Читать книгу Mind Amongst the Spindles. A Miscellany, Wholly Composed by the Factory Girls - Various - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The Athenians were proud of their glory. Their boasted city claimed pre-eminence in the arts and sciences; even the savage bowed before the eloquence of their soul-stirring orators; and the bards of every nation sang of the glory of Athens.

But pre-eminent as they were, they had not learned to be merciful. The pure precepts of kindness and love were not taught by their sages; and their noble orators forgot to inculcate the humble precepts of forgiveness, and the "charity which hopeth all things." They told of patriotism, of freedom, and of that courage which chastises wrong or injury with physical suffering; but they told not of that nobler spirit which "renders good for evil," and "blesses, but curses not."

Alcibiades, one of their own countrymen, offended against their laws, and was condemned to expiate the offence with his life. The civil authorities ordered his goods to be confiscated, that their value might swell the riches of the public treasury; and everything that pertained to him, in the way of citizenship, was obliterated from the public records. To render his doom more dreary and miserable,—to add weight to the fearful fulness of his sentence,—the priests and priestesses were commanded to pronounce upon him their curse. One of them, however, a being gentle and good as the principles of mercy which dwelt within her heart—timid as the sweet songsters of her own myrrh and orange groves, and as fair as the acacia-blossom of her own bower—rendered courageous by the all-stimulating and powerful influence of kindness, dared alone to assert the divinity of her office, by refusing to curse her unfortunate fellow-being—asserting that she was "Priestess to bless, and not to curse."

Lisetta.