alone and the
crowd goes hurrying on. How many in desolation of heart have stood
alone and unheeded by the busy, passing multitude upon that broad
levee! How many tears of misery have moistened its shell-covered
summit, when thinking of friends far, far away they should never see
again, and when hope had been rooted from the heart!

He wandered to the great square, now so beautifully ornamented with
shrubs and flowers which love the sun and the South's fat soil, growing
and blooming about the bronze representation of the loved hero who had
been her shield and savior in the hour of her peril, Andrew Jackson.
Then there were a few trees only, and beneath these, here and there, a
rude rural seat or bench. The old, gray cathedral was frowning on the
world's sins, so rife around her; and the great, naked square and the
mighty muddy river which was hurrying away to the sea. To the most
thoughtless will come reflection, and the sweetest face is mellowed by
sorrow. Here under these trees, in the midst of a great city, came to
the young adventurer reflection and sighing sorrow. His mother and
father came up in memory; the home of childhood, his brother, his
sister, his friends, all were remembered; his heart flooded over and he
wept like a little child. Blessed are they who can cry. It is nature's
outlet for grief, and the heart would break if we could not cry. The
heart is not desolate when alone in the forest or the boundless
grass-clothed plains of the West. Nature is all around you, and her
smile is beneficent. There is companionship in the breeze, in the
waving grass, the rustling leaves, and the meanings of the wind-swayed
limbs of the yielding forest. In the city's multitude to move, and be
unknown of all; to hear no recognized voice; to meet no sympathizing
smile or eye; to be silent when all are speaking, and to know that not
one of all these multitudes share a thought or wish with you--this is
desolation, the bitterness of solitude.

A year has gone by, and the youth has found a new home and has made new
friends. He is one of the busy world and struggling with it. He is in
commerce's mart and is one of the multitude who come and congregate
there for gain; in the hall of Justice, where litigants court the
smiles and favors of the blind goddess, where right contends against
wrong, and is as often trampled as triumphant; and where wisdom lends
herself for hire, and bad men rarely meet their dues.

Pestilence had come,