The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1891-02-19

nave II ndrQs Ina0k TOD bndG you art III
| just the best school for making heroes
and heroines. 1t is true both for this
world and the next Rock that baby in
cradle cushioned and canopied; grad
uate him from that into a costly high
chair and give him gold spoon; send
him to school wrapped in furs enough
for an arctic explorer; send him through
college where he will not have to
study in order to get diploma, be-
cause his father is rich; start him in a
profession where he begins with an
Office the floor covered with Administer,
and a library of books in Russian
morocco, and an arm chair upholstered
like throne, and an embroidered otto
man upon which to put his twelve-dol-
lar CATERS, and then lay upon his table
the best ivory cigar holder you can i'm
port from Brussels, and have standing
outside his door prancing span that
won the prize at the horse fair, and
leave him estate enough to make him
independent of all struggle, and what
will become of him? If he do not die
early of inanition or dissipation, he will
live a useless life, and die an unla-
mented death and go into FOOLS eter-
nifty.
But what has been the history of most
of the great cedars in merchandise, in
art, in law, in medicine, in statesman
ship, in Christian usefulness? John,
get up and milk the cows; it's late, it's
$50 in the morning. Split an armful of
wood on your way out, so that we can
build the fires for breakfast. Put your
bare feet on the cold oil-cloth, and break
the ice in your pitcher before you can
wash; it has been showing and drifting
again last night, and we viii have to
break the roads" The boys educa-
tional advantages, a long oak plank
without any back to it, in country school
house, and stove throwing out more
smoke than heat. Pressing on from
one hardship to another. After a
while a position on salary or wages
small enough to keep life, but keep at
its lowest ebb. Starting in occupation
or business with prosperous men trying
to fight you back at every step. But
after a good while fairly on your feet,
and your opportunities widening, and
then by some sudden turn you are tri-
umphant. You are master of the situa-
ton and defiant of all earth and hell.
A Lebanon cedar! John Milton ON his
way up to the throne of the worlds sa-
cred poesy, must sell his copyright of
! Paradise Lost" for seventy-two dollars
in three payments. And William SE2k-
speare, on his way up to be acInowl-
edged the greatest dramatist of all
ages, must hold horses at the door of
the London theater for sixpence, and
Homer must struggle through total
blindness to immortality, and John
Bunyan must cheer himself on the way
up by making flute out of his prison
stool, and Canov;, the sculptor, must
toll on through orphanage, modelling a
| lion in butter before he could cut his stat
uesin marble. And the great Stephenson
must watch cows in the field for few
pennies and then become a stoker, and
afterward mend clocks before he puts
the locomotive on its track and calls
forth plaudits from Parliaments and
medals from Kings. Abel Stevens is
| picked up NEGLECTED child of the street,
and rises through his consecrated genius
to be one of the most illustrious clergy
men and historians of the century. And
Bishop James, of the same church, in
boyhood worked his passage from Ire
land to America, and up to a useful
ness, where, in the Bishopric, he was
second to no one who ever adorned it.
While in Punishment Xenophon wrote
his Anabasis and Thueydides his Ellis
tory of the Peloponnesian War" Victor
Hugo must be exiled for many years to
the Island of Guernsey before he can
come to that height in the affec-
tions of his countrymen, that crowds
| Champs Elysees, and the adjoining
boulevards with one million mourners,
as his hearse rolls down to the Church
of the Madeleine. Oh, it is a tough old
world and it will keep you back and
keep you down, and keep you under as
long as it can. Hail, sons and daugh-
! ters of the fire!
Stand, as the anvil when the stroke of stak-
/ wart men falls fierce and fast.
| Storms but more deeply root the oak whose
brawny arms embrace the blast
| Stand like an anvil; noise and heat are born
i of earth and DIE with time;
/ The Soul, like God, its source and seat, is
solemn, still, serene, sublime
Thirty years from now the foremost
men in all occupations and professions
will be those who are this hour in ay-
full struggle of early life, many of them
without five dollars to their name. So
in spiritual life it takes a course of
bereavements, prosecutions, siclxnesses
and losses to develop stalwart Christian
character. got letter few DAYS
ago saying: Il have hardly seen a well
day since was born, and could not
write my own name until l was fifty
years of age, and am very poor, but /
am, by the grace of God, the hap
piest Toan in Chicago" The Bible
speaks of the SHOWS in Lebanon.
and at this season of the year the
SHOWS there must be tremendous. The
deepest snow ever seen in America
would be insignificant compared with
the mildest winter of SHOWS on these
Lebanon mountains. The cedars catch
that slzyfull of crystals on their brow
and all their long arms. Piled up In
great hefts are those SHOWS enough, -,