The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

energy, and the invincible lived before.”’ —_—eo—ononernrs*sn ee 5<5“<3O~wwer ersereee,ee=_e_e eeeeeeeeeee ee ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP. BY W. H. BURLEIGH. Nor worthiest is his worship who afar Retired from crowds, in meditation deep Passes his days beyond the maddened sweep Of stormy passions, and the angry jar Of clashing interests, that nought may mar His inward peace, though all his hours are given To prayer and penitence and dreams of heaven — Nor his whose set responses loudest are In the full temple, where the many kneel To utter forms the spirit does not feel — For not in words, though breathed from tongues of flame, Is the full heart of love revealed the best; Nor in unuttered thoughis, that fill the breast With quiet, and the bounding pulses tame. Action — untiring, earnest, bold and free, Its impulse Love —its object, Truth and Right— By holy zeal sustained — by heavenly light Directed ever, though thick darkness be Over the earth, and men no longer see The soul’s great birthright — Action, such as this, Is holiest worship, and a purer bliss Attends the offering, than the devotee Of forms can know. Words, offspring of the brain, ji =— ~tee nny a  THE ARMENIAN’S DAUGHTER. High-sounding yet not heart-born, are in vain — The heart turns loathing from them that hath known The baptism of the spirit — turns, to find Its joy in poInc — deeming thus his mind Hath Curist, our Head and great Exemplar, shown. III. Would’st thou, then, offer, with a willing mind, A sacrifice acceptable to Him Before whose throne adoring seraphim Bend with veiled faces — labor for thy kind, Uphold the feeble and direct the blind, Reclaim the wandering, the lost restore, And bid the erring go and sin no more. Live for Humanity, and thou shalt find Peace which the selfish heart can never know, Joys that from holy action only flow. Be bold for Truth, though all the world despise, Be strong in Right, though all the world oppose, Be free in Love, though all men are thy foes, And God will smile upon thy sacrifice. OOF PPP PP PP LLD PAPO LL DLVF IDE LIIOOO—wOr"V OMIA THE ARMENIAN’S DAUGHTER. A STORY OF THE GREAT PESTILENCE OF BAGDAD. —_—— PART FIRST. I. and officered by European adventurers. With this immense force devoted to his will, the Never, since the days of Motasem, the last pasha easily subjected the refractory Arabs, of the Caliphs, had Bagdad been in so flourish- and even by policy and bribery, so conciliated ing a condition, as in the year of Christ, one several of the tribes, that from formidable ad- thousand eight hundred and thirty-one. versaries they became most efficient allies, and For nearly two centuries the viceroys of the enabled him by their support, to throw off his Turkish sultans had ruled the city with a rod allegiance to Constantinople, and defy equally of iron, and under their capricious and impolitic the mandates and the arms of the sultan, who, sway, its commerce, its manufactures, and its embarrassed by the turbulence of his Janissaries, population, had dwindled to a shadow of their and by his difficulties with Russia, Greece and former greatness ; and finally, with the increas- Egypt, was utterly unable to repress his pow- ing decay of the Ottoman power, the predatory erful and contumacious vassal. Arabs who roam the vast Mesopotamian plain Having freed his dominions from their —the powerful tribes of the Aneiza, the Jer- most terrible and inveterate scourge, and com- bah, and the Ageil —began habitually, year pletely consolidated his power, the enlightened after year, to invest the city, desolating its and energetic Daoud directed his attention to environs, and in more than one instance, forcing the internal condition of his capital. He enacted their way within the walls and carrying fire judicious laws, which were rigidly and impar- and sword to the very gates of the citadel. tially enforced, so that Bagdad soon became as Some twelve or fifteen years, however, be- noted for order and justice, as it had been for fore the date I have mentioned, an adventurer turbulence and tyranny: he protected and en- named Daoud, who had been the slave of a couraged commerce, and again the streets and former pasha, and was distinguished for his squares of the city swarmed, as in the days of wealth, his intelligence, and his apparent reli- the Caliphs, with a motley multitude of mer- gious humility, was appointed to the then chants and artisans drawn from the varied races vacant pashalic. Under his administration the that inhabit Asia. The haughty Turk, the aspect of affairs was speedily changed ; an meek Armenian, the subtle Greek, the proud army of one hundred and fifty thousand men Arab, the independent Bedouin, the savage was raised, splendidly equipped, and disciplined Turcoman, the martial Kurd, the polite Per- VOL. I. — NO. I. 3 nn es  18 THE PIONEER. tt tc sian, the cringing Jew, the chivalrous Cireas- sulman, commended as was the latter by the sian, and the beautiful Georgian, mingled freely rank of colonel in the army of Dost Mohammed. and peacefully with the stranger natives of He was soon however detected in a daring more distant lands— with the open-hearted intrigue, having for its object the restoration of Afghan, the fanatic Seik, the melancholy Hin- Shah Shoojah to the Afghan throne. He saved doo, the lively Burmese, the dignified Parsee, his head by a rapid flight to Persia, and remain- the ferocious Malay, the black-visaged Nubian, ed a long time in voluptuous indolence at and the crafty trader from the celestial empire. Ispahan, occupied apparently, solely in the Nor were there wanting specimens of the less- study of the language and literature of the diversified nations of Christendom ; for besides country. The reputation of his talents and the pasha’s military officers, who were chiefly exploits at length reached the ears of Daoud French and Italians, there was then resident in Pasha, who was ever anxious to secure the Bagdad, an English mission and an Anglo- most accomplished instruments fer his ambi- Indian Embassy. ‘The vast and famous bazaar, tious and regenerating purposes. Osman was with its ten thousand shops, was likewise filled invited to Bagdad, and was speedily made an with the products of every clime and country — aga, or commander of high rank. He sustained with the camphor and copper of Japan, the his military reputation by several brilliant vic- teas and silks of China, the laces and calicoes tories over the Kurds and Persians, and at the of Hindostan, the shawls and carpets of Persia, period when my story commences was inferior the gums and coffee of Arabia, the slaves of in station to none of the pasha’s officers, and Zanzibar and Mozambique, and the more multi- apparently possessed the full confidence of his farious and less picturesque commodities of master. His fidelity was however in reality Europe and America. greatly and justly suspected by the wily pasha, The pasha too, with all his vigor and ambi- who had found reason to believe that his ambi- tion, was sumptuous in his tastes and luxurious tious and unprincipled lieutenant was engaged in his habits; he kept a numerous and brilliant in treacherous negotiations, not only with the court, and maintained much of that gorgeous Sultan, but with some of the powerful Bedouin magnificence for which the Orientals were for- tribes in the vicinity of Bagdad, who, despite merly famous, but which the imperial reformers their defeats, were unbroken in their strength, of Cairo and Constantinople, had banished from and