Weekly graphic. [volume] (Kirksville, Adair Co., Missouri) 1880-1949, 1882-07-28
A WASTED GIFT.

Ihls world would be highly educat
ed, If the morbid curiosity which lead:
men to devour the details of ever,
shocking and disgusting affair, were
instead. a healthy appetite for thai
knowledge which enlarges the mind anc
improves the understanding. In every
neighbcrhood are people with an insa.
table thirst for all that is improbable
and ESPECIALLY lift tend towards indie
cency. who yet have no interest for the
most curious details of scientific discov'
cry. or the latest result of phllosophie
thought. They are past masters in
petty gossip with touch of scandal in
it; and can bring down reputation a,
hundred yards, with one shot of their
rifled threats, like the Jaculator fish
that makes a squirt gun of its mouth
to shoot its prey from the bushes over
the brook.
We readily call to mind many excel
lent citizens, and prospective citizens
of the new franchise, who are deeply
erudite in the entire range OF useless
knowledge. having the most inexhaust-
tible fund of patience in worthless in
quiries. By long habit they acquire a
surprising ingenuity in supplementing
scanty facts with ample Interpretation,
and indeed, their happy guesses are
enough to make the fortune of a natu-
ralist. They track faint clue with
such fatal facility, to the lurking fact.
Agassiz wins great credit for skill in in
terpreting the significance of a shell,
bone, a scale, or the rude fragments
of a fossil lobster. Out of the left
hand corner of one caudal clipper"
transformed into rock now these thou
sands of years, he will build you up,
by the force of his suggestive irnag-
ination, the hugest crustacean that
ever escaped boiling, by living ages
before lobster pots and fisherman were
inventor. From a single scale OF an
extincr species, he will restore the
whole fish, with an accuracy that con-
descending nature declines to improve
upon, when she su1enders the entire
fossil from another bed.
1t is precisely this acuteness of the
imaginative faculty, allied to great keen
ness of observation. that has made him
the master that he is in the scientific
world.
But We have unlearned men and
women who will pull a mystery out of
its hole by smaller tip of its pro.rud-
ing caudal terminus, than Agassiz ever
dreamed of snatching at. ONLY the
mystery will be some utterly worthless
Circumstance that can furnish no meat
for the slightest mental digestion.
Ihave seen one Of these sharp STU
dents of the Useless detect the visit of
a stranger at a house fully two miles
away, with the build of the wagon, the
color of the horse, and shrewd dash
at the very Grand on which he had
come; and yet there was but a square
rod of ground from which the premises
were visible. 1t was done by sharp
seeing and smart guessing, and the
long habit of verifying conjectures by
actual inquiries. Had the same skill,
with no more mental power: been
turned to unhousing the secret habits
of some hitherto unlucky bug, or to the
meaning of Frauenhofer's lines in the
solar spectrum. the domain of science
would have been enlarged by acres.
So with the average reader of the end
less issues OF the popular press. wise
and otherwise, you will notice with
what headlong gravitation they run to
the malarious swamps OF scandal. the
foodless seas of shallow fiction, and the
thin froth of facetia, that is blown about
the shores of more solid matter. They
feed largely-on wlnd-only to become
more hollow, like a rubber bag, into
which the more you blow the greater is
its emptiness. Thousands who have
no time for Tyndall or Lockyear, are
at an empty Cobb. and fill
to depletion with 'Satur- /,
day Night" and the "New York Week.
w." or other trash too vile to name i
And yet, know a man who, in the {
absence of better guides, learned the ]
whole theory and application of the I
from the mere dust and S
1rift of knowledge caught in the crew. S
.es OF the daily newspaper and that, c
90. in spite of the ridiculous blunders c
If the unscienti6c Office boy. who IS lief 4
o set up such unimportant matter! S
A curiosity that seeks the worthless y
will find an ample field for its foraglngs;
,ut, even in this pasture, curiosity
hat looks only for what is edifying and
will see much to keep awake,
fnot to satisfy its appeti On some a
nance occasion, you will astonish your a
leighbor with the number OF good G
Kings YOU have picked up, at odd t.
INES. from his Ledger" though he @
as cheated night and Sunday in devot- a
ng to its astonishing narratives. where Fl
he more he reads the less he knows. a.
Minds have their elective afflnities, 81
o less that chemicals, and draw to So
themselves the element that build up n
heir structure. As different animals IL
nd different food in the same pasture, Sc
iverse natures getwhat they want from :, ~
he same field, and ignore the rest. Of
The ass is tabled to regale himselfon ii
,istles from stupid preference, and
on may see. in fact, on any cold day, u