Having finished his work in England, he went over to France and continued it there; and when, after having been more than twelve months in Europe, he returned to Cincinnati in 1865, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his journey had borne rich fruit for the freedmen. He paid another visit to Europe in 1867 as a delegate to an Anti-slavery Congress in Paris. With the account of this journey his book of interesting _Reminiscences_ concludes. We heartily recommend it to our readers. If nothing else, it shews how much one earnest man can accomplish in a lifetime for a cause that he has thoroughly at heart.
By some seeming irony of Fate, it is when our fortunes have ebbed to their lowest, and all seems cold, bleak, and dreary in the threatening horizon before us, that light begins to break in upon the oppressive darkness. That we are never so likely to fall as when we deem ourselves to stand in boastful security, proud of our seeming strength, is a truth which the historical student will not be slow to recognise. Down comes the thunderbolt from a clear sky, toppling over to shameful ruin the gilded image propped on feet of sorry clay. But there is a substratum of fact whereon is reared the homely proverb which declares that when things are at the worst they will mend.
For all that, we cannot wrap ourselves in a comfortable mantle of indolent fatalism, assured that our shortcomings will be compensated by some extraordinary turn of Fortune’s wheel. It so happens that we are often too dull of vision to know the heavenly messenger when we see him. Our deaf ears fail to catch the strain of hope. We miss the tide that offered to bear our argosy to port. The grass grows, but the steed, all unwitting of the green meadow hard by, starves within a stone’s throw of plenty. Chatterton was not the only one who, goaded by despair, has taken the leap in the dark at the very moment when kind hands were held out to lead the truant into the goodly fellowship of honest men. A great hush and stillness had fallen upon those who were shut up in the Hunger Hole. There was that in the situation which forbade useless words. It was getting late. There was every probability of spending the night and the morrow in that dismal place. That amount of imprisonment entailed cold and misery, perhaps an attack of marsh-fever, since the air from Bitternley Swamp was likely to be fraught with the seeds of ague. But twenty-four hours—thirty-six hours—might not see the end of the captivity of Ethel and Lady Alice, and in that case——