The Camden Weekly Journal

Georgia Home Gazette.

"LET ME SLEEP."—"Let me sleep," said my companion, half pettishly turning from my couch. "Let me sleep." The words haunted my memory for hours afterwards. How often has the wish been breathed in this weary world, "Oh let me sleep."

The man whose conscience lashes him for misdeeds—evils committed and repented of, cries, as he droops his head into his thorny pillow—"Let me sleep!—with sleep comes oblivion." The mourner, who has seen some bright and beautiful one fade from his embrace like a summer flower nipped by a too early frost bows his head above the pallid face of the prostrate form below him, and sighs, in the agony of his soul—"Let me sleep! sleep with the loved one whose smile shall never welcome my footsteps more."

"Let me sleep," says the traveller, who, foot-sore and weary, has toiled long in the world and seen hopes perish unfulfilled, joys wither ere they are tasted, friendship which he thought enduring, changing hue like chameleons, and rainbow promises, fading and melting into colorless air—"Oh let me sleep, for I am weary."

The rosy-checked child, the bright-eyed maiden, the thoughtful matron, those for whom life puts on its finest aspect, its most endearing smiles, all have periods in which they long for sleep, for the oblivion of all care, hours in which the waters of Lethe may flow darkly and deeply over them.

There cometh a sleep unto all!—a deep sleep, hushed and breathless. The roar of the cannon, the deep-toned thunder-bolt, the shock of an earthquake, or the rush of ten thousand armies cannot break up its still repose.- With mute lips and folded arms, one after another the ephemera of earth sinks down into darkness and nothingness. No intruding footsteps shall jar upon their rest, no disturbing touch shall wring from them their exclamation "Let me sleep,"