Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-03-10

J NLliNt an. II NOU WSIC pCIIli1tCCO
! to stop at the sixtieth milestone or the
! fftieth milestone or the fortieth mile
stone and retrace your steps to the
! twentieth, your experience would be
something like mine one day last No
vember IN Italy. | walked through a
greab 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 theatres. We examined the won
derful pictures on the walls and
the most exquisite mosaic on
the floor. In the streets were
the deep worn ruts of wagons, but not
a wagon in the city. On the front
steps of mansions the word ''Wel-
come, in Latin. but no human being
to greet us. The only bodies Of any of
the citizens that we saw were petrified
and in the museum at the gates. OF
the thirtyfve thousand people who
once lived in those homes and wor
SHIPPED in those temples and clapped
In those theatres, not one left! For
eighteen hundred years that city Of
Pompeii had 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
pilgrimage 1t would be an eXplOra-
ton 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 Pompeian
visit in November
Beside that, would you want to risk
the temptations of life over againi
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 has been far from being as con
secrated as [ would like to have had it,
[ would not want to try it over again,
lest next time would do worse. Why,
just look at the temptations we have
all passed through and just look at the
multitudes 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 pros
poets as you, who have come to com
plete mishap. Some young man that
told you that he was going to be a
millionaire and own the fastest trOt
tiers on Westchester turnpike and
retire by the time he was thirty
five years of age, you do not
near from for many years, and know
nothing about him until some day he
comes into your store and asks for five
cents to get a 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 mother, she became poor
Waif Of the street, and went into the
blackness of darkness forever. Live
life over again? Why, if many of
permitted to experiment, the next
journey would be demolition. You
got through, as Job says, by the skin
of the teeth. Next time you might
not get through at all. Satan would
say: Il know him now better than [ did
before, and have for fifty years been
studying his weaknesses, and [ will
weave a stronger web of circumstances
to catch him next time" And Satan
would cOncenter 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-
rectiOn. Better 90 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 q smooth Lu
zerne or Cayuga lake, [ would like to
get into a yacht and sail over it, not
once, but twice-yea, a thousand times.
But life is an uncertain sea, and some
of the ships crash on the icebergs of
cold Indifference, and some take lire of
evil passion, and some lose their bear
ings and run into the skerries, and some
are never heard of. Surely on such a
treacherous sea as that one voyage is
enough.
Beside all this, do you know if you
could have your wish and live life over
again it would put you so much fur
Their from reunion with your friends
in heaven? If you are in the aoon 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
emparadised loved ones. You are now,
let us say, twenty years or ten years
or one year off from celestial cOnjunc-
ton. Now suppose you went back IN
your earthly life thirty years or forty
years or fifty years, what an awful
pOstpOnement of the time of reunion!
1t would be as though you were going
to San Francisco to a great banquet
and you got to Oakland, four or five
miles this side of it, and then came
back to Hoboken or Harlem to get a
better start; as though you were go
ing to England to be crowned and
having come in sight of the noun
tains of Wales you put back to
Sandy Hook in order to make a
better voyage. The further on you get
in life, if a Christian, the nearer
you are to the renewal of broken up
companionship. No; the wheel of
time turns in the right direction, and
it is we'll it turns SO fast. Three hun
year and forward, rather than three
hundred and sixty five revolutions in
a year and backward But hear We
hear ye! while [ tell you how you
may practically live your life over
again and be all the better for it. You
may put into the remaining years of
your life all you have learned of wis
dom in your past life, You may make
the coming ten years worth the preced-
ing forty or fifty years. When a man
says he would like to live his life over
again because he would do so much
better, and yet goes right on living as
he has always lived, do you not see
he stultifes himself? He proves that
if he could go back he would do al
most the same as he has done. If a man
eat green apples some Wednesday in
cholera time and is thrown into fearful
cramps and says on Thursday: Il wish
1 had been more prudent in my diet;
oh, if [ could live Wednesday over
again, " and then on Friday eats apples
just as green, he proves that it would
have been no advantage for him to live
Wednesday over again. And if we,
deploring our past life and with the
idea of Improvement, long for an OPP
portunity to try it over again, yet go
on making the same mistakes and com
hitting the same sins, we only demon
strate that the repetition of our exist
ence would afford no improvement.
Voc orooo,, O,D,N1oe k0ofOuo ri II WON