Los Angeles daily herald., 1874-05-10
SATURDAY NIGHT MUSINGS.


After all, "this world is not so bad
world as some people try to make it;
and whether good or whether bad de-
ponds on how we take it," These per-
haps are not just the poets words, but
they embody his sentiments, and that
is all we care to know. The good and
bad of the world is not the good and
bad of the world itself, but the good and
bad of the people who live in it. 1t is
the people who make the desert q gar
den and the oasis barren. We make
each other happy or miserable-plunge
ourselves into the gulf Of despair, or
rise on the downy wings of happy,
conscious love and contentment to
the realms Of earthly bliss. Circum-
stances, combinations, accidents, SIM
pie in their nature, uninlluenced by
their victims, sometimes heap misery
on devoted heads and blight innocent,
unsuspecting hearts; but they are the
work Of the people of the world, not of
the world itself. Pride, vanity, ambi-
ton and jealousy are the seeds of this
worlds misery, and it is sad to reflect
that though one may SOW, another
shall reap the harvest. If only the
evil-minded suffered--if only the cal
lous-hearted felt the blow-thc aching
brows and wailing cries of this world
would be fewer, and ashy hearts only
found where crime and vice had soured
and curdled the milk of human kind
ness. 1t is "man'S inhumanity to man
makes countless thousands mourn"
We hurl above the stone, well knowing
that it must descend, and careless
upon whom it falls. When we have
learned to love our neighbor as our
selves-to weed from the heart the
hard, selfish principle which seems to
underlie every human motive - and
feel happy ourselves, while making
others happy, the world will not be SO
bad a world as we are now trying to
make it, II II -
Memory and nticipation-the past
and the future-the written unchangl-
able history and the dream book of
hope, links in the chain of life, in
dissoluble, yet as widely separate as
Heaven from Hades. One is reality
a thing that was and still is, checkered
with the light and shade of time past.
The other, enveloped in the mist of
futurity and haloed with the light of
hope. We connect them together, and
when the mind glances back through
the long vista of years, in imagination
we retrace the path up which we have
struggled and idled, along which we
have joyed and sorrowed, seeing here
the grave of a hope, there the fruition
of promise, here the ashes of dead
love, there the apex of human bliss!
And as we move along, seeing what
we have seen and feeling what we
have felt, we wonder if the uutrodden
fragment of life's path has its rocks
for our feet, its thorns for our hearts
its aching vOids and it's dead-sea APP
pies; and we hope that the bright
morning and calm Summer day may
follow the sometime dark and never
more than star-lit night. ''Hope
springs eternal in the human breast;
man never is, but always to be, blest.u
But the heart is but instructive. The
swallows nest built under the eve of
Noah's ark was the same in form and
nature as that fastened to the houses
of the nineteenth century, and the
men and women whom Joseph fed
loved and hated each other-had their
sorrows and their joys-as those who
live to- to-day And !, so it will be unto
"Blessed is the man who invented
sleep; it covers one all over like a
cloak" 1t is the rest of life, the mo-
ment of oblivion, the earthly glimpse
of the future heaven. 1t is the poor
mans solace, the rich mans mistress
coy and tickle. 1t is the EDITORS and
the printers friend; coming to them
and lowering about the desk and
stand hours before the nights weary
"bird of dawning singeth all night
long," our eyes are heavy and "sleep,
gentle sleep, natures soft nurse,n
watts us to the enchanting land of
King Somnus and-we snore!
Sunday morning! Yet little while
and our weeks task is over Yet q
little while and we the all-beholding
sun shall see again, if we do not has
ten to bed. Yet a brief space and the
day workman's Sunday his day of
rest-will dawn, and while the tOilers
of the HERALD are sunk in emblematic
death, he reads the news of the morn
ing. Anon, the church bells ring out
the summons to the temple of the
Most High, and while the old and the
young, the grave and the gay, are en-
joying this, the brightest day of all the
week, in walks, talks and love-making,
the editor dreams-dreams that morn
ing papers have ceased to exist, that
the last editorial has been written, and
the call for "copy" will be heard
"nevermore." $50 mote it be !"
quoth the weary composition.