The Abbeville banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1847-1869, 1856-09-18
THE WI CANT,Su

~ curious statistician estimates that about
onc-half Of the children born into the world.
are furnished by Nature with remarkable
lingual facility for the utteranco of this
brief and cowartlly sentence. Neither time
nor experience enables them to abolish from
their vocabulary these fatal words, and from
the cradle to the grave they drag a slip
shod life, spent in accomplishing nothing,
from the fact that they lack the energy and
will necessary to accomplish.
These human drugs arc recognizable any
where under any circumstances, and in
whatever garb. In the palace, but more
often in the prison, especially in such en-
l'ghtened States as ours, where prisons serve
as welcome refuge to many of them, who
are too utterly worthless to get their own
living, and therefore force their creditors to
g~s it for them. And with this exception,
we can sec no other humane purpose in a
debtors prison. Of the regal and ducal
{" cant's," history furnishes too many cx-
amples to need illustration at our hands,
Of titled members of tho order, of lower
degree, the world is cursed with a less num-
Der than formerly, for the reason that the
race is dying of mere INSANITY; but in the
great world, among the mass, ), il is as:oa-
ishing what host of drones share the
honey of the bees gathering. Regarding
everything they do as hardship, looking
upon labor us an evil, it seems to be sort
OF moral duty with such men TO do as little
as possible, and get all they can for it. "I
can't" is their shibboleth and shield. Pro-
pose TO them the accomplishment of what
ever new work, anything out of the beaten
track, any little addition to what they have
done, and see ! how, like trained jackdaws,
their beaks fly open-without moments
consideration Of the possibility or desirabi-
ity OF the doing-anl out it comes, like the
"prctty, Polly" Of a pet parrot-"I can't"
We have said you may know them every
where: in the Legislative halls, on the bat
tic field, in the council chamber, at the bar,
III the counting-house, in the studio, at the
bench, or in the furrow; for they are
spawned everywhere, and among ali classes
of industrials, merchants and mechanics.
You may know II can't" as well by what
he docs' as by what he will not try to do;
and miserable, mumbling, mealy- mouth
cd, mountaineering, and molchill-movinc
mummy of a man, will you find him in any
OF these pursuits. lie is always for delay.
"lle hasn't time, or he hasn't tools; he
lacks means, or he must have more help :"
you g had better watt" or he knows it is
impossible;" anything rather than do it.
"Ill try" never comes into his head, as it
did into Capt. Brasg's; to try being just
what he wishes to escape from; willie to
say Il can't" is the easiest as well as the
meanest method Of accomplishing his de-
sires.
" l can't" is a humbug and nuisance,
and society ought TO make him sensible Of
the fact by kicking him without its pale.
All things are possible to God; and of tue
countless things possible to man, through
the right use of the gifts he has bestowed
upon him, not one in hundred have vet
been accomplished; myriads of failures re-
suting from the soulless efforts and combi-
mated blunderings of the inanimate host of
81 cant's." A boy, of sound body and
mind, ought to be punished every time he
uses the phrase, by the adoption of Which
salutary corrective, the number Of the men
who will use it can materially be dimin-
ished.
"Can't," is the most contemplate COM
bination of letters known to the English
scholar; and it may be safely assumed that,
neither Alfred nor Arkwright, Milton nor
Maury, Washington nor Whitney, Girard
nor Astor, nor any other among tho glori-
Gus galaxy of determinate industrial stars,
ever yet recognised the can,ing use to
which the phrase is put by such as we de-
scribe.-Hunfs Morals for Merchants.
Hd"acendnon.-Ic years ago, wealthy
farmer named simmonds, living near New
burg, on the Hudson River, had presen-
timent" that he would die on the goth day
of August, 1856. So strongly was he i'm
pressed with the strange idea, that he re-
garded his decease at the time mentioned
as matter of certainty. He selected
spot for his grave, brought an iron Railing
to surround it, and had fine tombstone
and an elegant coffin prepared and brought
to his house. On Thursday last, the day
indicated by the "presentiment," he had
a clergyman and an undertaken at hand,
and at two o'clock in the afternoon, after
having partaken, with lis friends, of a
hearty dinner, he went to bed for tho pur-
pose of yielding up the ghost. He tried