The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-05-13

In the struggle not only for sUperOri-
ty, but for existence, and the making of
| existence comfortable if not beautiful
also, with which this country and this ace
are only too well acquainted, it is said
that workers have no time to take con-
! science into counsel, and to do their stent
as if doing it to the stern Judgment of the
| fullest light that might ever fall upon it.
Yet if all workers, and in that sense all
| individuals, realized the great doctrine
| of consequences, and the manner in
which every circumstance is interviewer
| with every other circumstance that has
gone before Oris to come after. conscience
would never be thrust out of sight, but
| would be the chosen friend, and given
the place of honor at one right hand.
The careless happy spinner Sights her
/ thread; the rope spun with that thread
breaks, and the man it held falls down
the shaft; then family is left fatherleSS
and destitute, children grow up to crime
and shame; theft, murder and the gal
lows hang on those strands of thread;
signs, tears, and agony, desolated affec-
| ton, betrayed love, crime multiplying
crime with the rapid growth of a fungus,
Il country its prey. If conscience had
sat by that spinner, that contingent
amount of harm, at least, with its far
widening and long-reaching circles,
would never have been done the world.
For there is no action that does not en-
tail its consequences, not on the actor
alone. but on all in contact with the actor,
with the air, one might declare, that the
lifting of the arm to do the deed disturbs,
and all whom that air touches.
We often hear complaints that this and
that sort of work is not done so well here
as in England, or France, or Switzer-
land; and allowing it to be true, one
marvels why liberty and all the civiliz-
ING influences that surround the worker
in this country should have the effect of
making his work poor and slOvenly and
unfaithful generally. Yet doubtless, if
the statement is indeed true, it is be-
cause in the older countries the worker
has no expectation of ever rising above
his work, and his only hope is in its per-
lection; while in this land. on the con-
trary, every worker knows his POSSIBLE
tiles, and looks at the future through
them and not through his handiwork; he
does his handiwork only in the interim
before he carries out his possibilities.
Perhaps the cOmplainants have done
their own work well in complaining; or
perhaps they have been too haSty in de-
manding more than one century of ma
tiOnal life has had time to effect, and we
may Just be entering on the ripened fruit
of the hundred years of liberty. For,
that unfaithful work used to be the rule
much more than it is now, we are very
sure, and nothing speaks better for our
later conscientious endeavOr than the APP
pearance of much work ut the Exhibit
ton of 1876, the fact that to-day many
of our wares find more demand and bet
ter market than the foreign, or than so
little a thing, as at first blush it may
seem, as the discovery by a woman of
the secret of the lovely Limoges-ware,
so that its foreign maker mistOok her
work for that of his own people.
Sometimes, indeed, the European
workers love of art answers for con-
science. Doubtless that old Demetrius
Of Ephesus who made silver shrines
for Dina did his work faultlessly.
4DitI II W tlS tiIlOlllCl SUI VI Ctl-
science that animated YOshiaki, the
sword maker of Orska, in Japan.
. His idea was that having been bred up
to a calling which trades in life and death,
he was bound, SO far as in him lay, to
atone for this by seeking to alleviate the
suffering which is in the world; and he
carried ont this principle to the extent of
impoverishing himself. No neighbor
ever appealed to him in vain for help in
tending the sick or in burying the dead.
No beggar or leper was ever turned from
his door without receiving some mark of
his bounty. Nor was his scrupulous hon
esty less remarkable than his charity.
Whilst other smiths were in the habit Of
receiving large sums BY counterfeitinr
the marks of famous makers Of antiquity,
he never turned out a weapon which bore
any other mark than his own. Without
knowing it, ToShiaki was a sound Christ
IAN And there can be no doubt that
81 = J., I.