New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-08-15
COTD OR COPPER.

|
| this wear into every class; even the labOrer :
wife sees the good sense of n week at farm
house. Hence there is n vast jumbing IN the
country of ciques and sets and strange Gle
ments, until social life III August is pretty much
like that Roman feast when noble and helOt
met on IN equality and shook hands on The
| streets together.
One of the oldest features of the time which
will perplex every peripateIic American, Is the
totally different view which he and his friend
will take of the same people. One declares
the landlord of his hotel to be typical B0nl-
face the country people as well worth study as
Shakespeare's men and women, and his fellow
guests all gente-folks the other is Disguised
cheated at every turn, and, no matter where he
goes, finds himself perpetually swamped III a
slough of vulgarity. Now, men, TO degree,
put on lust such face as they see you expect
| from them Our travelling American in
| August. if Mt no other time should remember
the story of Jclierys gate-keeper, VINO insisted
on salutlng each passer-ny as Your high
ness .: "Gln | ca a mon prince he Is bound
to 81 his siller like prince, but gin tax him
for puir body, he giles me but bawbee.'
Every man has both silver and base metal IN
lis character, and it depends on ourselves
| whether he gives us the guinea OF the bawbee
! You meet your fellO bOaIders for brief
week or month and perhaps never again III your
| lives. Keep the conversation keyed to the
fashions, the gossip of politics. or tawdry social
| ambitions and YOU shall receive nothing from
| Them but yapid inanities, dead and wearlsOme
Ms the wash Of stale water in the town gutter
| Another person comes among them, sensible
wcll-bred man or wOmanly woman, and
straghtway they stand upright; the loutlsh
schoolboy is a manly fellow, the gggling belle
shows herself gentle and affectiouate or the
| hard politician Turns out TO be a critical
scholar. The new conner takes away from
each some fine note of human harmony to in
| yigOratc his own journey.
This fact comes out most strongly in family
life, particularly in those isolated families or
| farm-houses where the routine of labor Is fixed
| and mOnotOnOus, and where there are no
| safety valves for g)adcd temper such as books,
music or society afford. There are thousands
| of such homes III the agricultural Middle States.
| Brothers and sisters in them learn the faults
! and ugly features of each other; they expect
| to see them; and they get them. But stran-
| ger comes among them, expecting courtesy and
generosity, and each member of the selfish,
grumpish household brings his better self to
| sight
| 1t is worth while, too, TO try the virtue of
| this truth in those problems of human life
which beset all Of us sometime. There may be
a drunken husband or brother, for example.
| The whole family are ridden by his sin as by
| a nightmare. They appeal to the offender,
they scold, argue. pray with him his mothers
broken heart, his own ruined life, an offended
God-all these tremendous arguments are
heaped upon him without ceasing. Now they
forget that his sin 10 to this sinner more of an
incubus than it can be to anybody else. They
are crushing him below it. He has learned to
look upon himself as a drunkard, and nothing
but drunkard Put this damning fact out of
sight for a time. Get him &c new ground If
possible, give him other surroundings, air and
influences, talk to him as a carpenter, doctor,
"a Shakespearean Observation-Disclosures he is out
side of that black point of view. Pull him up
above it don't reason with him about it any
longer.
1t is good policy to treat our own lives in the
same fashion. This theory OF life is pretty
much like an orange; you can get from it, as
YOU choose, the bitter rind, the sweet juice, the
seeds to yield golden fruit IN summers yet to
come. But circumstances we say, sometimes
place hard bars across our lives. If we cannot
climb over them, let us run away from them,
bury them out of our own sight. . resolved"
said Mr.. Fawcett. to pursue exactly the same
"course in life which should have done if
"bindness had not come upon me- " L deter
"mlned," said the elder Dumas, Z" to give men
so much else to see in me that they would not
81 look at the color of my skin" Many single
woman, of age DO longer uncertain, finding that
she has missed the birthright of her sex,
hardship worse to bear than blindness or a dark
skin, has bravely asked herself whether there
is no other place for woman in the world than
that of wife and mother, and resolved to be
helper and be loved though no child ever shall
rest upon her breast.
TO such, Life, being nobly greeted as prince,
gave gold. But if We meet him with surly Ill
temper OF with whining, he puts us of with
coins of small value and very base metal indeed.