The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1888-04-11
BURDETTE ON HOW TO LIVE.
THE HuMoRIsT WAKES ELOQUENT
The Wisdom of Winding Your Own Business.
The Way of the Transgressor is Hard.
"A Gloomy FOreboding.-Child-
hoods Happy Hours, etc.
fcopYrirhted. 1sss. !

To-day! We stand on the threshold.
We stand there! Waiting To be asked
in. Life! Is river! We meet it boldly.
Hope, courage, and high purpose thrill
our hearts! We cannot tear aside the
veil that hides the future from our view.
The future! Is before us. The past! Is
behind us. The present, however, stays
right by US. We do not fear it. We press
bravely on. Onward and upward! The
hourstrikes the noontide OF the world.
With resolute hands We grasp the shadows
on the dial. Behind us is the school. A
long ways behind us the most OF it. Be-
lore us lies the world. We accept
it. Grave are the responsibilities
10 the trust; especially the trust
fund. But we accept them. Life long will
be the labor of reform. We have put our
hands to the plough, and we will never
look back until We get to Canada, whence we
may look back in safety, and become lions
and ornaments in Canadian society. As
the years roll on, which they will prob
ably do, we will never forget our alma
mater, but we will shake things up on the
street ourselves, and il there is any re-
hypothecating to be done, inquire within.
Hoe tempore, the world is in bad form.
Vice rules the world. Bonos yirOs take
back seats in the convention. Lupus sits
IN the high places and judges the people
in the gates, while alcuS ekes out pre-
carious existence in the wool business.
Our rulers wallow in vice. The temples
OF commerce are dens of thieves. Mis-
trust, guilt and suspicious stalk
through the land, nudus membra.
All this has come to pass while
We were ut college. Lifel is an ocean,
Let us, then, cleanse its Augean stables OF
this blighting leprosy, and beard this hon
III the bud, and, in the gathering gloom
which marks the footprints OF decay,
throttle it in its cradle, ere yet its black
wings shall strike its fangs deep into the
soil of American freedom and with a
Judas kiss betray our fondest hopes and
brightest dreams into the sand-swept
waste OF this sirocco-stricken maelstorm
that yawns at our feet, waiting for some
self-sacrificing Curtius to lay the axe at
the root of this deadly Upas-tree that
shadows all the land with the lurid light
of its basilisk eve, which, siren-like,
charms with its delusive song, only to
chill into pulseless stone with the Gorgon
horror OF its icy blast!
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
"Diligent in his businessp 1t is the
man who is diligent in his own business
to whom this exalted position is promised.
There are people, dearly beloved, who are
diligent in everybody else's business, and
have, therefore, no time TO attend to their
own. They do not stand before kings;
they more frequently stand before the
police Judge. Their diligence is not COM
mendable. 4 workman is known by his
chips; so, alas! is the faro banker. Do
yQu be diligent in your own business and
be content with its rewards. You may not
walk so many miles in six DAYS
as Fitzgerald, but you can sleep great
deal more in that time; and if YOU do
not get so much money for il. neither do
you get so many blisters. On your little
salary at the suspender counter, YOU can
not clean up 100000 on Wall-st this
week. But then neither can YOU be
cleaned out OF $4,000 next week. You
may not be able to set the fashions in
male attire, but you can fill your soul with
nameless Joy and an endless exaltation OF
celestial birth, and climb to the top of
high Olympus and lean back and pile
your feet on the sofa, and make yourself
easy with the immortal gods, by paving
your landlady every Saturday and keep
ing even with your tailor. You may
never be Washington correspondent OF
a society paper, but then your
hair won't turn white in the agonized
effort to explain what it is about
Il senator's wife, who has red hair
freckles, no upper teeth, a hair wart on
her nose, and twang in her shrill voice,
that makes her so bewitchingly beautiful
and universally admired" just be dill
gent in your own business, and wait in
patience for the reward of your diligence
1t NAV be little slow in coming. The
mills of the gods grind slowly, so does a
hand organ on the Last Rose OF Sum
mer" stop, but it always gets there. And
don't pay more for the reward than the
reward is worth. A man who lives on
twenty-nine cents day will be apt to die
wealthy, but he won't die very fat Ii is
the liberal soul that shall be made fat
THE WAY or THE TRASsG REsSoR is HARD.
My son, you say il is $50 hard to be
goodp' You say it is easier to break all
of the Ten Commandments than to keep
one of them. Well, you mistake. 1t
isn't hard TO be good. 1t is hard to be
bad. All, yes, my boy, it's hard to be
bad. Not right at the time? oh, no. The
wine is sparkling, the songs are stirring,
the stories are brinning with humor, and
the air is full OF laughter. You are just
as bad as YOU know how to be, and it is
lots OF fun TO he bad, and you never want
TO be good-oh, yes, it seems to be very
easy and very delightful to be bad at night.
But the next morning, my boy? Where
is the difficulty then? Who feels serious
in the morning? Whose head can't he
covered with a tub? Who is afraid and
ashamed to 90 ont on the street and meet
people! Who wants TO hide? Who won
ders where he was last night, and whom
he met, and who saw him, and what he
said and where he went, and how he did?
Not the boy who went to the sociable and
ate cast-iron pound-cake and washed it
down with faded lemonade. Not the
young man who passed the evening in the
company of the goody, goody at the debat-
ing society. All, no! He didn't hear the
rollicling songs that you heard, my boy,
and he didn't hear the racy stories
that ''broke you all up" But he is
feeling much better than You are
this morning. He finds it easy 10 be
good" very easy indeed. But to be bad,
to have the headache, to have sour re-
belliOus stomach, to have uncertain eyes.
to have a treacherous memory, to have
sense of shame, to have dread OF sun
shine and horror of daylight, to have q
set OF quivering nerves and a faltering
speech, to have raging thirst that water
cannot appease and a gnawing hunger that
loathes food, to have a dread of meeting
your own mother, my boy, and fear OF
seeing your sister, and a shame of speak