Wichita eagle., 1888-02-18
A BROKEN PROVERB.
''YoU CAN'T TEACH AN OLD COO
NEW TRICKS.D

A Writer Disproves the Dictum-"Old
Dogs Who Are Constantly Adding to
Their Stock of knowledge-The Behind
the-Times People.
'You can't teach an old dog new tricks"
That's what you say at the age Of IS or 50,
or So, when you think that the bloom is
about all of 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 we'll, 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 be ashamed to term yourself q
'dog." You are a man, or fragment Of
one, and being man, you are, OF course, but
little lower than an angel, or at least little
lower, we will say, than a 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 OF twenty years,
dating from the time when you thought it
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
young man, although then you had COM
menced to fossilize, as SO many men and wo-
men do whose bodies are IS 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 Gf you insist on calling
yourself SUCH who can learn new tricks.
Gladstone is over 20, and rules England be-
cause he is always learning tricks Bismarck
is over 70, and rules Germany, and today is
learning new tricks. De Lesseps, who bosses
the canalisn of this planet, is over 70, and
never lets up in devices for cutting through
rock OF sand from ocean to ocean. Ericsson
is so, if not over, and is by no means through
with new ways and means for making little
no hot
a wasp may sting an OK nearly 70 death, and
two waSps, or iron scowS, freig lted 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 overweighted with eleven inch iron
armor Beecher, sir, never let up until over
TO- 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 in 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 that 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 so or 60
who look as young and are as young, fresh,
active and vigorous in body and mind. and
even more so, than you were at 40, 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 old
tricks practiced by the old dogs and learned
by these old dogs from dogs still older be-
longing to a generation before you were'con-
tracted 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 farmed that way and thereby left
him as a legacy an over worked, farmed out,
over titled soil, which obstinately and in a
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 time in order to restore to the soil
what it needs to raise wheat.
Or, like your uninspired, unimproved, lag
behind the times old dog doctor, who insists
on hanging on to the blue pill, forty horse
ach cleansing, bowel straining process COM
mon forty years ago, when men and women
thought an energetic cleansing of the diges-
tive apparatus as necessary every spring as
their rough and tumble spring house clean
ing-your old dog doctor who scorns the
milder methods of the new schools, which
about every fifteen years gives new names to
old complaints, and administers for the same
inexpensive and harmless bread pills with
even better results and also higher charges
per visit, provided the bread pill is accom-
panied by stylish doctors buggy, with q
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
consolation alternates 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.
Fancy Umbrella Covers.
Every woman will say that an umbrella
cover is a ''horrid nuisance, if she says
anything about it, and she is very likely
to. Yet it is all but necessity. None
but an expert can roll an umbrella so that
it looks neat without cover, and silk