Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-02-18
MAKING ONESELF MISERABLE.
A PerusaI of Certain Kind of Literature
VIII Surely Do 1t.

MAKING ONESELF MISERABLE.
A Perusal of Certain Kind of Literature
VIII Surely Do 1t.
'Why on earth do you read such
boolks?" said sensible man, a few
evenings ago, to woman of highly
sensitive and suffering organization,
| who had just been through the thou
sand pages of Stanley's SIN Darkest
Africa" "Such books are simply poison
to you. You ought never to read line
of them" ''What!" she answered, do
you think should be justified in keep
ing ignorant of the misery and degrade
ton of millions of my fellow creatures?"
"Yes, was his answer; 1.-The more ignor-
ant of such things persons like you keep
themselves, the surer their chance of
being sunny and helpful influences in
the world. The record of these horrors
simply paralyzes you. 1t works on
your sympathetic imagination till the
whole head is sick or the whole heart
is faint. At night you lie down and in
the morning you get up in darkest
Africa yourself. Had you spent your
time in reading something beautiful
and cheering you would have been
healthier, happier and hundred times
more useful to your husband, your
children and to society"
In the especial case in hand the man
was right, and the case stands for
thousands OF like ones. Overwrought
sensibility to the suffering side of life,
and the gloomy spell this exerts over
the imagination, is an actual disease of
hn l.
whose constant aim in life ought to be
to get away from the contemplation of
distressing objects, and who should
take as much pains as the florist with
his roses to expand the broadcast posi-
BILE expanse of clear glass to the rays of
the sun. Without sunshine and plenty
OF 1t, they can never thrive. Just as
some plants can flourish under the
denseSt shade, while others mildew be-
meath it, so is it with different organ
izations. Here lies the perpetual and
often cruel mistake that moralists, re-
formers and religious teachers are ex-
posed to. Natures on which too close
contact with misery produces an over
weight of passive torture are constantly
goaded on to the belief that they are
selfish and heartless unless they plunge
deeper and deeper into its abysses. An
Emerson who feels that the one right
thing for him is to take the sundials
motto: "Horas non numero nisi sere-
mas" Il mark no hours but the sunny
ones), is set down by thousands as a
kind of Sybarite. There are not
this world. He ought to stop
| ND IL, - L
heartsick to write any thing to cheer
and bless his fellows. Carlyle, on the
contrary, never suffered one of these to
escape his eye, though meanwhile the
birds were singing, the lambs skipping
and the grain fields dancing. 1t often
made him downright mad that Emer-
son would turn to the light when there
was so much especially provided to
make him thoroughly miserable.
There are few enough persons in the
world to attend to the sunshine depart
ment of it. For Heavens sake, let them
be economical and 'protracted" Do
not send them to darkest Africa, and
tell them they will never truly love
and serve their race till they contract
Jungle fever there and are too weak and
| wretched to hold up their heads and
smile. Plenty of alligator natures are
there to which such swamp environ
ment merely imparts a pleasing stimu-
| lus. If the best any one can do is to be
tearose or a heliotrope, then let him
| open out to the sun and fulfill that mis-
sion. Some of the most concentrated
workers in the worst haunts of mis-
cry, as notably Octavia Hill, in Lon
| 01o4 +o1- L.,
position. To many and many an over
sensitive nature, anxious to work with
her, she has said: ''You are not fitted
| for this; it is bad for you; it utterly I'M
Ats you for the real sphere in which
you were meant to live and be bless
Ing" There are purely domestic nat
ures, natures purely social or artistic or
mechanical, which to cut off from the
class of objects which cheer and inspire
| them, is to doom to misery and barren
ness. Such natures ought to be en-
couraged to take their resolute stand
and say: MY first duty to what 1 am
fitted for is to live in the sun. 1 have
made full trial of darkest Africa's
railway accidents, murder cases and
the whole catalogue of horrors. They
merely distress my mind and under
mine my health. Now, whether Isaac
B. Sawtelle killed his brother Hiram,
or not, shall leave to the court to de-
eide. / will not read the evidence
that's fiat. The same time spent on
some inspiring or instructive book will
make me a happier, wiser and better
man, and of more real use to the world,
all of which is said in clearest recegni-
ton of the fact that there are others to
whom such reading is necessary and
useful. "-Boston Herald