The record-union., 1896-12-13
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
By MEMO.
0C,opyrighfed)

| (COpyrlgnteQl
| (TheSe ''Thoughts'' by a layman reach
quarter of million homes, scattered in
| every State of the Union. In this county
| they can be found in the columns of this
| paper only, as we have made arrange
| ments with the author for their exclusive
| appearance)
| Each individual male reader will have
TO judge of the justice of the follow
ing attack upon our sex. 1t is the
expression of a worlan'S opinion. The
very eagerneSs of a man for his meals
shows him to be the inferior animal.
Keep him hungry when he reaches
! home and there is neither peace for
| God nor woman, for he finds fault with
| both To make a man docile and
| tractable you must treat him like a
snake, gorge him. This may be brill
| liant, but 1t is too severe, particularly
as woman from the story of Eden on
ward has not shown great skill in man
| aging snakes; and possibly not much
| more in managing men. The woman,
| to whom man is nothing more than
a thing TO be petted and pampered with
| this and that qualification, will find her
THEORY strongly confirmed by the ami
| maj Within him But the woman who
believes in other, grander posi- bilties
in man will find them there, because
she expects and demands them Men
are, after all, but plastic clay, and take
| ON readily the forms into which the
gentle hands of woman molds them
This also has been shown from the
story of Eden onward At least that
| is what Memo thinks
l Inv
| learning from others If we each were
held down to the knowledge we could
acquire by personal travel and investf-
| cation the amount We did not know
would be even more monumental than
1t now is. But beware, you omnivor-
Gus learners, of acquiring ideas and
| then having them remain unasSimi-
| lated, like the food on an overloaded
stomach. AS 10 learning, l would say,
| be in a skeptical frame of mind; re-
| ject the things that you prove TO be
| untrue; read, mark, learn, and inward
| ly digest all the truths that you prove
and approve, or that reach you from
reliable sources, and let them become
part of you; just as the steak you eat
and assimilate is no longer steak, but
| has become part Of you, your blood,
your brain, your power.
To be sincere in this advice as to skep-
| ticism, l should have to warn you
| against accepting statements just be-
cause they are in print; alas, this would
| include even these Thoughts" For
them l ask no hearing, no reception ex-
oept where they interpret some little
particle Of the great universe of Truth,
| divine and human, in which we live,
and of which we permit ourselves to
| partake, some more and some less, as we
| journey.
1t is quite the regular thing to find
fault with the weather forecasts issued
| from Washington and local bureaus
| surely because we expect too great
prescience from fallible men. When we
remember that observations in the up
| per strata of air are still practically un-
attainable, and yet that those high re-
| gions are liable to exert sudden inf1u-
| ence upon the lower strata, from whose
conditions the forecast has been calcu-
lated, then we shall be ready to concede
ehat the bureau does great things BY
means Of its work the average farmer
| or coastWise mariner can gain knowl-
! edge at given moment of general con-
| o1t1ons in the most remote regions, as
| well as in his own immediate neighbor.
| mood 1t works entirely in the line with
the cooperative instinct that thrills our
| age; the feeblest aided and advised by
trained experts. OF course, crops still
suffer from violent storms and ships are
wrecked. The farmer cannot go and
uproot his crops just because a cyclone
| is coming. But more than once in every
year each farmer and seaman is greatly
aided by his knowledge of the probable
tiles of twentyfour hours, and thereby
are dollars and lives most freely saved.
The fateful moment of the sea son is
naturally different for every locality, so
that each hour throughout the year
some one gains immense benefit from
his forewarned condition.
y
A really brave deed always arouses
enthusiasm; and not all brave deeds call
tor blood. With the hoarse pulsation of
the drum in his ear the rattle of mus
kerry on every side, the frenzy of mar
tial music in his veins, swept onward
by the enthusiasm of shouts and of
numbers, the soldier will glory in throw
ing away his life like flower. But
we are all called to a heroism far tran
scending that, a heroism that keeps us
quietly and unobtrusively working for
national and personal betterment in our
little sphere unknown to the rest of the
world, uncheered by the applause of
men, unaided by the hoarse- -throated
cannon. Let me give publicity to one
such brave deed, at least.
The newspapers from East to West
have contained casual references to the
recent burning of toll-gates by mobs
in Kentucky. Right in the disaffected
region lives the editor of the Vanceburg
Sun" terribly dependent upon his local
patrons as all country editors are. Yet
on his first page he places a notice two
columns wide and surrounded by a bor-
der. Abbreviated, it is as follows:
"The Sun is, has always been, and al
ways will be, so long as the present man.
agement has the say-so in it's columns.
an advocate of the free turnpike sys-
tenn. 1t has carried, and the re-
suit is assured. We now learn that there
is a move on foot among some of the
citizens to supersede the proper course
and to use force in making
them free at once. If force is
to be used in advance of the law we will
take up the cause Of the gates and do
all we can to bring the guilty parties to
justice. We are for Lewis
County, it's people, and their interests
SO long as they abide by the will of JUS
tice, but not otherwise