Think Not Of The Past;
Your Leading-Strings Are Cut; The Mystic Chain
That Bound You To Your Fair And Smiling Shore
Is Sever'd Now, Indeed.
'Tis now in vain
To sigh for joys that can return no more.
Emigration, however necessary as the obvious means of providing
for the increasing population of early-settled and over-peopled
countries, is indeed a very serious matter to the individual
emigrant and his family. He is thrown adrift, as it were, on a
troubled ocean, the winds and currents of which are unknown to him.
His past experience, and his judgment founded on experience, will
be useless to him in this new sphere of action. In an old country,
where generation after generation inhabits the same spot, the mental
dispositions and prejudices of our ancestors become in a manner
hereditary, and descend to their children with their possessions.
In a new colony, on the contrary, the habits and associations of
the emigrant having been broken up for ever, he is suddenly thrown
on his own internal resources, and compelled to act and decide at
once; not unfrequently under pain of misery or starvation. He is
surrounded with dangers, often without the ordinary means which
common-sense and prudence suggest of avoiding them, - because the
EXPERIENCE on which these common qualities are founded is wanting.
Separated for ever from those warm-hearted friends, who in his
native country would advise or assist him in his first efforts, and
surrounded by people who have an interest in misleading and imposing
upon him, every-day experience shows that no amount of natural
sagacity or prudence, founded on experience in other countries,
will be an effectual safeguard against deception and erroneous
conclusions.
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