The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-10-27
TROUBLE BORROWERS.
Persons who Make Themselves as Well
Their Friends Very Uncomfortable.


Persons who Make Themselves as Well as
Their Friends Very Uncomfortable.
There is an ancient weather tradition
about the month of March borrowing
certain days from April, which she
pays back, not in the same weather
that she borrows, but in one of her own
glorious gales, at a later date, and this
is perhaps the most poetical expression
of the borrowing of trouble that we
have. Those who borrow trouble,
however, are seldom in the habit of
paying it back with the scrupulosity
of the month of March in the tradition;
they keep it for themselves, they roll
it over and let it gather accretion, they
make much of it, and they grow so
weary with the weight of it that when
real trouble comes there is no strength
to bear that, and the nervous powers
fail at the time when they are most
needed.
Is there to be that most festive of all
festivals in the family, wedding, the
trouble borrower is sure that the bride
is lamb led to the slaughter, or that
the bridegroom is now to be lost for
ever to the family in being adopted
into the new wife's family, and that
| nobody knows where they will all be
year from that day. Or else the trouble
borrower is sure that the church will
be cold and they will get their deaths,
or the dress will never come from the
n u Tnp'c in fir,,n m with the
lovers well-known dilatory character,
he will be sure to be late at his own
wedding. Not even funeral satisfies
this trouble-borrower- an occasion
when one might feel as if there were
already on the spot trouble and to
spare; it certainly could not be ex-
pected that any one could be late at
ones own funeral, in spite of the feel
ings of the heirs of rich men who per-
sist in living; yet there as well as else
where the borrower will be sure to find
reason to anticipate disaster. At the
christening, again, it is the borrower
who, if not the bad fairy of evil gifts
in person, is the one who sees that fairy
coming, never by any possibility the
bright fairy, the good fairy; and a child
does not undergo teething in the family
where the borrower makes a home,
for which, from the first tooth to the
last, trouble is not to be extracted. An
urchin can not be sent to school from
that family where the borrower does
not fOrsee an overtaxed brain and
: nervous disease, and it can not stay
away from school where there is not at
once forecast Of Ounce. In business
matters it is as bad: this debtor is not
going to pay, that creditor is going to
be memorable. In all the concerns
of life, in short, the borrower
is drawing on the future al
ways a bankrupt future in every
thing but sorrow; and even when it
comes to death, the borrower illustrates
this life with the lurid light of the
flames of the bottomless pit, although
more often concerned in that light
for others than for ones self, it may be
said. This borrower of ours extends
operations even into the outer affairs
of nature. There is never a sunshiny,
balmy day of south winds but it is
weather-breeder, and the borrower sees
no sun to-day for the cloud and storm
of tomorrow. Are the first buds early,
the bluebirds here, and all things prom
Using a genial spring?-then it is I'M
timely weather, and the premature
buds will all be nipped by the frosts to
come, and there will be no fruit. On the
other hand, has the bad weather held its
own till late, knowing apparently, with
that strange intelligence of the ele-
ments, that everything will come on in
the stronger and longer sunshine with
about the same celebrity as if it had not
had it's own freer and lingering play,
the great law of cOmpensations acting
with inanimate as with all other of the
departments of nature?-why, then
the summer is never going to be long
enough to ripen anything, and if there
should not be real famine in conse-
quence, yet prices will put food out Of
the reach of the poor, and the balance
of trade between the continents will be
disturbed, and there will be a change
in the rate of discount of the Bank of
England.
Nobody is made so uncomfortable by
all this borrowing of trouble as the
borrower himself, although, of course,
everybody in the region is disturbed
and veXed by the habit. 1t is habit
that takes on serious freaks sometimes.
-Harper'S BGEar.