Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-05-05

NNNAL aAIAA VI A1AA 0NIA MAAAlu ~ 0lAlA.r
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 20
dip their branches, and the unyoked oxen
come at eyentide TO cool. Healthy waterl
Bright waterl Happy waterl While some
stream, too lazy any more TO run, gathers
itself into a wayside pool, where the swine
wallow, 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 ague and
death. There Is an endless activity under
foot and overhead.
Not one four o'clock 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 feeding on
clover tops, not one drop falling in a show
er, not one minnow glancing 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 mis-
sion as certainly as any monarch on earth
or any angel in heaven. You hear the
shout Of the plowboys busy in the field
and the rattle Of the whiffletrees on the
harrow, but you do not know that there is
more industry in the earth upturnvd and
in the dumb vegetation underfoot than in
all that You see.
NATURES CEAsELEss ACTIVITY.
If you put your ear to lump of riven
sod you may hear nothing in the roots and
spicule of grass, but there are at work
spades and cleavers and piledrivers and
4 s.,N. l.
not wonder that the lively fancy of the an
clients saw in the inanimate creation
around Floras and Pomonas and Graces
and Fauns and Fairies and Satyrs and
Nymphs. Everything is busy Nothing
is inanimate, except the man who cannot
see the life and hear the music. At the
creation the morning stars sang together,
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 Halloween 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 unrest. Men
will be healthy-intellectu morally
and physically-only upon the condition of
an active industry. | know men die every
day of overwork. They drop 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 vii
lage you find men groaning under burdens
as, in the east, the camels stagger under
their loads between Aleppo and Damascus.
Life is crushed out every day at counters
and workbenches and anvils. But there
are other multitudes who die from mere
inertia, Indulgences every day are con-
tracing diseases beyond the catholicon of
allopathy and homeopathy and hydropathy
and ececticism. Rather than work they
rush upon lancets and scalpels.
Nature has provided for those who vio-
late her laws by inactivity-what rheum
for the eyes, and what gout for the feet,
and what curvature for the spine, and
what structures for the chest, and what tu-
bercles for the lungs, and what rheuma-
tisms for the muscles, and what neural
gias for the nerves. Nature in time az
raigns every such culprit at her bar, and
presents against him an Indictment of one
hundred counts, and convicts him on each
one of them. The laws of nature will not
stop their action because men may be ig-
norant Of them. Disease, when it comes
to do its work, does not ask whether you
understand hygiene or pathology or ma
terra mediCa
If there were not SO many lies written on
tombstones and in obituaries you would
see what multitudes of the worlds inhab-
itants are slain in their attempts to escape
the necessity of toll. Men cross oceans
and continents, and climb the Alps, and sit
under the sky of Italy or the shadow of
Egyptian Pyramid, and go down into an
cient ruins, and battle at Baden Baden, and
come home with the same shortness of
breath, and The same poor digestion, and
the same twitching of the nerves, when at
home with their own spade they might
have dug health out of the ground or
with their own AK hewn health out of a
log, or with their own scythe garnered
health from the grain field.
There are many who estimate the re-
spectability of an occupation by the little
exertion it demands, and would not have
their children enter any employment where
their hands many be soiled, forgetting that
laborer's overalls are just as honorable
as priests robes and an anvil is just as
respectable as pulpit. Health flies from
the bed of down and says, Il cannot sleep
here;" and from the table spread with
ptarmigan and epicurean viands, saying,
81 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, say
ing, II cannot 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 carry
ing hods of brick up the ladder of wall.
IDLENEss is sATAN's OPPORTUNITY.
Furthermore, notice that Incidence en-
dangers the soul. Satan makes his chief
conquests over men who either have moth
ing to do, or, if they have, refuse to do it.
There is legend that St. Thomas, years
after Christ's resurrection, began again to
doubt, and he went to the Apostles and
told them about his doubts. Each Apostle
looked at him with surprise and then said
he must be excused, for he had no time to
listen any longer. Then st. Thomas went
to the devout women of his time and ex-
pressed his doubts. They said they were
sorry, but they had no time to listen.
Then St. Thomas concluded that it was
because they were so busy that the Apos-
ties and the devout women had no doubts.
Idleness not only leads man into as
sociations which harm his morals, but
often thrusts upon him the worst kind of
skepticism. Loafers are almost always in
fidels, or fast getting to be. Consummate
idlers never read the Bible, and if they ap-
pear in church can be distinguished in an
audience Of thousand by their listless-
ness, for they are too lazy to hear. Tt is