The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-12-19
Burlington Hawkeye.l
VIII the End of the World Come
this Year?

Well, yes, anxious, troubled questioner, it
will. We hope you will feel satisfied to have
the matter definitely settled. And we can tell
you positively that it will. We know as much
about it as Professor Proctor, as Professor
Swift, as the Smithsonian Institute and the
National Observatory and more than the
United States Signal Service. You have been
tormented and tortured, no doubt, by Mother
ShiptoD, and the comet, and the Canadian
farmer who built him an ark and had it all
ready to launch for the 10Th of Juue-he can
go into the ferry business with it now, or sell
it to the Mississippi Barge and Transportation
ompany-and by the Millerites, and one fool
thing and another, until your mind is distract
ed and you can't sleep, and don't think it
worth while to pay your debts All the same,
you will have to pay, or go out of business.
And If the world should come TO an end at 10
o'clock tomorrow morning, up to 9.45 m.
money would be eight per cent. on gilt edge
paper and none too easy to get then.
For the world is coming to an end. And
the comet can't hasten and a million comets
can't retard its coming. 1t Is bound to come
this year There is no help for it. Ii it scares
you we can't help it. Every day and every
Lour the end of the world comes to some un-
suspecting mortal who is only thinking up his
plans for next Summer, or studying over
''hoss trade" he has in his mind for next week.
Every time your heart beats the end OF the
world comes for some one, and just as sure as
you have, or more surely If you have not, paid
your subscription for the Hawkeye, it is COM
ing to you. And, good subscriber, fearful and
troubled about comets and many things, when
it does come, if it catches you off your feet,
with your business raveling out at the edges,
your business unsettled, your notes protested,
your subscription not paid, your pew rent over
due, and your pastor running into debt Tor his
living, with. your conscience burdened with
wrongs and your life bristling with uncorrected
and unrepented faults, you won't need any
comet nor any long procession of perihelia to
scare you. You won't think OF the planets
then, good man.
So, don't you worry about two comets or
conjunetions or perihelia or ecipses or the
spots on the sun. They have nothing to do
with your case at all. You may not live to see
the world burn up, and you may pass away in
the great final dissolution of all things torres
trial, but you are going to live to your end of
the world, and don't you forget it. That's all
you have TO do with it. You go home and quit
worrying about prophecies Admire the comet
without fear. Study astronomy for its Won
ders and beauties and not for fanciful and ig-
norant and superstitious terrors. You go
home and sell clean goods by full measures
and honest weights; teach your clerks that a
thirty-five inch stick doesn't measure yard of
dress goods; don't weigh yourself on the hay
and the wagon by itself; make your ton of coal
weigh twenty hundred, and cut your wood four
feet long; be honesland square in your dealings
pay your pew rent every week, and your
newspaper subscription in advance, read the
revised Testament oftener and go to church
regularly; go out and club yourself every time
you suffer yourself to vote the Democratic
ticket, be manly and pay your debts as fast as
you can, and so live that you can look every
man in the eyes when you meet him; give up
swearing and try family prayers as substi-
tute; don't be afraid of any man that ever
wore hat, and always stand by your own con-
victons, and then if some night comet with a
tail like torchlight procession, and the peri
heion of Jupiter and an eclipse of the sun
and old Mother Shipton, should file into your
front yard, and kick and thunder at your door,
I'VE want you, old snap" you would hop
cheerfuly out of bed, and shout back, All
right, wait till get on my trousers!" and go
out 10 join the procession.
Bless your timid SOUL non-paying subscriber,
the other end of the world is nothing, if you
only shape this end as nearly right as you
know how.