Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1876-05-05
What's the Use?

4Ai. opOOlCl AliS COHCluuCu W oC6b y
at home and teach school.
What's the Usel
Do we not, as a people, distress
ourselves too much about trifles? Do
we not worry and fret too much over
missing shirt-buttons, broken shoe
strings, ill-fitting collars, late dinners
and early breakfasts, with a tendency
to exaggerate the evil, and with no
tendency to get ourselves out OF the
trouble. Are we not inclined to be
panic-stricken when there is little
cause for alarm; and do we not ex-
haust ourselves often in panicky
movements that are without aim or
results? A boy may wrench himself
by kicking against the wind, or get
a tremendous fall in trying to kick
higher than his head; but, as the In
dian remarked, when he saw y bal
loon go up like bubble, "What's
the use?" But we are all-are we
not?-wrenching ourselves in useless
mental gymnastics, as incomprehens-
lble and as uncalled for as those of
a boy trying to kick his own hat off.
There Is a pimple on woman's
face. She is as inconsolable as though
she had lost an arm. The little mole
hill of pimple becomes a mountain
of enormity, and she is as reckless as
to expenditure of force and as incon-
siderate as to effort as an elephant
kicking at fly. That mote of a
pimple obscures her vision and clouds
her reason. She believes implicitly
in the advertisement of quacks, and
plunges recklessly into dangerous ex-
periments, using any and every cos
metic, with blind disregard of pos
sible or probable consequences. The
typical boy, kicking persistcntly at a
grease spot on his hat-rim, or becom-
ing heated and furious in determin-
ed effort to lift himself over fence
by his boot-straps, or exhausting him
self in a frantic endeavor to Jump
into his trowsers, both feet at once,
represent the mental state into which
men and women work themselves
over trifies.
The harshest words spoken to those
nearest and dearest to us are inspired
by the merest trifles. The red flag
of irritation, that makes bull in a
man like bull in a china-shop, or, it
may be, like bull in the arena, is
often the tlimsiest rag of pretense.
And yet how he plunges about
what damage he does-how relent-
lessly he strikes how keenly he
wounds,
Men bear with each others faults
and vices for years, and shoot each
other for careless remark. A man
bears with his wife's faults, and the
wife with her husbands shortcom-
ings for score of years, and flash
up in an unlucky minute about the
merest nothing, to undo the work of
all the years-to forget the tender
memories-to repudiatc the affection
to sneer at the idea of love.
1t is said that the most trifiing in.
cidents will sometimes create panic
among the bravest and best-disciplin-
ed troops, and bring more disaster
than the most sanguinary hand-to-
hand conflict with a stubborn and
ruthless enemy. Panics are the un-
reasoning moods Of great armies,
illustrating the same weakness in
human nature at large that is now
under consideration. They always
demoralize and exhaust. But troops
with duty plain before them are hard
ly ever panic-stricken, and the
strength that would be worse than
useless in a panic becomes wonder
fully efficient when we'll directed
And at the close of great battle the
men who stood in the van are less
fatiguei than those who have run
like frightened horses from the field.
So, in our everyday lives, the worry
and fretting, and .bluster over trifles
exhaust US more than the hardest
struggle with poverty, the sternest
battling against misfortune or ene-
mics, and leave us more helpless and
blind than the most distressing blows
OF grief and sorrow.
We cannot afford to fight the
empty air. We cannot permit any
wanton waste of energy or strength,
and we cannot lie helpless or listless
under difficulties. With real work
always before us, we are compare
lively cheerful under heaviest calls
for effort, and it may be said we en-
joy the consequent fatigue. 1t tries
us less to lift a heavy load than it
does to exert the same strength at
lifting at nothing. Effort, to be sat
isfactory, must have an object in view.
Strength cxerted must act on some
thing. If not, it strikes back at the
protector with the spitefulness of a
kicking mule.
AS we never use a sledge-hammer
to kill fea-never blaze away with
cannon at chipmunk-nevcr con-
censrate an army to shoot a single
man-why should we arm ourselves
in fury over trifle-dash it with
force enough to conquer lion-ex-
pend OH it effort enough to build
house-grieve over it as we would at
the death of a friend-worry over it
as we would over the loss of for
tune or the destruction of home
We exaggerate little things as
habit, and lash ourselves into fury
over little troubles and triAlng annoy
ances, as a part of our regular duty
in life. We allow ourselves to drift
into war dance heroics on such slight
provications, that war-dance about
spoiled shirtfront, or late dinner,
or wart on the finger, or pimple
on the face, seems a legitimate per
Torrance. But it wasn't. It be-
longs to the primitive age of naughty
hnvhood whan cnankinus renreasad