The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1882-11-24
Advice to q YsnnR Han.


of your strength for old age. Don't
waste it all, and don't use it ali up in the
pleasures and tolls and follies of youth.
Save some of it. Save great deal of it.
In the expressive dialect of Arkansaw,
save up a right smart heap of it. and
you can use it right peart and still have
a right considerable left for your old age.
But save it principally from your dissipa.
tons, my boy. Save it by going to bed
at ten. rather than by sitting up to drink
beer until half-past one. Too much
sleep is injurious, it is true, but then
fifteen hours sleep will harm you less
than six hours OF wine supper. Go slow
on these things, my boy, and at sixty you
will have ten years of forty-five left in
Drawn and blood and brain.
But don't be so saving of your youth
full strength that you will have all of it
left at sixty. Because you won't You
may save it. but it won't be there. 1t
will waste by disuse. just now is the
time when you must work the hardest,
but as told you little while ago, hard
work won't hurt you.
Improve your time, my boy. Put in
every minute in honest hard work, or
tranquil meditation, or healthful recrea-
ton. That is all l ask you to do. o,
'you believe you'll select meditation as
a profession" then, do you? 1t strikes
you that it is easy work to sit and think,
Ell? Now, my boy, if you want some
thing easy, you had much better stand
and chop wood. 1t isn't easy to think.
We don't think half so much as We want
to make people believe we do. In fact,
we don't think nearly so much as we
think we do. 49,
Busy thought and aimless idleness are
often very similar in external appear
ance. Edison, sitting before his tireless
forge, with his hands folded listlessly in
his lap. looking at nothing, may be APP
parently as idle, even idler, than the
man perched on the end of a cottonwood
log, watching his cork bob lazily in the
yellow water of a sluggish creek. But
the results are in one instance the tele-
phone and the electric light. and in the
other the ague and soft-mouthed
sucker and catfish four inches long,
The one dreams out marvellous inven-
tons that thrill the world with wonder
and multiply commercial activity, and
gives them to the eager, waiting world;
or ut least he sells them to Jay Gould
and jay Gould sells them to the world,
and the other contracts q malarial fever
and gives it to his family. 1t is not easy
to think we waste more time than we
use, and the hours slip away so noise
lessly and easily, we don't know where
they have gone.
Ihave sometimes thought, Telemachus,
if man could only have always present
with him some constant.reminder OF the
flight of time; if he could have in his
room a great hour glass, laden with just
the equal and exact sands of his life. il
he could every day watch the steadily
dropping grains, and knew that when
they all ran through the last grain would
Just complete his grave; if when he
closed his eyes he knew that all night
long the priceless grains ran through;
if in the silent hours Of darkness when
he awoke, he could hear them dropping,
steadily as the drip. drip, drip of
water clock; if when he came in from
journey he could see how much of the
sands of his life had run out while he
journeyed for pleasure or profit; If,
sometimes, he could stand before it
and watch the swift grains running away
with his~life; and he could feel that al
way and Away, night and day. sleeping
or waking, fasting or feasting. working
or resting. wherever he went or what
ever he did, no faster, no slower, stead
lily. pitilesSly, the sands run through,
and Away every hour the life heap above
fell away and the grave below piled up
and up; if he could realize that no
thought or care. or skill or learning,
could make thsm run more slowly by
and by, or add one light grain to. the
measure melted out and sealed against
his life by the memorable fates, l wonder
how MANY of the dropping grains he
would turn to gold by the alchemy OF
his industry?
Pshaw, my son. if you had such
glass the novelty of such thing would
wear away in thirty days. Some night,
when you came in late from toilsome
game of ssdraw," so to speak, or a
walking match around billiard table,
or some popular nightmare known as
brilliant spectacular drama, YOU would
look at your warning hour-glass and
say: "By George, it seems to me sand
is getting distressingly scarce in the up
per story. Je-roO-salem! How these
boots do hurt nv feet. I'd like to kill
the man that made EN-" And you
would be sound asleep in twenty min
utes. Reminders? Why the world is
full of reminders that our lives are slip
ping away. Every time YOU hear the
nIn ~ 10 = 90 20. ind hot
you may never hear it strike eleven.
When the Egyptians of olden time
had the CHASTITY skeleton carried
in at their feasts, did it cast
gloom over the community p Not
shadow. Itmade them merrier. ..See
what are you coming to- they shouted,
and ate and drank like poor relation at
his annual dinner party, 70 which he is
invited to fill up. Fill up tie party !
mean. .. .~ r $50
You see, my boy, you can't afford to
waste time just now. This is your work
ing time. 1t may not seem fair, / know,
that the world should Judge you. and
your youth and inexperience by the high
est standard of human success and at
tainments, but it does, and we can't
change the way of the world. You must
now do everything your best. aud keep
on your company behavior all the time.
Is this the man with only one suit OF
clothes and small salary, Telemachus,
who at all times must be polite and
agreeable and faultless observer of all
points and forms of etiquette. Theman
worth 100000 may trample over your
corns, walk across your wife's train, eat
pie with knife. and take his soup with
a swish and swoop that sounds like q
horse walking in the mud, and his stand.
ing in society isn't affected by it. But