The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1882-04-01
MISTAKES.

tons of your being; do not vex yourself
and break your heart, struggling against
what is irremediable. Do not look to find
here what is not to be found. Do not
fancy that wiser and luckier folk have
found it, and that you would have found
it, too, but for some unhappy mistake
you made at critical turning in your
life. The mistakes you have made, if
you be an ordinary mortal living ordi-
nary life, have not, in fact done your
about as much of things in this world as
it was in you to make at all. Make the
best of the bargain you have made, in
this or that. Doubtless you see it was
not perfectly wise bargain. You would
not make it again. Had you been con-
siderably wiser than Solomon you might
never have made it at all. But you are
in for it now. Make the best of things,
in good nature and cheerfulness. Do
not NOPE and keep thinking, thinking,
how much better you might have done,
and (like Mr.. Bumble) how cheap you
went. So doing, you will be making
the very worst Of things. You will be
deliberately blackcning the sky under
which you must live if you are to live at
all; you will grow into a curse to your
self and nuisance to your neighbors.
There is plenty for you to do. Go and
do it. There are people a thousand
times worse off than you. Try and help
them. And for any sake, do not be al
ways thinking about yourself. Get away
from that unsatisfactory subject of con-
temptation. And be quite sure that if
you have told your special friends, about
ten times each, how unhappy you are
and how many blunders you have made,
they are by this time most uncommonly
sick both of you and them.
Being what you are, it is quite certain
that if you had not done the foolish things
you did, you would have done something
else as bad or worse. You married early,
when you could not afford it; you had
some anxious years; days have been
when it seemed the poor head was to go
under water altogether. Well, but it did
not You have lived through these anx-
ieties; why recall them? You have got
upon firm ground. Be thankful. 1t is
far more and better than you deserve.
And the burden which lay on you so
heavily may have saved you from max
ing an inexpressible fool of yourself. A
man of sixty dangling after some silly
girl of five-and-twenty is an amazing and
humbling object of contemplation. Even
he suspects himself to be fool; every
body around knows it. Now you, with
your seven grown-up sons, and with
your masterful wife, are safe not to make
fool of yourself in that particular way.
Other ways are open to you. But not
one which leads to manifestations quite
SO deplorable and contemplate. 1t is
likely enough you would advise friend
not to take the turning you did. A man
who has a mother-in-law will generally
counsel any mortal man to marry an
orphan. But this comes Of your know
ing the evils you have, and being I'M
aware of those which are waiting round
the corner, and from which no earthly
lot is free. You must take all things
here, your profession, your wife, your
house, your horses, your servants, your
native country with its climate, all your
environment, for better for worse. A
friend worries you by little weaknesses,
but he is better than no friend at all. He
may be ikened to gift of q thousand
pounds, subject to deduction of two
hundred and fifty. 1t is disadvantage
about a locomotive engine that it gets so
hot. But you must accept the engine
under that deduction, For it will not 90
unless it be so hot. II you. being human
being living in this imperfect system of
things, will break away from everything
which has its Inconvenience, you viii
leave yourself without any possessions or
surroundings whatsoever.
To speak gravely: One remarks, in
these advancing years, that the great
anxiety and care of worthy men and
women, growing old, are about their
children; the lesser ones, still going to
school; the bigger ones, for whom YOU
are seeking an aim in life, or whom have
gone far away. No doubt, if you had
no children, you would be free from many
anxious thoughts. The income would go
much farther. The furniture and the
painting of your house would last much
longer. You could indulge in many
Injuries, now impossible. You might
buy books without stint and cross the
Alps yearly. But you would not have
these selfish indulgences at the price. II
is cherries thing, a childless home.
No one will bear with you in the last
fretfulncss, and smooth the last steps of
your way, like your own boy or girl. II
there be in you any good at all, it has
been brought out mainly by the continual
presence and charge Of your children.
And you have had CLEANS of pure and
unselish happiness, which are unknown
y :
the responsibilities of life, aud given no
hostages to fortune, you would, no doubt,
have presented q narrow mark to the
shafts of care. But, unless you were q
very poor creature indeed, every time
you heard the laughter of the little ones,
and watched their winsome ways, their
thoughtless merriment, you would have