The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1892-09-14
P'INTS FROM PINEToP.


The ant.
T sat lin my brown study and
watched an ant-a little guileless, in
nocent ant-and I thought of the slug
gard.
How busy the ant. See her toiling
aud spinning along on the big earth.
A few feet of ground must be a whole
| township to her, but she doesn't seem
to weary in her journey as she picks
up q crumb and carries it to her home.
Oh, industrious little ante. Solo
mon was indeed wise when he pointed
you cut to the miserable sluggard.
We have some sluggards in Newber-
ry to-day-fit representatives of the
unfit sluggards of old-men who idle
away the golden hours Of the day,
while their wives and daughters aud
sisters, yea, even their mothers some
times, labor, hard and YEARLY, for the
bread that sustains them; loafng and
drinking and thinking of nothing but
ease, ''sitting in the lurking places OF
the Villages" while the poor women
are suffering in their daily work.
It is said that man was made little
lower than the angels; the sluggard
must have been made much lower
than the beasts.
About the most contemplate specta-
Gle on earth is an able-bodied man al
lowing woman to support him.
Did I say man? No, he is no man;
he is less than human.
If"man's inhumanity to man makes
countless thousands mourn" what can
not be said of the sluggard's inhuman-
ity to woman?
I like to sit and watch the ant. I
can sympathise with her as she butts
against rock-a stone wall to her
with her big load Of provisions and
has to go so far out of her way to get
around it, o7ercoming the obstacles of
difficulty; like the higher order of be-
ing-an honest man; not the so-called
superior man who lives by credit and
never intends to pay his debts, and
who would be nothing if it were not
for the money which belongs to others
but the true man, the struggling,
working man, who lis a msn for all
that" whose honesty in some cases
keeps him poor; the man whose chief
desire is to some day pay to the last
cent the every dollar that he owes,
who feels humiliated by debt, and
who hungers in honest adversely while
often lower men feast in dishonest
prosperity.
Nothing funny about that.
So, wherever and whenever I see the
little insect which furnishes my text
this week, think of the toiling masses
Of humanity, and Solomon's words
seem so full of meaning, so sensible
and so appropriate, when I hear them
as they are spoken: ..
$50 to the ant, thou sluggard; con-
slider her ways, and be wise"
It used to be that man was not
considered success in this life unless
be had accumulated wealth; but it is
different now.
Public sentiment has undergone a
great change in that, as we'll as in
many ether respects; and it is well
that it is so.
A poor man and a house full of chill
dren can't get rich these days with
cotton at six and a half cents.
But he can be an honest man; a man
whose word is as good as any mans
bond.
And time was also when man
wasn't much in the world if he could
not boast of great-great-grandfather
who had fought in some war away
back yonder, or of a paternal great
grandmother whose great maternal
and eternal and very often internal
gran dfather had accepted an invitation
to dine once in some castle or other
of az .iquity, but
1t is all changed now; people have
come to their senses. .... =
Stern necessity has brought to the
front live reality, and
The blue blood that now tells is the
red blood that flows through the veins
of an honest man.
His rent, and wood bills, and mis-
fortunes, may for time cause his in
ability to pay some other bills and
show himself square to hose who may
doubt his integrity, but he has the con-
sciousness of feeling that
Something has come over the spirit
Of the worlds dreams, and the test
now is:
"Act we'll your part, there all the
honor lies"
In regard to poverty versus wealth,
were I to say II care not for riches,
neither silver nor gold," it would no
doubt be a slight exaggeration; but
the prayer, "Give me neither poverty
nor riches," could be considered as sim
eere, in view of the inconvenience Of
J poverty and the statement that
It is harder for rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven than for q
simple camel, without the p and the
bell, to go through the eye Off
NEEDLE.