The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1888-02-04

|
the-Times People.
"You can't teach an old dog new tricks
That's what you say at the age Of 45 or so,
or s., when you think that the bloom is
about all oil the eye of life, that it's nearly
all up with you. and that about all the OBJ
ject you have in living is to prepare for
dying, and shuttle in your old shoes out of
life as quietly as possible-possibly to the
content and satisfaction of your nearest of
kin, who love YOU WELL and the dollars you
will leave them better.
| But, sir, You have no business TO call your
self IAN old dog of any sex or persuasion.
You should Ike ashamed to term yourself a
| dog" You are a man, or a fragment OF
one, and being man. you are, of course, but
little lower than an angel, or at least little
lower, we viii say, than second hand
angel; worse luck to you!
| You are saying now to yourself, and you
are saying it every day, that the time is over
for you To learn anything new or do any
/ thing new, and for that matter think or en-
] JOY anything new, save the last neighbor-
hood or village tattle and gossip, which you
do enjoy as well as any other old woman.
Your boundary of your own life in your
mind is to hobble down every morning to the
town or village tattle center, and in summer
sun yourself on dry goods box, and in win
ter warm yourself by the grocery stove, or
somebody's stove, and there rake and scrape
over and gnaw at all the old bones of con-
versation and gossip that you have gnawed
over for the last five, ten or twenty years,
dating from the time when you thought 1T
the proper thing to commence becoming an
old man, and make it your principal business
to sniff and snuff and find fault with the new
tangled ways of the rising generation, VINO
are learning new tricks and don't suit you at
all, because they do not dress or dance or
travel in all respects in the same rut you did
when you were what you called yourself a
young man, although then you had COM
menced TO fossilze, as SO many men and wo-
men do whose bodies are ~ years Old if, in
deed, they were not partially fossils and rem
nants of, say the Miocene period, when they
were born.
OLD DOGS STILL LEARNING.
Sir, you are dog Of you insist on calling
yourself SUCH who can learn new tricks.
Gladstone is over 70, and rules England be-
cause he is always learning tricks. Bismarck
is over 20, and rules Germany, and today is
learning new tricks. De Lesseps, who bosses
the canalism of this planet, is over 40, and
never lets up in devices for cutting through
rock or sand from ocean to ocean. Ericsson
is So if not over, and is 10y no means through
with new ways and means for making little
ships overcome big ones, on the principle that
a wasp may sting an OK nearly To death, and
two wasps, or iron scowS, frelghted with
guns powerful enough and having their shot
sent to the right place, can sink the biggest
OK of a ship in the world overloaded with
men and overwcighted with eleven inch iron
armor. Beecher, sir, never let up until over
90 and he might have been in Plymouth
church pulpit yet had he learned few new
tricks in the art of keeping young, which
thousands are i'll the future to learn
You see, sir, that some old dogs can learn
new tricks, and keep on learning them, SO
long as they recognize the fact tnat to keep
the mind young is TO keep the body young,
and as proof of this fact you may see any
fine afternoon on Broadway men of 30 or 70
who look as young and are as young. fresh,
active and vigorous in body and mind. and
even more so, than you were at -, when
you really commenced to grow old. because
you thought You were at or near the down
hill side of life and being of what the world
calls middle age it was about time to COM
menCe preparations for sliding down the vale
of years and tobogganing your coffin into the
grave.
It's not the young dogs. sir, who always
learn new tricks. Indeed it's the young ones
who are generally inclined to learn the cd
tricks practiccd 10y the old dogs and learned
by these old dogs from dogs still older be-
longing TO generation before You were con
tractcd for, planned out and manufactured.
a CHANGE OF CROPS.
Like your old farmer. who farms Just as
his father farmed before him, only because
his father farlned thai way and thereby left
him as IA legacy an over worked, farmed out,
over titled soil, which obstinately and in
righteous sort of way wouldn't raise wheat,
and will raise only weeds, because nature
needs what You call weeds or change of
crops for IA time III order to restore to the soil
what it needs 10 raise wheat.
Or. like your uninspired, unimproved, lag
behind the times old dog doctor, who insists
on hanging on to tho blue pill forty horse
power "heroic treatment kill or cure stom-
ach cleansing bowel straining process com.
mon forty years ago, when men and women
thought an energetic cleansing of the dges-
tive apparatus as necessary every spring AZ
their rough and tumble spring house clean
ing-your Old dog doctor who scorns the
mldCr methods of the new schools, which
about every fifteen years gives new names to
old complaints aud administers for the same
ana harmless bread pills with
even better results and also higher charges
per visit provided the bread pill is accom-
panied by a stylish doctors buggy, with a
black boy in buttons to hold the reins while
the doctor with new tricks is prescribing, if
not flirting with the sick lady inside, who
imagines she is sick if there's young and
good looking medicine man within mile of
her house, and who manages to live and en-
dure life by means of his assistance, added to
that of the handsome and recently called
young bachelor minister, who with spiritual
altrrnates with the wheaton ma
terra medica IN keeping her alive.
Sir, these are some new tricks These are
the advantages of learning and practicing
them, and all the new ones are not yet ex-
hausted. There are lots more coming
Prentice milford in San Francisco Chronicle
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