The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-12-13
TWELVE PAGES.
The Sunday Journal has the largest and
best circulation of any Sunday paper in In
diana. Price five cents.
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Death, the grim messenger who comes for
all Of us soon or late, and whose reckoning
hand none can refuse to follow, makes his
visits without warning more frequently than
Of old. Once his approaches were gradual; he
advanced and retreated, seemed to relent, and
again grew stern, until the traveller, grown
weary of the hopeless contest, babe farewell
TO life, and love, and friends with what
resignation he might command, made his
peace with God and man, and passed over
the river after such preparation as became one
about to journey into a strange country. The
tossing aside of life, as if it were garment
outworn, and assuming the garb Of the spirit
In single moment, was a necessity
that confronted the slower moving members
Of former generation at wider intervals than
it comes to US to-day. For, as if to keep pace
with the swiftest tide of modern life, the
feverish eagerness with which we strive to
crowd the work, and experience, and pleasure
of a year into week or day, Death tarries
less often, now, at the bedside Of his victims,
but smites them as he passes by-ushers them
into the next world with haste equal to that
which has characterized their progress in this.
They drop dead.
A general, on whose movements the eyes of
the world were fixed, as he lay before Rich
mond, twentyfour years ago, passed from APP
parently sturdy health and strength to his
coffin, between midnight and dawn, month
ago. A Vice-president Of the Nation walked
abroad in the morning and at sunset had
closed his eyes forever. A mag
nate of the commercial world stopped
in the middle of speech to friend
and went out into the unknown-dropped
dead. Every morning paper chronicles like
fate Of less distinguished men. Hardly week
passes but the announcement of sudden death
OF friend or acquaintance comes to each of us
with shock. No man is secure The min
lister stumbles at the foot Of his pulpit, the
farmer at his pillow, the housewife falters at
her endless tasks-they drop dead.
1t is common wish, expressed by those
who have noted the terrors of lingering dis
ease, that they might be allowed to enter,
without warning, the shadowy path which all
must tread They want, or fancy they want,
Death, when he comes, to be unheralded.
Probably they deceive themselves, since no
one is heard to say with earnestness that, if
the swift Reaper come that moment or the
next, he is ready to 60 with him. Some
indefinite day in the future--"when their
time comes"-they desire to 60 in haste; but
not now. Our lips follow the words of the
tiffany, ''from sudden death deliver us, good
Lord while the heart oppressed with cares
and grief refuses to respond and longs for re-
lease from life. But where is even the world
weary creature, who, if confronted with the
alternative, would not choose
"A little space of time ere time expire.
little day, little way of BREATH"
would not grasp at life for brief hour more,
rather than drop dead9
Existence may seem dreary waste, with
burdens heavy and hope vanished but with
all our supposed willingness to lay the load
down, we shrink from the thought of passing
Instantly from familiar scenes to become
'hurrying shapes" in No-nan's land We
will endure the bitterness while longer.
life even seems better worth living when the
imagination brings the hereafter face to
face with us. We cannot 90 lust
yet; we cannot pass from the whirl of this
life into the bewilderment of the next with
out little time in which to adjust our souls
to the coming change. We cannot; but,
alas! why pray, or why protest. We cannot
cheese the way. Whom fate has assigned to
60 next into the land of spirits without warn
ing, no man shall know. 1t may be one or
another who shall rend the veil Of the flesh,
who shall drop dead; but the one is among us.
We can only look at each other with inquir-
ing eyes that penetrate the mysteries of life
such little way, and wish
"Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow.
10 these who shall not have good morrow"
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