Middletown transcript., 1881-05-06
EARNEST THOUGHTS.

EARNEST THOUGHTS.
Yuung man, what are you living for
Hay, you an object dear to you as life,
and without the attainment of which
you feel that your life will have been
wide, shOreless waste of shadows, peo-
pied by the speeters of dead ambitions
Is it your consuming ambition to pad
die quietly but firmely up the stream of
time with manly strokes against the
current of public opinion, or to linger
along the seductive banks, going in
swimming, or, careless of the future,
gathering shells and tadpoles along the
shore F.?
Have you distinct idea of a certain
position in life which you wish to at
tain Have you ,lecided whether you
will he a great man and die in the poor
house, and have a nice comfortable
monument after you are dead for your
destitute family to look at, or will you
content yourself to plug along through
life as a bank president =?
These, young man, are questions of
moment. They are questions of two
moments. They come home to our
hearts to-day with terrible earnestness.
You can take your choice in the
great battle of life, whether you will
bristle up and win a deathless name
and owe almost everybody, or be salts
fed with scads and mediocrity.
Why do you linger and fritter away
the heyday of life, when you might
skirllish around and win some laurels I?
Many of those who now stand at the
head of the nation as statesmen and
logicians, were once unknown, I'M
honored and unsung. Now they saw
the air in the halls of congress, and
their names are plastered on the temple
of fame.
They were not born great. Some of
them only weighed six pounds to start
with. But they have rustled. They
have peeled their coats and made Rene
howl.
You can do the same. You can win
some laurels too if you will brace up
and secure them when they are ripe.
Daniel Webster and President Gar
field and DR.. Tanner and George Eliot
were all, at one time, poor boys. They
had to start at the foot of the ladder
and toll upward.
They struggled against poverty and
public opinion bravely on till they won
a name in the annals of history, and
secured to their loved ones palatial
homes, with lightning rods and mort
cages on them.
So may you, if you will make the
effort. All these things are within
your reach. Live temperately on 50
per month. That 5 the way we got our
start. Burn the midnight oil if neces-
sary. Get some true, noble-minded
young lady of your acquaintance to
assist you. Tell her of your troubles
and she will tell you what to do. She
will gladly advise you.
Then you can marry her, and she
will advise you some more. After that
she will lay aside her work any time to
advise you. You needn't be out of
advise at all unless you want to. She,
too, will tell you when you have made
mistake. She will come to you
frankly and acknowledge that you have
made a jackass of ourself.
AS she gets more and more acquaint-
ed with you, she will be more and more
candid with you, and, in her unstudied,
girlish way, she will point out your
errors. and gradually convince you,
with an old chair-leg and other argu-
ments, that you were wrong, and after
she has choked you little while, your
past life will come up before you like a
panorama, and you will tell her so, and
she will let you up again.
Life is indeed a mighty struggle. 1t
is business. We can't all be editors,
and lounge around all the time, and
wear good clothes, and have our names
in the papers, and draw Il princely
salary. Some one must do the work
and drudgery of life, or it won't be
done-BW Nye.