Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-08-19

| meHt, perhaps only moving from bed to
sofa, and back to bed; well aware that
they never will move elsewhere except to
the one narrow couch where we all must
lie, yet never complaining never craving
after the outside world, which circles
Aoisily round their perpetual silence; ex-
acting no sympathy, on the contrary, Civ
ing it to all and any who need?
" l have no troubles" said, smiling, one
OF those sweet saints, whom most people
would have considered IA great MARTYR"
" 1t is you others who come to me with all
yours
SO we do, we who are still in the thick
OF the fight; to these who seem as if their
battle were done forever. How often do
we find counsel and comfort by the couch
of some dear woman-it is generally a
woman--whom the world calls" a terrible
sufferer" but whose sufferings are the last
things she talks about! She has let her
self go, and is absorbed in the interests of
other people The fragments of her life
that remain to her she has made so beauti-
full that you almost forget it was ever
meant to be like other lives, perfect
whole; that the wasted frame before YOU
was ever merry baby. happy girl, a
young woman looking forward to woman's
natural destiny. All that is over yet she
is not unhappy. Nay, she is actually
happy in her own way; no one could look
in her face and doubt it. But it is a hap
piness quite different from and beyond
ours-something which naught earthly
can either give or take away.
This is bright picture, which l
would fain place opposite to the dark
pictures | have drawn, compromising
nothing and denying nothing, yet say
ing, a1er all: "Take courage God never
leaves Himself without witness In the
deepest darkness is a possibility of light"
For there is that in the human soul
which piU not die. Neither mental nor
physical suffering will kill it before its
time. And neither will extingush in it
the germ of possible happiness in this
world, at least; whether or not in other
worlds, God knows. But He has said
enough to prove to us two things-that
here on earth sin is the only absolute
death, and "Delver us from evil' the
only true solution.
Therefore mere pain in all forms be
comes temporary and endurable thing
if we will only try to see it as such &C
customing our eyes to behold the good
rather than the bad, choosing in our
daily life to eat the food and reject the
poison
Easy enough, one would say, yet no
body does it. People sit and mourn over
the fragments of their scattered joys, blind
to the blessings they have, seeking mad.
ly for blessings denied The rich COM
plain of their responsibilities, the poor of
their renunciations. The single think
they would have been happy married, the
married reply, warningly: Z" Keep as you
are" Many-chided parents groan under
the burden of that bright troop of boys
and girls whom some empty household
longs enviously for, with angry protest
against Providence, whose gifts are so
unequally divided. Nobody will see his
own blessings, or open his heart to en-
joy them, till the golden hour has gone by
forever and he finds out too late all
that he might have had and might have
been.
A discovery made sometimes in an
empty room or by a grave-side, knowing
that all the tears in the world will never
lift that stone or fill that vacant chair that
all our ceaseless compainings, our angry
taultfnding, even our real wrongs, sink
into nothing before the remorseless still
ness of death. Even if life were not the
absolute whole we expected = to be, if our
friends We're not perfect nor ourselves
neither, why did we fall into despair in
stead of quietly setting to work to gather
up the fragments that remained, suffering
nothing to be lost? Now we never can
gatherthem up any more. The Great De
stroyer has passed by, and there they lie,
must lie, forever.
Gather up the fragments. In every hui
man life there are sure to be some. Every
one of us has "A secret chamber somewhere
filled with inhabitants whom none but
himself can see 1t rests with himself
alone whether they shall be decaying
corpses or only beautiful ghosts.
:" God made me what | am, and made
my lot what He willed it to be- is a truth
not inconsistent with the other truth, that
He gives us the materials to work with,
but leaves the workmanship in our own
hands Every man can make or mar his
own life; at any rate it appears So The
fact that we know nothing of the results
of our acts makes them, as regards our
selves, absolutely Independent, and the inn
/ possibility of gazing one inch into the inn
/ penetrable future comes to the same thing
as if we beheld it all.
Lead Thou me en-: do not ask TO see
! The distant scene: one steps enough for me-
/ But that one step must be taken steadily,
firmly, religiously. There must be no
! looking back, no mourning over the mex
orable past. Each day-such little day,
and every one circling round so quietly
that they mount into weeks and months
and years before we know what we have
lost or gained each day must be filled
up minste by minute, with those duties
which are in themselves joys, or grow TO
be. Ii among them ever rises the spectral
face OF theneverforgotten might-have been
beautiful in its eternal youth, perfect in
its unattained felicty-why fear: It is
but ghost, and life is a reality.
I'll L.. Il. l.. Il