Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1889-03-20

happy homes III the world, and many broren
hearts, and there is a great cry raised
against the causes therefor. A crusade is
even being raised against the giant forces
that comb ine to break up the harmony of
domestic concord, yet the lesser influences
Tor evil are ignored and forgotten. 1t is "a
though we armed ourselves to go out and
shoot elephants in a country where rabbits
were devastating the crops, or fitted ont a
Meet to catch whales in fresh-water pond
full OF eels and catfish. Intemperance. and
unfalthfulness, and all the greater causes
OF sorrow in the worlds homes have ALWAYS
plenty OF armed and steadfast opposers and
Toes, but the little hidden foxes that spoil
the vines run to and fro without molesta-
ton.
IL takes as much heroism often to sit
down and endure for half-hour the electric
buzz-saw of a modern dentist as it takes IN
march to battle behind drum and a fac.
but who ever wrote poem to the hero or
heroine of the dentists chair! 1t takes
more Christian grace to live in the same
mouse with sarcastic tongue than to wear
halr-cloth shirt and do ante-sunrise pen-
ance, and yet who stops to say word of
comfort TO the saint Injured to domestic tor
ment, or learn lesson from her sublime
going to be those who march up by and bv
and show saber cuts on the body who will
be called heroes, but those who display
scars made in the heart that were silently
endured, who will wear the laurel and the
bay. We all pride ourselves on the Ell.
quette that teaches US to be gentlemen and
ladies' IN the drawing-room or in public
places, but when some of us have learned
the etiquette that teaches US to be more
genlemanly and ladyIike as fathers and
mothers, sisters and brothers, parents and
children, we shall have learned new code.
The man is a coward who is civil only
where he dare not be otherwise, but be-
comes a bully behind the closed doors of
his home. What we need is less manner
ism for show, aud more courtesy at home.
You would never dare to speak to lady in
society, sir, as you speak TO your wife and
daughter, and say you are the worst sort
OF cad when you take tone with the de-
fenseie3s ones ut home you would not dare
assume to a stranger.
All pontenesS that is put on merely for
show is like the stain the cabinet-maker
puts on pine board politeuess that
amounts to- any thing is in the grain OF
the wood, not an external application We
make a terrible fuss when our growing
children put a dinner knife to their Inns.
yet say nothing when they poster and
harass one another with mean and sarcas-
tic speeches until good nature flies out the
window aud evil temper stalks in at the
door.
l will take my chance any day to live
with the person who commits the soiecism
of putting his knife in his mouth rather
than with the person who deals in anger
provoking speech and inuendo.
You take it greatly to heart when the
slugs get into the roses and your June
gardens are despoiled of their sweetness
and beauty. And yet there is something
worse that gets into the home, that garden
of delight, when unkind and sarcastic
speech creeps in with its chilling blight. !
have in my minds eye as l write a family
of growing sons and daughters more desc
late than any garden devoured by slugs
or withered by devastating blight. The
father sits over against every thing that is
spontaneous and ardent and earnest with
his cold and clammy ridicule; the older
boys emulate their father, and the girls are
ashamed to be fresh and natural and enthu-
siastic, as they were meant to be, for fear
of evoking laughter and contempt. In the
midst sits the mother, a dear little fright
ened morsel of woman, full of poetic fan
cies and immortal enthusiasms stuffed and
confined like SO many infant Moseses IN bull
rush baskets, with Herod stalking up and
down the bank.
If you must murder love, then, in the
heart and home, wherein YOU ought to
glorify and crown it, l pray you go out and
get drunk, or rob bank, or Skip to Canada
with defaulter's grip-sack; any thing, so
that the deed is done quickly and poor inno-
cent love be not long time dying, like a
victim on the rack.