from the log cabin of the American peasant to the palaces of European kings. Throughout this entire country—in every State, city, and indeed almost every hamlet it contains—the Cherry Pectoral is known by its works. Each has living evidence of its unrivalled usefulness, in some recovered victim, or victims, from the threatening symptoms of Consumption. Although this is not true to so great an extent for distempers of the respiratory organs, and in several of them it is extensively used by their most intelligent physicians. In Great Britain, France, and Germany, where the medical sciences have reached their highest perfection, Cherry Pectoral is introduced and in constant use in the armies, hospitals, almshouses, public institutions, and in domestic practice, as the surest remedy their attending physicians can employ for the more dangerous affections of the lungs. Thousands of cases of pulmonary disease, which had baffled every expedient of human skill, have been permanently cured by the Cherry Pectoral, and these cures speak convincingly to all who know them.

Many of the certificates of its cures are so remarkable that cautious people are led to feel incredulous of their truth, or to fear the statements are overdrawn. When they consider that each of our remedies is a specific on which great labor has been expended for years to perfect it, and when they further consider how much better anything can be done which is exclusively followed with the facilities that large manufactories afford, then they may see not only that we do, but how we make better medicines than have been produced before. Their effects need astonish no one, when their history is considered with the fact that each preparation has been elaborated to cure one class of diseases, or, more properly, one disease in its many varieties.

AYER'S CATHARTIC PILLS

have been prepared with the utmost skill which the medical profession of this age possesses, and their effects show they have virtues which surpass any combination of medicines hitherto known. Other preparations do more or less good; but this cures such dangerous complaints, so quickly and so surely, as to prove an efficacy and a power to uproot disease beyond anything which men have known before. By removing the abstractions of the internal organs and stimulating them into healthy action, they renovate the fountains of life and vigor,—health courses anew through the body, and the sick man is well again. They are adapted to disease, and disease only, for when taken by one in health they produce but little effect. This is the perfection of medicine. It is antagonistic to disease and no more. Tender children may take them with impunity. If they are sick they will cure them, if they are well they will do them no harm.

Give them to some patient who has been prostrated with bilious complaint: see his bent-up, tottering form straighten with strength again: see his long-lost appetite return: see his clammy features blossom into health. Give them to some sufferer whose foul blood has burst out in scrofula till his skin is covered with sores; who stands, or sits, or lies in anguish. He has been drenched inside and out with every potion which ingenuity could suggest. Give him these Pills, and mark the effect; see the scabs fall from his body; see the new, fair skin that has grown under them; see the late leper that is clean. Give them to him whose angry humors have planted rheumatism in his joints and bones; move him and he screeches with pain; he too has been soaked through every muscle of his body with liniments and salves; give him these Pills to purify his blood; they may not cure him, for, alas! there are cases which no mortal power can reach; but mark, he walks with crutches now, and now he walks alone; they have cured him. Give them to the lean, sour, haggard dyspeptic, whose gnawing stomach has long ago eaten every smile from his face and every muscle from his body. See his appetite return, and with it his health; see the new man. See her that was radiant with health and loveliness blasted and too early withering away; want of exercise or mental anguish, or some lurking disease, has deranged the internal organs of digestion, assimilation or secretion, till they do their office ill. Her blood is vitiated, her health is gone. Give her these Pills to stimulate the vital principle into renewed vigor, to cast out the obstructions, and infuse a new vitality into the blood. Now look again—the roses blossom on her cheek, and where lately sorrow sat joy bursts from every feature. See the sweet infant wasted with worms. Its wan, sickly features tell you without disguise, and painfully distinct, that they are eating its life away. Its pinched-up nose and ears, and restless sleepings, tell the dreadful truth in language which every mother knows. Give it the Pills in large doses to sweep these vile parasites from the body. Now turn again and see the ruddy bloom of childhood. Is it nothing to do these things? Nay, are they not the marvel of this age? And yet they are done around you every day.

Have you the less serious symptoms of these distempers, they are the easier cured. Jaundice, Costiveness, Headache, Sideache, Heartburn, Foul Stomach, Nausea, Pain in the Bowels, Flatulency, Loss of Appetite, King's Evil, Neuralgia, Gout, and kindred complaints all arise from the derangements which these Pills rapidly cure. Take them perseveringly, and under the counsel of a good physician if you can; if not, take them judiciously by such advice as we give you, and the distressing, dangerous diseases they cure, which afflict so many millions of the human race, are cast out like the devils of old—they must burrow in the brutes and in the sea.

Prepared by DR. J. C. AYER & CO.,

PRACTICAL AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTS,

LOWELL, MASS.,

And Sold by all Druggists

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