Northern Ohio journal. [volume] (Painesville, Ohio) 1872-1896, 1880-05-15
"Made the case darker,
Which was dark enough WithOut0 -
The Yesterdays.

Ever since the days of the Wise Man
of ALI; great deal of breath has been
expended in talking to the young about
the waste of their time, as if it were
possible to drill anything of the sort in
to their minds until it comes to them by
the lessons of experience. You may
tell them, and they may know it by
mere rote and routine, that two from
three leaves one, but they do not know
it as a fact of consciousness till they
have learned it through the visible and
sensible abstraction of two objects from
three in their own hands.
To the young, life seems like the out
pour of an .inexhaustible spring flowing
into boundless sea. Should the spring
by any possibility fail, there is yet the
sea to draw from. They do not realize
that the sea is in the dim confines of the
life to come, and that only the waters of
the running river fed by that spring are
theirs. There seems to them to be SO
much time, so boundless a future, that
there is no hurry about any thing-save
their pleasure-and they may pause on
their chief errand to run after every
butterfly, secure in the perpetuity of
the sunny season. And all at once, if
they cease the chase and look about
them, it is no longer morning, but high
noon; and lucky indeed are they if they
have not chased butterflies to point
beyond the high noon, and where the
afternoon shadows begin to gather.
AS a rule, youth is SO full of vitality,
so elastic, and SO buoyant that the mo-
ments go lightly on the wings of the
swiftly succeeding thoughts and actions.
1t is only the unhealthy young-un-
healthy morally or mentally, or placed
in unhealthy circumstances-who find
any need of using the process known as
s.iilling time" that Thoreau impaled
on the point of his pen when he said,
stAs if one could kill Tune without III
| iuring eternity"
For the most of us, alas! time kills it
self all too soon. We but just think of
| this subject to be studied, of this art to
be accomplished, of this pleasure to be
| enioyed, of this work to be achieved
in fact, just learn how to enjoy and be
| conscious that we are enjoying, we but
| lust learn how delightful time is-and
time is gone We have been dallying
with youth and all the sweet properties
OF youth, and suddenly the. lock of hair
that blows before our eyes is gray.
] And what of that, one might say?
/ Silver is as beautiful as gold; white is
as strong and good in its way as black
or yellow. But the truth is that that
silver is the insignia of the frost of the
grave, and the gold was the emblem of
vitality and pulsation; and as one re-
places the other we are fain to know
that the wind which blows from the un-
/ discovered country is breathing in our
| face:
1t is not that the gold departs from
the hair or the bloom from the cheek In
itself that gives lis thought; but the
knowledge of meaning behind the
fact, that the vital energy departs with
| them, and that force which sends us
along the paths of life as the stars are
| sent in their courses. And it is not by
degrees, but usually all at once, that we
arc made aware of our loss-loss, too,
of something more than the round beauty
of early years, and all the pleasures that
belonged to them, the loss of the inter
ests of that period. We no longer live
in them; we look back on them. We
remember how sweet those pleasures
and interests were; the bitterness is thai
they are no longer sweet, and that we
do not care whether they are sweet Of
not; that we have ceased to value them
to take delight in them, to long fol
them; and that we know that while WI
once felt we could not live without them
we now neither reach forward nor bacl