Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1857-07-22
THE TOLL GATE OF LIFE.


for the accommodation Of those who
choose to call as they go-and there are
very few OF all the hosts of travellers
who do not occasionally stop little at
some one or another of them-and con-
sequently pay more or less 10 the toll
gatherers. Pay more or less, we say,
because there is great variety as well
in Ike amount as in the kind of toll ex
acted at these different stopping places.
Pride and Fashion take heavy tolls of
the purse-many a man has become a
Leggar by paying at their gates-the
ordinary rates they charge are heavy,
and the road. that way. is none of the
best.
Pleasure offers avery smooth, de-
lighGul road in the onset; she tempts the
traveller with many fair promises, and
wins thousands; bnt she takes without
mercy; like an artful robber, she allures
until she gets her victim in her power,
and then strips him of his health and
money, and turns him off miserable
object, into the worst and most rugged
road of life.
Intemperance plays the part of stur-
dy villain. He's the very worst toll
gatherer on the road, for he not only
gets from his customers their money and
their health, but he robs them of their
very brains. The men you meet on the
road; ragged and ruined in frame and
fortune, are his visitors.
And so we might so on enumerating
many others who gather toll of the IN
wary. Accidents sometimes happen, it
is true, along the road, but those who
do not get through at least tOlerably
we'll, you may be sure have been stop
ping by the way at some Of these pla-
ces. The plain. common sense men, who
travel, straight forward, get through the
journey without much difficulty.
This being the state of things. it be-
cones every one. in the outset. if he in
tend TO make comfortable journey, to
take care what kind of company he
keeps in with. We are all apt to do a
great deal as companions do-stop where
they stop, and pay toll where they pay.
Then the chances are one to ten, but
our choice in this particular decides our
fate.
Having paid due respect to a choice
Of companions, the next important thing
is closely TO observe how others manage,
to mark the good or evil that is produc
ed by every course of life-see how
these do who manage well; by those
means you leain.
Be careful of our habits; those make
the man. And they require long and
careful culture ere they grow up TO
second nature. Good habits we speak
of, Bad habits are most easily acquired;
they are spontaneous weeds, that flour
ish rapidly and rankly. without care or
culture.
THE USE OF MoNEr.-The Ne York
Mirror says it is estimated that one of
our rich men William B. Astor has
now an income of $4,000 day, or l.
100000 year. If wealth led to happi-
ness, Astor would be the most contented
man in the world. But he is not To
keep away the gout, he feeds himself on
Graham bread, and INDUCES in less
generous diet than we do. Astor, instead
of being the happiest man in New York,
il, perhaps, enc Of the most discontent-
ed He is in law with his tenants half
of the time; and instead of taking the
world kindly, he spends eight hours Of
Ten in reading up5n the statutes of freud.
Astor's income is 5000 day, and yet
we could furnish all he consumes for
S15 a week. Such being the case, it
strikes us that the man who makes if-
teen dollars a week is Just as well off
as Astor. People who worship ducats,
place a false estimate on them. Three
of the best things in the world world are
obtained gratis--yiz: pure water, pure
air, and unadulterated health.
Col. Scut.er, in a race-way Of whose
mill the California gold was FIRST discov-
cred has been reduced to poverty. By
the last arrival from California we learn
that Hook Farm, his residence, has been
sold under the sheriff's hammer. This
is the last of the magnificent domain
which was one time his property, and
the old man whose name is so closely
associated with the history of California,
whose unbounded hospitality has well
coined and cheered so many travellers to
that county, and by whose means so
many have been enriched, is now left in
his declining years without home Of
his own. His generous, unsuspecting
nature was not sufficient to cope with
the shrewdness of lawyers and specula-
tors when his lands became of value; and
so they have all been wrested from him,
much by what in the parlance of trade
would be called Legitimate transac-
tions," much by barefaced fraud--BJ'
talo Commercial Aduertiser.