The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1875-07-15

We do not like to see our relatives and
friends going about with melancholy faces,
perpetually weeping over the unburied
corpse of some hopeless grief or unpar-
donable wrong. We had much rather
they buried it quietly and allowed us, after
due season of sympathy, to go on our
way Most of US prefer to be comforta-
bic if we can. have always found those
the best-liked people who have strength to
bear their SORROWS themselves, without
troubling their neighbors. And the sight
of all others most touching, most emo
bling, is that Of man or woman whom
we know to have suffered, perhaps to be
suffering still, yet who still carries cheer
full face, is burden to no friend, nor casts
a shadow over any household-perhaps
quite the contrary. Those whose own
light is quenched are often the light.
bringers,
To accept the inevitable; neither to
struggle against it nor murmur at it, sim
ply to bear it-this is the great lesson of
life, above all to woman. 1t may come
late Or early, and tho learning Of it is sure
to be hard, but she will never be really
happy woman until she has learned it. 1
have always thought two of the most pa
thetic pictures of women's lives ever given
are Tennyson's "Dora:"
As time
Went onward, Mary took another mate;
IL l. l. l.
and Jeanie, in "Auld Robin Gray" who
says, with the grave simplicity of a God
fearing SCotswOman:
| daurna think O Jamie, for that wad be a
sin;
So l will do my best guide wife to be.
For Auld Robin Gray is vera kind to me.
Besides lost loves, common to both men
and women, there are grlets which belong
perhaps to men only-lost ambitions. 1t
is very sore for man just touching, or
having just passed, middle age slowly to
find out that he has failed in the promise
of his youth; failed in everything-aspi-
rations, hopes, actions; man Of whom
strangers charitably say; " Poor fellow,
there's screw loose somewhere; he'll
never get on in the world" And even his
nearest friends begin mournfully to be-
lieve this; they cease to hope, and con-
tent themselves in finding palliatives for
a sort Of patient despair. That loose
screw"-Heaven knows what it is, or
whether he himself is aware of it or not
always seems to prevent his succeeding
in anything; or else, without any
fault Of his own, circumstances have
made him the wrong man in the wrong
place, and it is too late now to get out of
it. Pride and shame alike keep him
silent; yet he knows-and his friends
know, and he knows they know it-that
his career has been, and always will be,
dead failure; that the only thing left for
him is to gather up the fragments of his
vanished dreams, his los4hbitions, his
wasted labors, and 90 on patiently to the
end. He does so, working away at a
business which he hates, or pursuing an
art which he is conscious he has no talent
lDT, Or DOunu manu- anu 1901 III Il lncSn OF
against which he has not
energy enough to struggle. Whatever form
of destiny may have swamped him, he is
swamped, and for life.
Yet even in a case like this, and there
are few sadder, lies a certain consolation.
People pirate about heroes, but one some
times sees asimple, commonplace man, with
nothing either grand or clever about him,
who, did VIC only know it, is more worthy
the name of hero than many a conqueror
of a city. Ay, though all the dream-pal-
aces of his youth may have crumbled
down, or, like the Arabs, he may have to
build and live in a poor little hut under
the ruins of temples that might have been.
But One beyond us all knows the story of
this pathetic might-havc- been" and has
pity upon 1.-THE pity that, unlike mans,
wounds not, only strengthens and heals
Harper's Bazar.