The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1886-02-25
full-grown who are dying" in his
exultart thought.

10 him tho past presents itself in
constantly varying prospects. Hither.
to it has given him but little occasion
for thought. Now it spreads out like
map, and he studies it. Under this
examination it changes necessarily,
and things which before were prom.
lnent shrink into Insignificant dimen.
slons, and others which had been re-
garded as petty and inconsequential as.
sumo Importance. Thus, many acts
which were regarded at the moment OF
their occurrence as being possessed Of
grandeur, of worth. resolve themselves
into puny trifies in their consequences.
and unworthy in their motives. This
view over the long stretches of the past
when taken from the heights rising be.
You'd middle age, strangely dwarfs the
eminences, and reduces the most o1
the distance into a monotonous level.
What Is curious about this back view
is not only the leveling of the heights,
but the bringing into view of the little
of things, events, and of people that
have long been out of sight. They rise
as it were from graves in which thew
have been entombed from a generation
or more, and which would be supposed
to contain only ashes. But they are
not dead. They reappear in ali the
freshness of their original existence.
They relate to no particular period OF
life, save that perhaps they are fresher
and more distinct and life like the
nearer they are to the cradle. He sees
himself: on cold winters night, nest
ling in the lap of his mother. He re-
calls distinctly the grateful warmth to
his bare feet of the wooden dress, the
cracking of the wood, and the flying
sparks in the open fire place. Scores,
hundreds of incidents of this period,
long since forgotten, come into the
memory and repeople the remoter past.
While the early portion of his life is
thus revivitied. that which is nearer
him grows more deserted.
The last dozen years are sparselv
populated. A little figure remains
here and there, but the vast throngs
which once occupied the space have
disappeared. A haze hangs over the
nearer areas, through which things are
seen dimly, or are obscured beyond
sight Yearly the vaporous obscurity
grows denser, and he comprehends
that the time is not remote when this
portion of his life will be obliterated
from his vision. But as the darkness
increases on the foreground of the
past, the dimness of the distance
wherein are located infancy and youth
is becoming infused with a growing
light, as the obscurity of night is made
eff4lgent by the glories of the day.
He is transported, as it were, back
to this early period of life. He dwells
in it more than in the present. His
weary frame is again rocked in the
cradle; he races over the hillsides with
FOSTERING boys; he once more trembles
and shivers in the presence of some de-
mure schoolgirl, and dreams over the
delicious and disturbing experiences of
his early loves. He is again robust,
filled with indetinable aspirations,
without care, healthy. and hopeful of
the bright. and apparently endless
future which extends before him.
V.
These occasional excursions into the
past afford him some little consolation.
He then forgets for the moment his
falling strength, the brevity of the
space which lies in front of him, and is
rid, for brief interval, of the harrow
ing uncerta' mites of his condition. The
memories of youth are his single re-
fuge. All the greater efforts of his
life distress him with their littleness as
he contemplates them from his distant
standpoint. When near them thew
were mountains, and now they have
sunk down on the horizon, and exhibit
no more than a thin, wavy line against
the sky. He sees them now as
the world does, if it sees them at all;
nothing which he has built at the cost
OF infinite labor remains within view.
There comes to him the humiliating
conviction that his life has been useless,
and that when he goes away he will be
forgotten as instantly as if he had never
existed.
Directly in front of him, and so close
that he can almost touch it, hangs E
palllike curtain, which shuts off his
vision. He regards it with unmixed
horror and apprehension. Beyond it
lies the unknown, the inexplicable, the
menacing, the troublous No-Man s
Land, with all its frightful possibilities
and its dread uncertainties.
In vain are the efforts to obtain a
glimpse of the secrets lying beyond the
veil with which the man who has grown
old occupies himself. 1t is a course of
se!f-intlicted torture. He haunts the
adyta of the Christian temples, inhales
the mystic vapors of so-called inspira-
ton, listens to the utterances, the
promises OF the oracles, and secures no
assurances that leave him at rest.
From Delphi to Didyma, from Colophon
to Achaia, he wanders, invoking the
priestesses of humiliation, of eternal
pain, of immortal felicity, and from
each gains--nothing. Still the i'm
penetrabIe curtain shuts out the be-
yond, and to his frantic interrogations
there is no response. A horrible, in
exorable, deaf silence receives his de-
mands and absorbs them with a SUBJ
lime and tranquil indifference.
Battled at every step; thrust down
when he attempts to climb; given gauzy
legends and mystic speculations when
he asks for facts; told to hope when.
dizzy and fainting, he is about to fall
into appalling and bottomless depths;
commanded, when weak and stumbling,
to lean on intangible faith; given al
ways vapor when asking for sub
stance, with regret behind and despair
before him, he falls into condition of
reckless hopelessness, and as likely as
not blasphemes over destiny which
forces him to stake his temporal and,
possibly, eternal happiness on the
solving of a problem whose solution,
at least in reaching a unanimous con-
clusion, has detied the genius of forty
centuries.
POLIUrO.
Salvation Oil is the greatest cure on earth
for pain. This invaluable linimeut routs
and banishes all bodily pain Instantly,
and costs only twenty-five cents q bottle.