Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1890-03-13

imaginable would be second journey
of life. IL is amusing to hear people
say: would like to live my life over
agsin, il ! could take nv present ex-
perience snd knowledge of things back
with me and begin under those i'm
proved auspices. Why, what an unin-
teresting boy you would be with your
present attainments in a child's mind.
No one would want such q boy around
the house: A philosopher at twenty,
q scientist at fifteen, an arch@oloRist
at ten, and q domestic nuisance all the
time. An oak crowded into an acorn,
A Rocky Mountain eagle thrust back
into the egg shell from whick 1t was
haSched.
Beside that, If you took life over
again, you would have to take its deep
sadnesses over again. Would you want
to try again the griefs and the heart
breaks and the bereavements through
which you have gone? What mercy
that we shall never be called to suffer
them againl 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 life again or your child again? II
you were permittedto stop at the sixtieth
milestone or the fiftieth milestone or
the fortieth milestone and retrace your
steps to the twentieth, your experience
would be something like mine one day
last November in Italy. I walked
through a great city with friend and
two guides, and there were in all the
city only four persons and 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-
quisite mosaic on the floor. In the
streets were the deep worn ruts Of
wagons, but not wagon in the city.
On the front steps of mansions the
word Welcome" in Latin, but no
human being to greet us. The only
bodies of any of the citizens that we
saw were petrifed and in the museum at
the gates. OF the thirty five thousand
people who once lived in those homes
and worshiped in those temples and
clapped in those theaters, not one left;
For eighteen hundred years that city OF
Pompeii lad been buried before mod
ern exploration scooped out of it the
lava of Vesuyius. 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 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 our Pempeian visit in No
vember.
Beside that, would you want to risk
the temptations of life over again?
From the fact that you are here 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-
secrnted as would like to have had it,
! would not wont to try il over again,
lest next time would do worse. Why,
just look ut the temptations we have all
passed through and just look at thet
mulsitudes 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, or the operatives in the
same factory with just as good prospects
as you, who have come to complete mis-
hap. Some young man that told you
that he was going to be O millionaire
and own the fastest trotters on West
chester turnpike and retire by the time
he was 35 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 Scents 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 so transcendently
fair and popular. But while you have
these two honorable and queenly names
of wife and another, she became poor
waif of the street, and went into the
blackness OF darkness forever. Live
life over again? Why, if many of those
who are now respectable were permitted
to experiment, the next journey would
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: Il know him now bet
ter than did before. and have for fifty
wears been studying his weakness, and /
will weave a stronger web of circum-
Satan would concenter his forces on this
one man, and the last state of that man
would be worse than the first. MY
rectiona Better go forward than back
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 smooth Luzerne or
Cayuga Lake, would like to get into q
yacht and sail over it, not once, but
twice yea, thousand times. But life
is an uncertain sea. and some of the
ships crash on the icebergs of cold in
difference, and some take fire of evil
passion, and some lose their bearings
and run into the skerries, and some are
never heard of. Surely on such a
treacherous sea as that one voyage is
enough.
Besides all this, do you know If you
could have your wish and live life over
again il 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-
loved ones. You are now, let
us say, twenty years or ten years or one
year of 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 of time Of reunioEl It.would be
as though you were going to San Fran
cisco to great banquet and you got to
Oakland, four or Ave miles this side of
it, and then came back to Hoboken on
Harlem to get better start; as though
You were going TO England to be-