Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1892-04-28
pours Through It, and when the leaves

bend not once all day long,
then pestilence smites its victims and
digs trenches for the dead. The fount-
ain, born far up in the wild wood OF
the mountain, comes down brighter
for every obstacle against which it is
riven and singing new song on every
shelf of rock over which it bounds, till
it rolls over the water wheels in the
valley, not ashamed to grind corn, and
runs through the long grass of the
meadow, where the willows reach
down to dip their branches and the I'M
yolSed oxen come at even-tide to cool.
Healthy water! Bright water! Happy
water! While some stream, too lazy
any more to run, gathers itself into
a wayside pool, where the swine wal
low and filthy insects hop over the sur
face and reptiles crawl among the ooze,
and frogs utter their hideous croak,
and by day and night there rises from
the foul miro and green scum fever and
plague and death. There is an endless
activity under foot and overhead. Not
one four-o'clocls in the flower bed, not
one fly on the window pane, not one
squirrel gathering food from the cones
of the white pine, not one rabbit feed
ing on clover-tops, not one drop falling
in a shower, not one minnow CHANGING
in the sea, not one quail whistling
from the grass, not one hawk cav
ing in the sky, but is busy
now and is busy always, fulfilling its
mission as certainly as any monarch on
earth or any angel in heaven. You
hear the shout of the plowb Boys busy in
the field and the rattle of the whiffle-
trees on the harrow, but you do not
know that there is more industry in the
earth upturned and in the dumb vege-
tation under foot than in all that you
see. If you put your ear to lump of
riven sod You may hear nothing in the
roots and spiculB of grass, but there
are at work spades and cleavers and
pile drivers and battering rams and in
the lively fancy of the ancients saw in
the inanimate creation around Eloras,
and Pomonas, and Graces, and Fauns,
and Fairies, and Satyis, and
Nymphs. Everything is busy. Nothing
is inanimate, except the man who can
not see the life and hear the music. At
the creation the morning stars sang to-
gether, but they were only the choir
which was to lead all the stars and all
the mountains and all the seas in Gods
worship. All natural objects seem
at one and the same time uniting in
work and JOY and worship. In Gods
creation there is no pause in either the
worship or the work or the joy. Amid
all natural objects at one and the same
time it is Hallow Fen and Whit Sun
day and Ash Wednesday and All Saints
Day. All the healthy beauty of that
which we see and hear in the natural
world is dependent upon activity
and unrest Men will be
healthy-intellectua morally and
physically-only upon the condition of
an active industry. | know men die
every day of over-worh. They droop
down in coal pits and among the spin
dies of Northern factories and on the
cotton plantations of the South. In
every city and town and village you
find men grooming under burdens, as,
in the East, the camels stagger under
their loads between Aleppo and Da-
mascus. Dife is crushed out every day
at counters and work benches and an
wills. But, there are other multi
tudes who die from mere inertia.
Indulgences every day are contracting
diseases beyond the catholicon
of alIopathy and homeopathy and n.y.
dropathy and eclecticism. Rather than
work they rush upon lancets and seal
pels. Nature has provided for those
who violate her laws by inactivity,
what rheum for the eyes and what
govt for the feet and what curvature for
the spine and what structures for the
chest and what tubercles for the lungs
and what rhumatisms for the muscles
and what neuralgias for the nerves.
Nature in time arraigns every such
culprit at her bar, and presents against
him an indictment of one hundred
counts, and convicts him on each one
of them.
There are many who estimate the
responsibility of an occupation by the
little exertion it demands, and would
not have their children enter any en-
ployment where their hands may be
soiled, forgetting that laborers over
alls are just as honorable as a priests
robes and an anvil is just as respectable
as pulpit. Health flies from the bed
of down and says: 81 cannot sleer
here" and from the table spread with
ptarmigan and epicuriean viands, say
! ing: II cannot eat here" and from the
vehicle of soft cushions and easy
springs, saying; 81 cannot ride here;'
and from houses luxuriously warmed
and upholstered, saying: Il cannot live
here" and some day you meet Health
who declined all these luxuriant places
walking in the plows furrow or swell
tering beside the kissing forge or spin
ming among the looms or driving Z
dray or timing a roof or carrying hod'
of brick up the ladder of wall.