The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-05-06

then peStllence snites 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
driven 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 unyoked oxen come at even-tide to
cool. Healthy water. Bright waterl
Happy waterl 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 mire and green scum fever and
plague and death. There is an endless
activity under foot and overhead Not
one four o'clock in the flower bed, not
not one fly on the window pane, not
one squirrel gathering food from the
feeding on clover tops, not one
drop falling in shower. not one min
now CHANGING in the sea, not one quail
whistling from the grass. not one
hawk cawing 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 plow boys busy in
the field and the rattle of the while
trees on the harrow, but you do not
know that there is more industry in the
earth upturned and in the dumb vereta-
ton under foot than in all that YOU see.
If You put your ear to a lump of riven
sod yoI may hear nothing in the roots
and spiculae of grass. but there at work
spades and cleavers and pile drivers and
battering rams and internecine wars.
l 10 not wonder that the lively fancy of
the ancien.s saw in the inaniInate crea-
ton around Floras, and Pomonas, and
G-aces, and Fauns, and Fairies, and
Satyrs. and Nymphs-
Everything is busy. Nothing is mani
mate except the man who cannot see
the life and hear the music At the
creation the morning stars sang to-
gether, but they were only the choir
which were 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
of 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 cen and Whit Sunday and Ash
Wednesday and All Saints day. All
the healthy beauty of that which we
see and hear in the natural world is de-
pendent upon activity and I'M
rest. Men will be healthy-in-
tellectually, morally and physically
only upon the condition of an
active industry. 1 know men die every
day of overwork. They droop down in
coal pits and among the spindles of
northern factories and on the cotton
plantations of the south In every city
and town and village you will find men
groaning under burdens, as. in the east,
camels stagger under their loads be
tween Aleppo and Damascus. Life is
crushed out every day at counters and
work benches and anvils. But there
are other multitudes who die from mere
inertia. Indulgences every day are
diseases beyond the cathol-
icon of allopathy and homeopathy
and hydropathy and eclecticism. Rather
than work they rush upon lancets and
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 rheumatisms for the muscles and
what neuralgias for the nerves. Nature
in time arraigns every such culprit at
her bar and presents against him an in
dictment OF one hundred counts, and
convicts him on each one of them
There are many who estimate the re-
specta bility Of an occupation by the lit
tie exertion it demands, and who would
not have their children enter any en-
ployment where their hands may be
soiled. forgetting that laborer's over
alls are just as honorable as a priests
robes and an anvil is just as respecta bic
as pulpit. Health flies from the bed
of down and says: Il cannot sleep
here" and from the table spread
with ptarlnigan and eipicurean viands,
saying: y cannot eat here" and
from the vehicle of soft cushions and
easy springs. saying: Il cannot ride
here" and from houses luxuriously
warmed and upholstered, saying: Il can
not live here;;" and some day you meet
health, who declined all these luxuriant
places, walking in the plow's furrow or
sweltering beside the kissing forge or
spinning among the looms or driving
dray or timing roof or carrying hods !
of brick up the ladder of wall.