We are now in the heart of winter, and a cold icy heart it
proves. During these sullen days and
bitter nights the gaunt wolf howls on the prairie, and his grim brothers in
populous settlements catch and repeat the cry.
Wolves are of many different species each bearing certain distinctive
traits but haggard and hungry all.
When the night shuts in still and clear, and the stars shudder and draw
nearer to each other for mutual warmth, when the white frost gathers on the
coverlet of the sleeper, and his breath floats above him like a cloud then from
attic and hovel comes at frequent intervals a harsh spasmodic sound. That is the barking of the wolf of cold, a
sharp fanged animal who preys chiefly upon the vitals of his victims. Night by night and day succeeding day, he bites
blue fingers and toes, turns red ears with a touch to ghastly white, and gnaws
incessantly at torn and bleeding lungs.
Like others of his race, he sometimes prowls in the retreats of luxury,
and if the pet of the nursery has been too briefly clad, or too long exposed
upon the ice, by his warm couch at midnight is heard that fearful bay. But most fearful are his visits when he sits
triumphantly upon the widow’s heart and turns the orphan’s tears to hail stones
as they fall.
In the large cities, as you pass down squalid street and
filthy lane, you hear at intervals a low, wailing cry, like that of a
child. It is the wolf of hunger, found
only where there are more heads than hearts.
For in this fruitful world is more food than its children can consume,
and nature has annexed to every mouth a pair of hands through which it may be
filled. But there are grasping hands
which gather and hoard up the food of many, and so the wolf of hunger rarely
prowls except under the shadow of the basely rich. Wherever bloated wealth takes the poor man’s
lamb to make up exorbitant rent, where commerce forecloses the pitiless
mortgage and grasps the last penny of interest with an iron hand, there the
wolf of hunger seeks his prey, and feeds silently upon blood and nerve and muscle,
till the bones stare woefully through the shriveled skin. He pauses only to glance fraternally at his
human ally, who strides pompously down the street, caressing the whiskers upon
his well fed cheek, with white fingers upon which no ordinary eye can detect
the stain of blood.
But there is another wolf that hunts in a wider range, and
ventures in where fire and fuel abound.
He sits by the hearth of the settler, when for weeks no human form draws
near his door. He looks in upon the
farmer when the storm is wild without and no trace of living thing breaks the
surface of the pathless snow. He lands
with the immigrant, when the forms he meets seem but a part of the landscape,
and every eye is glass. He shares the
vigils of the wife, when her husband “tarries long at the wine,” and of her, a
wife no longer whose eye sadly explores the winding road down which a form has
passed that shall return no more. He
draws to the side of the mother, when her darlings are asleep in snow-white
beds, each with a stone for a pillow and a curtain of the willow’s pendant
boughs. His eyes glitter in the
fire-light of many a loveless hearth, where stern forms sit in silence and a
word is frozen by a frown. He intrudes
even where chilling courtesies are exchanged, and cold hands meet and part
without a throb, and life is polished till its machinery has not friction
enough for heat. This is the wolf of
loneliness, the most prolific of the race.
By night and day, in town and country, he is widely and wearily
known. He has no voice, but his silence
is terrible. Do you know what will drive
him away? – {Springfield Republican.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2
1 comment:
There is some quite fantastic imagery in this article.
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