St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-30
BURDETTE'S PROVERBS.
ADVICE TO YouSG MEN.

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN.
SHE that diligently seeketh good, procurethl
favor; but he that seeketh mischief, 1t shaii
come upon him. Proverbs, XII, 81.
Tread softly. See the strong man bowed
upon his knees. His pallid brow is pressed
against the carpet Ave, humble yourself
proud man. PROSTATE yourself in the dust.
Aye, groan. 1t may relive your penU up
feelings, but it will not help you to see any
better. The strong man rises. What is that
which he remarks! He says it is not nuer
the sofa. But what else did he say! de
says if a mans eyes stood out on the SIDE Oh
his head like his ears a man might look De-
hind the bureau. But what did he say be-
fore that! Never you mind what he said be-
fore that. He did not say it necessarily 1or
publication, but simply as guarantee that
! he was in dead earnest about it and meant
what he said. There, he has upset the ROCK
| ing chair Now he has broken goblet. he
| stands on the back of chair to look on Ihe
top of the door frame. When the chair 1alls
over with him he says he knew IL was MOI
| there. He puts his head out at the door ana
| shrieks down the hall that he cannot ma IL.
| A female voice somewhere down the nan
sweetly beseeches him to speak more softly
or he'll sour the milk in the cellar. Inc
man drops on his knees and crawls about
the room on all fours, holding the head low,
like Gordon setter hunting cold trail. a
beautiful child, with soft blue eyes and gold
| en- hair, comes into the room, and with a
merry, silvery laugh, tries to climb onto the
mans back Now the child has gone howl
ing down the hall, and voices of lamentation
and comfort streak the pale air. The man
puts ON his boots and yells out that some
body has hid it. He tramps
across the floor. Suddenly he stops.
He stoops. He says; '.Ah, there it is?'
And so it is. 1t is his collar button. How
did ne find it? He stepped upon it. 1t is
not quite so flat as postage stamp, but is a
| good deal fatter than wafer. Is the man
glad because he found his lost collar button
He is of age, ask him. Did you2ever hunt
for something you didn't want to tindl Peo-
pie frequently do. No man wants to find a
horizontal collar button, nor does the gentle
woman who carefully and anxiously looks
under the bed every night for man, really
want to find the man. She believes there is
one there, but she would be greatly disap-
pointed and surprised to find him. Never
look for things you do not want to find, my
son. 1t is hard enough TO find the things
you want. If you do not want to find faults
in your friends do not look for them and you
will not see them. If you do not want to
find your enemies, do not hunt for them
| They will hunt for you, my son. And what
is worse, they will find you, too.
| have known men who passed their lives
hunting for things nobody wished to have
discovered and which only make the finder
miserable. There are men who can't smell
a heliOtrope held at their lips but have nose
| for carbon that would be fortune to some
poor struggling buzzard. He never looks
| for a good point about any man. He finds
the spots on the sun, but sees not one ray of
! its brightness. A clear running brook gives
him the hydrophobia, and mud puddle is
a reviving Turkish bath to his mean little
soul If he could go to heaven, which, prais-
| ed be all goodness he never can, he would
be of men the most miserable, because he
could find no mud to throw at the angels.
And when he goes to the other place, which,
indeed he will, he will be happy be-
cause everybody there will be so mnch bet
ter than himself that he can enjoy himself
trying to pull them down to his own level.
Don't look for the faults of your neighbors,
my son. Remember, as Shakespeare has
! said:
''Who steals my purse steals trash,
| But he who flches my good name
Robs me of that l never had
And losing which enriches me the more,
But makes him poor indeed;''
or words to that effect, be the same more or
less. Don't look for the traces Of evil, nor
for any of the rest of the harness Don't 90
up and down the world looking for the signs
of moral leprosy. ''The priest shall not seek
for yellow hair'
Moreover dearly beloved, it isn't enough
| 70 off Jo1,O
to seek it out, yet he shall not find it," On
the western farm, where much of the sum-
mer time of my life was passed, we had a
dog. There being two or three boys on the
farm, we had seven or eight dogs, as a mat
ter of fact, but there was one particular dog,
with whose tail l desire to point moral. He
was hunter. Morning after morning,
summer and winter, he went forth to hunt.
Night after night he came back home, his hair
full of burs, his feet covered with stone
bruises, and his ears pendent with wood
ticks. For seven long years that dog lived
on the farm. He gnawed not the bone of
| idleness, neither was he wise in the conceit
of the sluggard because in all those seven
years he hunted all the time, seven days a
week. But, alas like the slothful, he ''roast-
ed not that he took in hunting" prov. xii,
20. Because he never found anything
Not one single, lone, solitary, lost thing did
| he find in all those seven years of hunting.
Never found a thing. But we kept him,
because we believed, indeed we knew, that
the dogs intentions were good. He meant
well. Every morning as he went forth, hap
Ply and confident, he hoped to find some
thing and to bring it home with him Joyous
and triumphant. But he never did. And
at last, one keen, clear, bracing November
day, he went down in the
ferny glens and lost himself
We never heard that he died; nobody ever
saw him or heard anything of him again his
bark came back no more; he was just lost ::
he had wrapped the drapery of the unknow-
able about him and joined the innsmerable
caravan of Intangible things he had been
hunting for years.
The moral of this passage is self-evident.
There are men, even in your circle of ac-
quaintance, who hunt all their lives and
never find anything. They are industrious,
patient, hopeful and yet they never accom-
plish anything. They take the Congressional
Record for its jokes and read the Nation for
political instruction. He goes to the minstrel
show for amusement and reads the Washing
ton papers for news. He goes to a summer
boarding house to get cool, and takes vaca-
UlOn InaI he may rest. lie goes 10 the coun-
try for cream and fresh eggs and keeps a
horse to save street car fare. In all this he
doeth foolishly. He hunts well enough but
not wisely. You must know, my boy, before
you go hunting, where to hunt for what you
want. You might go deer stalking all over
Coney Island for twenty years and never
bring home pair of branching antlers to
hang in the ancestral halls of the flats in which
you live.
RANDOM SHOTS.
may as well confess that I have been
hunting great deal in that random happy go
lucky way this week myself, and have done