Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

From the FARMER's WEEKLY MUSEUM.
"Dost thou well to be angry for the gourd?"
OR to fret, at any of those petty accidents of life? Thou discontented mortal, undoubted descendant from Jonah, and his peevish tribe, why dost thou suffer a cloud to gather on thy brow, because there is a little one, no bigger than a man's hand, rising in the sky? Be serene thyself, and it will import little, whether it rains or blows.
Of all vile habits, that of fretfulness is the least tolerable. Many offensive things, which vulgar people do, are sometimes laid aside, and their neighbours are occasionally relieved from annoy. But fretfulness is a kind of perpetual motion, excited no less by a creaking door, than a fit of the gout. It is a voracious monster, and feeds upon minutiae as well as vast vexation. Let us strive, therefore, to pluck off this blister from the heart, and, even in the hottest, and most oppressive days of life, care not whether the shelter of a "gourd" be extended over us, or taken away. I have always grieved ever since the schoolmistress bid me read, with a loud voice, Jonah's journey to Nineveh, that the prophet should chuse, like a roused brute of the forest, because a gourd, a short lived plant of the night, had withered. It appears to me, even if the sun beat fiercely upon his head, and the east wind blew sharply upon his breast, that the prophet might have found so much alleviation of his misfortunes, in beholding "sixteen thousand" people, and "as much cattle" spared from destruction, that a dead "gourd" would not give him the spleen. I cannot help feeling a degree of indifference, and, perhaps, aversion towards this fretting messenger to the Ninevites. I have a profound respect for all, and a warm affection for most of the other pro-phets. Many were courtly, as well as ingenious writers. I admire the sublimity of Isaiah, the sensibility of Jeremiah, and the generous zeal of E-zekiel. Even the lowly Amos, the heroman of Tekoah, through the narrowness of his education has induced a degree of rudeness in his writings, till I believe to be as honest a prophet, as ever uttered a prediction. But as for Jonah, setting aside his disobedience, selfishness and vanity, he was so sulky and so morose a mortal that I never could like his character or his principles. I am not so un-charitable, as to wish that he had actually been di-gested by the whale, which swallowed him, but he ought to have kept no better company; for not the "great Leviathan of the deep ever floundered more impatiently in his element, than discontented Jonah, in the voyage of life.
On a review of what I have, thus far written, I believe that there is no occasion to look so far back as the history of an eminent prophet for an instance of anger employed upon trifles. if I should lift the window sash of my study, I should discover, whole companies fretting and fuming for the "gourd."
Walking in a studious mood, by the side of a neighbour's garden fence, I observed him stamping upon the ground with such disorder, that I concluded he was in convulsions, or practising a dance of St. Vitus. Humanity urged me towards him. and I meditated medical rather than moral aid. But to my eager question of "what aileth thee?"; he replied to my astonishment, that the bugs had blighted all his cucumbers, and was not that enough to make a wise man mad? I endeavored to compose his perturbated spirits, and quoted to him Seneca upon tranquillity of mind, and part of one of Ba-sil's homilies, but all in vain. He appeared to be possessed; and it required an abler exorcist than my-self to drive his devil away. I retired; and, think-ing of Jonah and his "gourd" could not help al-legorizing a little in Bunyan's manner. My neigh-bour Irritable's forefathers, quoth I, probably cul-tivated cucumbers without the walls of Nineveh; they fretted when the fruit was cut off, and my worthy friend here, I find, has not yet been cured of the family taint!