The record-union., 1896-11-15
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS
By MEMO.
(Copyrighted.)


(Copyrighted.)
(These Thoughts" by a layman, are
read in five hundred thousand homes, scat
tered in every State of the Union. In this
county they will be found week by week
in the columns of this paper only, as we
have made arrangements with the author
for their exclusive publication)
It seems popularity of youth to
envy; to grow dissatisfied because some
other person is apparently better sup
piled with pleasures. Youngsters, this
lis because you are not grown enough
spiritually to understand life. Tell me
if your old people grow morbid at an
others success. They certainly do not,
if they are normal; for the older we
grow the more fully do we realize that
'all is not gold that glitters," and that
there is a seamy side to the most ex-
pensive wordrobe. AS the years roll by
we learn to look at things from others
points of view, instead of looking from
within outward and judging things
good or ill just according to whether
we feel happy or depressed. A faint rec
objection comes to me of a metaphor
that is admirably suited to us young
folks. If We take in its full meaning 1t
can make our lives more effective and
beautiful, since it is a. certainty that
while we envy and covet we obstruct
our own progress as effectualy as sand
obstructs navigation.
Life is arranged somewhat as fol-
lows: Each of US travels a narrow road
from the cradle to the grave-a road OF
experiences, pleasurable and pitiful,
that no other living being ever has
travelled or ever will, for no two lives
exactly agree in ways and works and
woes. Scattered all along this narrow
road are tollgates, wheraat, for further
progress, we have to surrender this and
that and the other thing, and it is these
tollgates that make US anxious to enjoy
the lot of our neighbor, whose head we
see bobbing pleasantly along in his own
narrow roadway, just shut off from us
by a Shoulder-high fence. If we were
only raised high in spiritual perception
we should see that his way was fully
as beset as ours with tollgates, many of
them calling for sacrifices that we
should shrink from, and, after seeing,
should turn from, to pay eagerly our
own little toll of a less narrowing char
acter.
Thus goes Life, and wise is he who
spends no time in repining over joys
that have been and are gone; or in
yearning for life that would be pleas
ant but may not ever be. Shedding idle
tears over split milk when our supply of
fodder and meal is plentiful to nourish
the stock that furnishes the milk is ON
par with beating our hands against
our neighbor's fences and in an agony
crying to God to give US their lot. We
know not what we ask. If our neigh
boris heart were bare to us, he would be
possibly ready to give up all the advan-
tages We envy in him, for only a taste
of the simple pleasures he detects, or
thinks he detects, In our more obscure
life. Tut, tut! to grow wan over what
we can never be will be as fatal to us
as the attempt of the bullfrog to equal
the OK in size. Plodding is what we
must content ourselves with. The duty
well done to-day is the solid GROUND for
the step forward tomorrow. The grad
ual process of accretion whereby the ant
builds the ant-heap must be our method.
A weary road? Certainly at times; for
(this is TRUTH the future always seems
long. But when by patient performance
of the simple everyday duty we at last
reach some faint enjoyment of the PIN
nacle that once lowered before US as
worthy of ambition, the past will seem
strangely short, and we shall ask our
selves why we ever grew impatient.
Every life, great or small, good or bad
has to bow before the unyielding law of
sacrifice. No single thing is gained in
any direction except by the giving up of
something that seems estimable in it
self Lbertines and ascetics; wicked
women and wise; men of business and
ministers, and all other classes that you
can name. meet the inexorable necessity
of judging things to be either major or
minor In Importance, and then surren-
dering the minor in order to enjoy the
major Do / really mean that butter
flies of fashion, mere pleasure-seekers,
lawIess ones of every stripe, make sac
rifices? Emphatically / do; the moth
futtering around the lamp gives up the |
fresh coolness of the restful night be-
cause the scorching light attracts it
more; the libertne rusheS to destruc-
ton despite the tender hands of the |
mother whose breasts sustained his in
FAINT life, despite the quiet and honora-
ble paths opening on either side of him. |
despite the curses and the agony of
those women he has wronged, but from |
whose uDbraidings he turns to seek
fresh victims of his passion Truly he |
sacrifices. Yes, upon his altar every
thing Of beauty and sweetness is
scorched up, while things of tinsel re-
main, for he esteems the tinsel most su-
premely In Lowells Vision of Sir |
I.aunfal' Il write where the book is in
accessible) some lines express this |
thought
in the devils bauble shop
All things are bought and sold,
For every ounce of drosS