The Arkansaw traveler., 1882-12-17
A Breeze of Rneouragemen,.
ICheek.

lCheek.
 To the young and old. the loose-,eint- cd and spawned, the round. full chested and the old and wheezy. let us say 1t IS never too late to learn. Never too late to cultivate some neglected art. some wild ambitious desire which you have nursed through infancy and reared on the bottle of youthful hope.
 Now there Is old Socrates. He is q bright and shining example of what pa- tience, energy and perseverance can ac- complish. At an extreme old age he first learned to play on a musical instrument What do you think of that for starter 1? Of course the people all turned in and assassinAted him as soon as he got so he could play one tune, but 1t shows what an old duifer like Socrates can accomplish when he sets about t in the right way.
 Then there is Cato. At eighty years of age he commenced 10 study the Greek ianguAge 90 that he could talk back to his mother-in-law. He used to sit up nights and wrestle with the Greek roots and verbs and nouns and adlectives and cylinder heads and set-sorews and other dingusses, but his mother-in-iaw died be- fore he got so he could handle her in her own tongue, but for all that Cato was af- terward heard to remark that he should never think the time he spent in downing the Greek language was spent in vain.
 Putarch. when between seventy and eighty years of age, tackled Latin. and got away with it. too. Plutarch was an ambitious Athenian liar. but he wasn't satisfied to lie in his mother tongue: he said he didn't think he did justice to him. self and 90 he learned Latin in order that he might keep somewhere in sight of Cato.
 boccaeeao was thirty i've years ef age when he commenced his studies of polite literature, yet he afterwards became one of the great masters of the Tuscan dia- lect, so great, in fact, that there is not one bookstore out of i62 in the United States which dare keep his peculiarly high fla vored literature publicly on sale. I, is never too late to learn.
 Sir Henry Speuman neglected the sci ences in his youth and went round trying to put salt on birds tails and sanding his hands so that he could hold on to the young eels which he yanled out of the mud holes. But he began the study of law when he was sixty years old and ever aiter this he could magnetic a i've pound note out of the vest pocket of a client with the greatest of ease. It is never too late to learn.
 |-Dr.- Johnson applied himself to the study of the Dutch language but a few years before his death. He knew all ,he rest of the dead and alive languages, but the Dutch dialect paralyred him and he went down as though he had received a clip over the eye from playful mule Benjamin Franklin did not fully begin his philosophical pursuits till he had reached his fftieth year. He didn't have time. It was about all he could do to scratch around and make living by sticking type in the daytime and stealing clippings from his brother paragraphers. He was also the inventor of a pa,en, paste pot which was a kind of paten, self-feeder, one tube running into gns, mill. the other into creek under his of flee. When hunger gnawed at Ben,a- min's vitals he was in the habi, of lap ping handful of paste on to the stove lid and cooking pan cake.
 Ludovico Mona1desco. at the age of iis years. wrote the memoirs of his own times We don't know anything abou, his times, and must say, after a thorough examination into this apparent lie that we think younger man would have done better in his place But it Is never too late to learn. While there's life there's hope, and many rheumatic old gander may have long life of usefulness