National Republican., 1882-12-27
BE COMMONPLACE.
The Post"CIlrlstmns and Pessimistic Talk
OF n TaIlxer.

OF n TRltxer.
1t might have been the time of year, and
il might have been the effects of recent OK
periments that colored a conversation heard
in one of the hotels last night. Whatever
the cause of it, the effect was the gloomiest of
pessmism-a holiday revelry in the shadow
of unpleasant realities.
He refused proGered cigar and opened out
on his line of pessimisR with that act His
dark colored argument ran about like this.
"No. 1 will not take a cigar, for the rea-
son that l want it. Whatever you want,
don't take Whatever seems to offer pleasure
TO you, let it alone. The old Puritan notion
that man must be miserable in order to be
happy is the right one, after all, if you
change the last word for one never can be
happy unless he has short memory, no re-
Election, and no power to look ahead. Let us
see how it would he with me, if | should join
you in drink and cigar, both of which il
seems to me | should enjoy. The cigar would
give me a headache in two hours and the
whisky would put the notion of work out of
my head, and | must work, SO ] cannot do
what | want to and enjoy it. Why, j read
in the paper tonight of man who was before
the police court to-day. He said he was 80
years old, and had been arrested every Christ
mas for eighteen years. He thought every
year that he was going to have a good time.
Now if he had gone about some commonplace
duty that did not in the least attract him or
promise pleasure he would be all right. 1t is
so with everything. ! like a good dinner
with wines in plenty and no stint of meats
and sauces. While eating and drinking the
dGlusion prevails that it is pleasure. This
is for two three hours. Then follows
two days of disordered stomach,
a morning of oversleeping, and humiliatinG
sense of having been just enough eXhilarated
out of my dead level self to have said some
foolish things. If | had remained at home to
dinner, with beef and bread and cold water,
the dead level would not have been inter
rupted, and could have kept about my bust
ness without the sort Of mental and physical
torture that always follows your good time
There is no such thing as pleasure What
! is inevitable and absolutely necessary
/ is bearable. The see-saw from mo-
ment of pleasure to a day of modification
is both unbearable and fatal to ones peace
will not say happiness never expect that, foI
what is known as pleasure comes like Il fash
of lightning and then leaves you more in the
dark than before This man, who started in
to have eighteen happy Christmases and
| landed before eighteen police justices, must
be in mood to regret that Christ was ever
born. Had he been content to he common
place, no such sacreligious thought would have
/ ever come up IN MS mlnu. why, talk O
pleasure There is Abdul Mejid, who has beer
trying to prove to himself that life is fol
pleasure until he has gone stark mad, sem
his wives away, and is about to realize the
worst of all his fears-dethronement. HI
tried to have an eternal Christmas, varied
with an occasional Fourth of July, and yor
see what it accomplished for him. Some o
the Oldest nations of the earth have not fount
this out. See this dispatch from San Fran
cisco-forty Chinese women arrested for com
ing over to be the wives of forty Cinnamon
Why didn't they all stay at home? ThC
men thought they would secure happiness by
coming over to get money faster than they
could at home, and the women thought they
would be happier over here with the men
Now they are to be fired out of the countr,
in way to make them think their trouble
have just begun, just as trouble begins fo
people who come here and beg and promis
and exert influence enough to secure abou
three times as much as they deserve, anC
finally get an Office to sweat over awhile ant
then lose, They fire at pleasure and brinl
down trouble, | am going to begin with th
new year, by doing everything that | hav
heretofore dreaded and shirked, aud passinl
by what seems to offer pleasure, with tn
thought that it has, without an exception, al
ways given pain in the end and led 10 nupc
cuniosty and other complications | will no
60 to bed because | want 10, for IL would b
too early; | will not wait until | want TO ge
up, because it would be too late; / will eat /
feed myself, and not to feast myself; | vii
drink to water myself, aud not to pamper m
conceit. will see whether or not there is
way to live without being iOlted up and dow
from hope to humiliation" With this h
drank glass of water and went to bed.