The Forrest City times., 1892-04-29

lence? A marked consequence of this vice is physical disease The healthi- ness of the whole natural world de- pends upon activity. The winds, tossed and driven in endless circuits. scattering the ,mists from the mount aims and scooping out death damps from the caves and blasting the miasma of swamps and hurling back the fetid atmosphere of great cities, are healthy. just because of their swiftness and un- controllableness of sweep. But, after a while, the wind falls and the hot sun pours through it, and when the leaves are still and the grain fields 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 un- yoked oxen come at even-tide to cool. Healthy waterl Bright waterl 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 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 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 shower, not one minnow glancing in the sea, not one quail whistling from the grass, not one hawk caw- ing in the sky, but is busy now and is busy always, fulfilling it's mission as certainly as any monarch on earth or any angel in heaven. You hear the shout of the blow boys busy in the field and the rattle of the whiifle- 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 a lump of riven sod you may hear nothing in the roots and spicul@ of grass, but there are at work spades and cleavers and pile drivers and bnttering rams and in- ternecine wars. do not wonder that the lively fancy of the ancients saw in the inanimate creation around Floras, 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 God s 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 Saint S 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-intellectu morally and physically-onlyu upon the condition of an active industry. I know men die every day of over-work. They droop down in coal pits and among the spin dles 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 k-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 allopathy and homeopathy and hy- 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 gout for the feet and what curvature for the spine and what strictures 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. The laws of nature will not stop their action because men may be ignorant 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 em ployment where their hands may bt soiled, forgetting that a laborer's over alls are just as honorable as a priest: robes and an anvil is just as respectable as pulpit. Health flies from the bed 1 of down and says: "I cannot sleeI here;' and from the table spread witt
 ptarmigan and epicuriean viands, say l ing: II cannot eat here;" and from tho vehicle of soft cushions and easy springs, saying; '1 cannot ride here;'
 and from houses luxuriously warmed and upholstered, saying: 'I cannot live
 here;" and some day you meet Health
 who declined all these luxuriant places
 walking in the blows furrow or swell
 tering beside the missing forge or spin