The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1877-12-29
DELUSiYE ANTICIPATIONS.


Worry, rs has often been said, kills ten
men where work kill one. And worry gen.
orally is less about what has been than
about what might be, but very seldom is.
That which has actually past rarely troubles
us; that which is present soon becomes past
but that which lies in the future may be as
grievous and formidable as we choose to
make it. 1t is the indeterminate, the IN
happened which is likely to give us more
uneasiness, and fill us with the largest
amount of apprehension. The majority of
us accept facts, however mournful, with
commendable resignation, though we are
prone to be nervous and fussy at the thought
of what may be. The real ills of life are
in most cases far less than the ills which we
anticipate. These torment and wear on US
year after year, and leave with US the bitter
memory that we have suffered deeply for
what has never occurred.
Very few of US that are not conscious of
this tendency to be beforehand with mis-
fortune to measure the blood Of a wound
that has not been made. We are perfectly
Il
counseling others against its indulgence.
Nevertheless, with wise words on our lips,
we nourish the weakness in our hearts and
compromise with reason by concealing what
we are not strong enough to control. We
look back upon the year that is all but gone,
and see the innocence of evils which we
fancied and prefigured until they distressed
us AS much yea, more than, if they had been
actual. We determine to be rational the
next year, and we believe that we shall be.
We do not fear the same things; We put
new cnes in their place; and because they
are new, we imagine that we have conquer
ed the fear. SO we go on, struggling to
shield ourselves from darts that have not
been hurled, and picturng agonles from
poiSous that have been brewed. 1t is hard
haad for US to understand how our ass ciat es
can be SO reckless Of their content as to
waste it On shadows, though we have
shadows also, called by different name,
and allow them to shut out the sunlight
that rightfully belongs to us.
These darksome and delusive anticipa-
tions are common to the great bulk of men.
They do not seem so, for men arc ashamed
to acknowledge what they feel to be a
weakness. They rarely sympathze with it
in their fellows, unless their fo.ebodngS
are of the same kind and on the same sub
jects, which is very frequent. Men are dis
posed to apprehend that which is highly
Improbable, as we'll as that which is pro
bable. The rich, albeit their fortune is
well secured, often dread lest they may
come to want, and torture themselves over
the possibility. The ambitious. having
reached the object of their ambition and
intrenched themselves there, are necessarily
haunted with fear of their downf The
strong in integrity and virtue grow morbid
in contemplating the opposite, and suffer
intensely from fancied consequences against
which they are protected.
The folly of anticipations, whether fol-
ourselves or others, might be learned by
their contradiction in experience. Wha,
is anticipated happens so seldom that ii
might seem as if Destiny delights to defy
forecast. lnvalids very frequently die of a
totally different disease from the one they
have constantly fought against. a man
who inherits weak lungs spends thousands
of dollars for medical advice and travels
and is finished at last by a malarial fever
He who has suffered for years from calcu
lus goes to his grave from a virulent car
buncle. The life long victim Of asthma i:
struck down by disease of the heart. The
man who has endured all the horrors OF
protracted dyspepsia yields suddenly tC
angina pectoris. The person prepared tc
end with intestinal trouble ends with pneu
monia. Cholera carries off the man t,
whom nervous prostration has been from
early manhood familiar foe. He who
has repeatedly declared insanity impossl
BILE to him becomes raving and incurablt
maniac. The brawny, robust fellow, con
n fan Inn Iar
before he is thirty. The infant which no
body expects to live three months lasts t.
ninety years. The pale, thin youth, who
looks as if a Spring might blow him away
grows so obese that apoplexy releases hin
at eighty.
Soldiers always expect to fall in front Of
battle, though the greater part of then
sicken life away iii the hospital. Mel
without any notion of business in the be
ginning abruptly develop INTO milionaires,
Wild boys, about whom sober neighbor:
shake their heads and talk lugubriously o
disgrace and the gallows, blossom int,
evangelical clergymen, and pain the mos
pious of their congregation by the stern
ness of their creed Young men pointed
out as patterns of propriety, and made
themes of moral lectures TO young men O
more worldly mold, turn out consummat,
scoundrels, and keep out of prison only
because they are too shrewd to get en-
meshed in legal justice. Quiet citizens
never known to have departed from rou
tine, and believed incapable of urconven
tional emotion, startle the community 10y
killing their wives and children, setting
fire to their houses and perishing in the
flames.
All such surprises are doubtless as grea
to the actors rs to the spectators. 1t seems
impossible for any body to anticipate wha
shall be. Most of us may have our secre
and pet bugbear; but the danger that con
frontsus the rock we split on is usually
as unlike the bugbear as a liyzard is unlike
a leopard. Fortune seems bent on ba liinE
our expectations. No mind can see wha
may or may not happen. Prophets belong
to the realm of poetry. But it would ap
pear that we have reason to believe tha
almost anything may be except the fore
Swallowed. Perhaps we should have new
proverb: 1.-THE anticipated is always ant
entirely improbable. ~. J. Times.