Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-03-21

fifty. The most inane and stupid thing
imaginable would be y second iourney
of life. 1t is amusing to hear peonIe
say: Il would like to live nv life oyer
again, if I could take nv present eS-
p%erlence and knowledge of things back
with me me begin under those i'm
proved auspices" Why, what an unin-
terestlng boy you would be with your
present attalnments in q child's mind.
No M would van such q bow around
the mouse: A philosopher at twenty,
o scieh'Ast at nfteen, an archmologist
at ten q domestic nuisance all the
m An oak crowded into an acorn.
A Rocky Mountain eagle thrust hack
into the egg she'll from which il vas
Matched. q
Beside that, if you took life over
again, you would have to take it's deep
sadnesses over again. Would YOU wan
to try again the griefs and the heart
breaks and the be~reavements through
which you have gone? What a mercy
that we shall never be called to suffer
them again! We may have others bad
enough, but those old ones never again.
Would you want to go through the
process OF losing your father again or
your mother again or your companion
IN LIE again or your child again? II
you were permittedto stop ut 1.-THE sixtieth
milestone or the tiftieth milestone or
the fortieth milestone and r%etrace your
steps to the twentieth, your experience
would be something like mine one day
last November i'll Italy. l walked
through a great city with q friend and
two guides, and there We're in all the
city only -four persons md they were
those OF our own group. We went up
and down the streets, we entered the
houses, the museums, the temples, the
theaters. We examined the wonderful
pictures on the walls and the most ex-
quislte mosaic OF the floor. In the
streets were the deep Worn ruts of
wagons, put not q wagon in the city.
On the front steps of mansions the
human being to greet us. The only
bodies of any Of the citizens that we
saw were petrited and in the museum at
the gates. OF the thirty-tive thousand
people who once lived in those homes
n worshiped in those temples and
clapped In those theaters, not one left.
For eighteen hundred years that city Of
Pompell Lad been buried before mod
ern exploration scooped out of it the
lava of Vesuvius. Well, he who should
be permitted to return on the pathway
of his earthly life and live it over again
would find as lonely and sad q pilgrim
age. 1t would be an exploration of the
dead past. The old school house, the
old church, the old home, the old play
ground either gone or occupied by
others, and for you more depressing
than was Il Pompeian visit in No
vember.
Beside that, would you want to risk
| tho forn imitation nf H. o,o no.;..0
From the fact that you are here I con
clude that though in many respects
your life may have been unfortunate and
unconsecrated you have got on so far
tolerably Well, if nothing more than
tolerable. AS for myself, though my
life mas been far from being as con-
secrated as l would like to have had it,
| would not wont to try il over again,
lest next time l would 10 worse. Why,
just look at the temptations we have all
passed through and just look at the
m%ulIitudes who have gone completely
under. just call over the roll of your
school mates and college mates, the
clerks who were with you in the same
store or bank, OF the operatives in the
same factory with just rs goodprospects
hap. Some young man that told you
sA"e ~ "sS SSAh5 ~ W q
and own the fastest trotters on West
chester turnpike and retire by the time
he was 80 years of age, you do not hear
from for many years, and know nothing
about him until some day he comes into
your store and asks for 5-cents to get q
mug of beer. You, the good mother of
a household and all your children rising
up to call you blessed, can remember
when you were quite Jealous of the belle
of the village who was sotranscendently
fair and popular. But while you have
these two honorable and queenly am
of wife and mother, she became Il poor
waif of the street. INC went into the
%blackness OF darkness forever. Live
life over again? Why, if many of those
who are now respectable We're permitted
be demolition. You go through, as Job
says, by the skin of the teeth. Next
time you might not get through at all.
Satan wouldisay: II know him now bet
ter than did before. and have for fifty
wears been studying his weakness, and L
will weave q stronger web of circum-
stances to catch him next time" And
Satan would concenterhi his forces on this
one man, and the last state Of that man
would be worse than the first. My
friends, our faces are in the right di-
fectlOn. Better go torWard than Dack-
ward, even if We had the choice. The
greatest disaster | can think of would be
for you to return to boyhood in 1890.
Oh, if life were q smooth Luzerne or
Cayuga Lake, l would like to get into a
yacht and sail over it, not once, but
twice-yea, q thousand times. But life
is an uncertain sen, and some of the
ships crash on the icebergs of cold in
difference, mud some take fire of evil
passion, and some lose their bearings
and run into the skerries, and some are
never heard of. Surely OF such a
treacherous sea as that IL voyage is
enough.
Besides all this, do you know if you
could have your wish and live life over
again it would put you SO much further
from reunion with your friends in
Heaven? If you are in the noon of life
or the evening of life you are not very
far from the golden gate at which you
are to meet your transported and en-
paradised loved ones. You are now, let
US say, twenty years or ten years or n
year off from celestial conjunction.
Now suppose you went back in YOUR
earthly life thirty years or forty years
or fifty years, and what awful postpone
ment IF TINA of raurioul IT WOuld he