Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-08-06
The Race Of Fools.

When Alexander Barclay translated
| Sebastian Brandt's wise and cynical
Ship of Fools" he doubtless fiattered
himself that he had found in that erudite
work, and checked off in that quietly
ironical catalogue of his, every type of
the genus that had ever afflicted long
suffering humanity.
But he lived three OF four hundred years
ago, and the race has grown and WaXed
mighty since his day New types have
come into being of late years that would
delight the soul of the old philosopher
and furnish him materials for a score Of
hOmilies OF which he never dreamed. But
some future observer of his kind may one
| day revise and amplify his work. Most
| abundantly Will he be supplied with ma
terial; but we cannot help hoping that he
will begin his supplement with one great
| and worthy subject for his study-One
over which the excellent Barclay would
have INDUCED in pages of well-timed
wrath; one for which he would have
written the title with infinite gusto:
OF Folys that WOrrie themselves 10 death
with fearing lest they may perchance
sometime die"
They are a race that Will never become
extinct. Every accident induces scores
of them to stay trembling at home or
walk the streets in torture, lest build
ing may fall on them also, Or an eXplo-
sion put an end to their uncomfortable
existence, or q maniac meet them and
Stay them forthwith. Every burglary
renders the two weeks next following a
time of anguish to hundreds Of them, who
cannot sleep o. nights for counting the
possibilities that they may be the next
victims. Every published instance Of in
jury by lightning keeps dozens Of them
at their windows scanning the northwest
ern sky in search Of possible thunder
storms by which they may be done to
death. They enter railway cars and
steamers with a mental calculation OF
the doctrine of chances as to their emerg-
irg alive; they sit down to tOrturing din
ners with thoughts of suppOsititious trich-
in9. They begin in the morning to Won
der whether the kerosene lamp will not
explode at night; they begin at night to
wonder whether they may not die of
heart disease before the morning.
But it needs Il hydrophObia season to
bring them before the world in positive
swarms. In the press and in meetings,
in the unsympathetic presence of a too
careless public, and in the tremulOus
comfort of their private lives, they adj
vance their theories, shrink before their
approaching fate, and succeed in render
ing the feeble remnant of their lives SUI
premely wretched; and when, after all,
theirs do not form any of the four cases
that occur in a community of four mill
ion people, they draw long breath, and
attribute to their own care their marvel
Gus escape.
Had worthy Barclay lived to see this
m6rtal So with several hundred tSousand
reasoning beings almost fearing to walk
the streets because the chances are as
one in million that they may die of
terrible nervous malady; with a comet.
too, and all the old stock Of worries on
hand besides-what study he would
have had, this most persistent philoso-
pher, and what d hOmily he would have
written !-4pp5eton's Journal.