St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-04-13
st. cSolmsbmp Galedunialr.
Advice To A Young Man.

Cato once remarked that THAT
man approached nearest the gods who
knows how To be silent even when he
is in the right 1t seems to me, my
dear boy, that is the very time man
is most apt to be silent. That Is the
trouble with the man in the right.
He won't speak up. He should lift up
his voice, and cry aloud and spare not.
The fellow in the wrong doesn't keep
silent. He rends the very heaven
with his clamor. He gets the floor
early in the session and has spread
himself over fifty pages of the record
before the right man has mustered up
sufficient courage to get up on his legs
and say "Mr. Speaker Because the
man who is right keeps silent, the
New Jersey legislator steals the waste
baskets of the state with impunity a
Pennsylvania jury justities the most
infamous man in the land in the most
Infamous crimes dynamite is intro
duced in Christian lands as political
argument hotel keepers lure the wea-
~ travellers into fire traps railway
directors save enough on cheap bridges
to pay heavy damages for life and
limb and still declare heavy divi-
houses and nobody to blame :" steam
ships with two thousand miles of clear
water to pass in, collide in mid ocean.
and the captains get new ships aims
houses are robbed by their superin
tendents and state treasurers go into
office poor and come out rich and III
Mexico the money-changers and
they that sell doves sit in the porches
of the temple craftsmanship gives
place to the politics of the pot house
and the senate yields to the ward eau
Gus and all this time the man who
is in the right ''keeps SILENT He has
no right to keep silent. 1t isn't god
like in him. 1t is cOwardly, it is base,
it is treachery to his duty. GOu young
fellows whose brains are clear and
whose hearts are i'ure and whose
hands are clean. You are the men to
be heard. And don't he content with
speaking. my boy. Do something
Think and speak and vote for what is
right. Don't believe in every party
that Haunts the banner of reform
mot every one that saith unto Me
Lord. Lord, shall enter into the king
dom" Don't look at the banner
look at the men who carry it. Cry
aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice lik,
trumpet and show the people theil
transgression, ''the sin of th6l nation
that is written with pen of iron, and
with the point of diamond" wher
YOU see this wickedness in the land
my boy, you have no right to keel
silent. Scourge them that sell OXer
and sheep and doves, the 'soulles'
men whose measureless greed would
make the temple of the nation IA mark
ct place, away from its sacred portals
and rest not from thy work until ''thl
light shall break forth us the morning
and thine health shall spring fortl
speedily There is so much in this
world for you to do, my boy, tina
your poor old father left undOne, 81
much that we are too weak or toe
cowardly to do, that you're not going
to have much time for rest, if you ac
complish even the half of your mis-
sion. There isn't more rascality il
the poor old land than there is good
ness, my boy. But the trouble seem
to be that the rascals are doing two
thirds of the work and three-fifths o
the talking X. j. Burdette.