Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1892-12-22


1T was eleven. We must set oul
clocks on if we would save ourselves
save the world. Better far be toe
early than too late.
Punctuaiity should be a matter OF
conscience, as well as a matter OF
courtesy, The successful men OF
every vocation in life have been they
who were misers of minutes.
Napoleon kept his eye as closely on
time as on the field OF battle. Nelson
said all his success in life was due to
the fact that he had been a quarter
Of an hour before his time. AL men
are seeking the best road to wealth
and every active clock is constantly
pointing out that road. Jane Taylor
made a fable of the clock, which,
looking forward to a years labor,
calculating the number of times 1t
would have to tick in the year, got
discouraged and stopped. But some
of the machinery, a little more con-
siderate, intimated that IL was an
easy task to tick n in a second,
and proposed that the pendulum
should Try it. And SO after the
experiment, all the members con-
cluded that il only one tick was to
be made in a second, they would go
to work and continue faithful
throughout the year, and thus make
up the vast sun Of the years work.
This same is true Of fortunes. Solid
wealth is not the requirement of a
day or a year; it is a collection Of
little items of industry, frugality,
and economy, and he is really rich
who is content with little. All
thinking men to-day are seeking a
solution OF the so called Labor
Problem" and every active clock
points out a very important but
constantly neglected factor in that
desired solution. The poet Hoods
verse uns thus:
A mechanic his labor Will often dlscord,
II the rate OF his pay he dislikes;
But a clock-and Its case is uncommonly
hard,
VIII contine TO work though 1t strikes
Every star is a sun around which
other stars revolve. And yet every
sun is but a star in some larger
system. So man is in himself a
clock, and at the same time is but
the part Of a larger clock. Here is
the unknowable, and there is the
impossible, and man is a pendulum
that swings between the two, always
in procession, " at rest. l want
to know how God can be absolute
sovereign and yet man a free agent;
/ want to know why TINS sorrow was
permitted to come into my life; !
want to know where and what life
eternal is; oil! a thousand things my
soul longs to know but they are all,
at present-unknowable. / want to
help young people to a first class
education; j want to help sickly
people to better climate and water
| want to help the old and poor TO
comfortable homes. l want to help
my friends who have only the brave
necessities Of life to its comforts and
~luxuries; these are the impossible.
All the time | am a restless pendulum
swinging from the unknowable to
the impossible. And so of all Gods
children here on earth.
"Therc remaineth a rest to the
people Of God" In the life to come
we shall know the unknowablc, and
impossible will be of the past, and
we shall rest. Other clocks start
and stop, start and stop, and then
stop forever. But mar is a clock
that was made to start and never TO
stop, to go on, and on, v e touching
higher elements of possibility, and
ending in the glorious liberty Of the
sons of God.
Life itself is a clock. Profession of
a religious life is on hand thereon,
and the practice Of righto isness the
other. When both these hands point
down We are devils; when profession
points up, and practice down, we are
hypocrites, and when both hands
points up we are the consistent
children of God. What is the
position of these hands on your life
clock? At KeRilwOrth Castle, when
Queen Elizabeth visited Lord
Leicester, all the clocks in all the
towers and throughout the Castle
were stopped at the moment of her
arrival, sc continuing to point to
that moment as the one surprising
sleep. Some clocks tell only the hours;
others tell hours and minutes; still
Others tell hours, minutes, seconds,
and also the month and the day of
the month. Men differ from each
other as much as clocks in their abil-
ity to tell little and much to the
world. The famous StraSsburg clock
could tell nearly everything under the
sun. So Lord Bacon took the whole
province of knowledge for his field Of
ascertainment and communication.
Some clocks have handsome cases,
while Others have very hOmely ones
1t often happens that the homIicst
cases have the best works within.
Just so with men. Where were there
any hOmlier men than Abraham Lin
coin, David Swing and Alexander II.
Stevens, and yet their minds and
hearts kept better time with the
great Head and Heart Of the universe
than all the handsome men and
women of earth.
There are clocks private and clocks
public. The old clock in the farmers
kitchen does not envy the town clock,
nor the town clock the farmers
kitchen clock. The men and women
working faithfully in cellars and gar
rets and on frontier settlements ought
not TO envy the statesmen of the ma
ton, nor vice versa. We all have our
work TO Go, and whether in obScurity
or publicity we ought to do with our
might what our hands find to do. 1t
is on record that EllicOtt set n
clock going by the ticks Of another
even when the two clocks were sep
arated by a wall. Lady Huntington
who labOred SO faithfully in the Lords
vineyard with Whiteicld and Wesley
governed her own estate on the prin-
.eiples of Christian integrity, caring
for the sick and moor. and doing all