Semi-weekly south Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1883-1889, 1885-06-19
Advice To Young Men.

JlOll Win u DflSnJ young lclloW JnS'
starting out on ambitions road. This
brings to my mind so many tender
memories, so many fond recolectlons.
that cannot resist the temptation to
write. Glorious days Of boyhood,
halryom hours when hope sings only
from the very summets of lifes hill.
How You vanish, how like the wild
dreams of a startled slumberer you
are gone and when once gone are
gone forever 'Tis the same road
with all of us, in the marblc-playing
days we long for the time when Il
razor shall have plowcd lis way
across our face, when proud man
hood shall claim us for lis own. We
start out never dreaming ere we
reach mid-lile our names shall have
been written on the vey apex Of
fame's proud temple. We run hur-
riedly over Shakespeare's glorious
pages and dream we know more Of
human nature than hc. We read the
life of NapOlcan and his Marshals
and imagine ere long We will be
greater even than he "who madly
grasped at glory's fleeting phantom
and vainly sought to make his throne
a pyramid of bones amid sea of
blood" then too we now and then
read a chapter in that grand book
leaving out even its inspiration and
none ever excellent. mean the BIZ
BILE and we soon in our vanity con-
c,udc the whole thing is nothing
more than the absurd shadow Of
madman's dream, that Heaven is far
away, home only Of strangers, that
hell is only fiction, fabulous spot
talked of only to scare the simple
minded, Gods wcakings into doing
better. Then too about this time a
dream of love and beauty begins TO
nestle in his soul. On. the God
given, glorious, ecslatic, hours ofiirst
love. how they drive us almost 10
madness and too some OF Ws never
get over them, cling to them, love q
sentiment, even down to death and
out into the dream beyond. Arci-
demtally You meet a blue eyed girl,
YOU look across the church at her.
she smiles back, you screw your
courage up TO the sticking point, YOU
visit her AT her home, you sit close tn.
her, bv and by her hand. tendcraS M
opening rO-ehnd, finds its way into
YOURS, yon yet nearer and nearer In.
her until you can almost hear the
wild beatlngs of her heart, You ten
hcrly push back from her brow the
golden ircsses that hang in ii wild
tangle there, by and by her head ncs-
Ties on your bosom, and her wnvl
ringlrts fall adown Your shoulder
,ou sw ecr to live eacl for the other
it not both for God. You go away
late at night believing you can love
only her, that life would be Il dreary
desert waste without her, that even
the music Of the spheres celestial
would he incomplete without her
voice. BY and by you separate, duty
calls YOU elsewhere, new scenes aud
new faces come before you, and ere
you are aware of it, you are oil with
the old love and on with the new.
After ten long years You see her
again, now the wife OF another man
broken, faded, with crows feet all
over the brow from which YOU push
ed back the golden curls. With the
dimple gone deeper and deeper in on
her chin, her eyes do not sparkle as
they did ten years ago, the laughter
plays less frequently across her lips,
the roses are not blooming as they
did on her cheek, you feel less conf
dent of your success i'll the world,
now, you know something of the
hollowness, the emptiness of human
friendship, you know how uncrr'
tain are all our calculations, how the
world is ready TO pluck every leadeI
from the wreath your are trying to
weave around you brow. But men
can succeed, and Notwithstanding The
. dreams of b0yhood fade like morn
ing mistS, youth is the right time tC
, start, in the right direction and 1
young man can tell which end of the
(; road leads that way. Young man il
is so hard to get back when once yol
] defect. know young man who
got drunk when he was seventeen
and every time he has laughed {
good old fashioned side splitting
laugh from that day to this his enc
mics have had him drunk. We al
have enemies more or less.
5 The more paths we cross, the mOr'
D people will envy us, the more we d'