St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1897-03-19

outside of yourself; enjoy the inheritance
OF great things already done.
Just as learning dead language helps
us to. understand English, so the past
interprets the present with its multiform
activities. Without such knowledge life
is to us,vas with the unthinking brute,
bereft of clue as to whence or whittier.
The blood of heroes for righteousness and
martyrs to racial duty courses in human
veins. Such knowledge will thrill man
into the full stature Of manhood. Yet
the supreme grandeur OF living can be
ours only when doing something definite.
We may draw inspiration and pride of
birthright from the past; we must live
and act. in the present.
Bunyan's muck-heap raker saw no
beauties; selfshness in the essential du-
ties of life, and appreciation of the full
meaning Of life do not abide together.
We cannot'serve our race and worship
Mammon. If we flank ourselves with
moneyibags, or if we want to, Just for
what they may bring OF personal comfort
we are condemning ourselves to loneli-
ness and heartaches. Money never
bought a friend, and money never held
Tbaf+ 60 f,fo
woman's love, it never purchases. 1t
buys eye service it buys sefseeking
sycophants. The house of'the heart is
empty when such fill it.
The trained ear can detect sounds in
audible to the unframed; the trained eye
can see.into beauties invisible to ordinary
mortals 1.-THE trained hand accomplishes
things.impossible to gross manipulation.
The heart trained to interests outside it.
sell looks upon new world.
Without interest in others, narrow lite
remains narrow; with it even a sick
room may become the center OF world.
wide influence. The shepherd tending his
wandering sheep, the miner working
amid dangers, the farmer wrestling with
difficulties, the wife at her unpaid labors,
all can live transformed lives, if they feel
their share in the worlds best interests.
Whittier describes life as "a cry between
the silences." That is lonesome view
of it. Your life and mine are links in an
endless chain. We are the living express
sion of the dead who rest from their la
bors; we are the custodianS of the future,
ifso be that we live. How dead the imagi-
nation.that cannot understand this Uu-
born sons and daughters are within YOU.
For them your daily life is preparing a
gloomy or glorious morn. What that
morn is to be, we, you and | are pre-
destinating by our strength or by our
weakness.
But Mark you! To live is to turn the
back on inaction; sloth and real living
are antpodal Likewise, earnestness
and full appreciation by our fellows are
impossible. Human nobodieS have no
enerlies but he who goeth forth with
noble purposes, is bound to run counter
to the legion demons of laziness and
stupidity, guttony and filth, who cry
out, Leave us alone. What have we
to do with thee?" They whose souls
are to go marching on with armies
whose footsteps never yet have echoed,
must face contumely if they try to lift
humanity one niche higher.
Unhappy for the world is it for man
to attain his full ambition. He ceases
his efforts; inaction is death. Better far
to have the full fruition of effort always
just evadng the hand, and thus bekoning
to further deeds. Let there be no con-
tentment.with one good thing done; but
have each purpose merely & part of
something greater just as with the
universe, made up of numberess stars,
all grouped into solar systems, these in
Guided in the vast aggregation itself,
and that in turn pushing through space
to something yet neither seen, nor lore
told, nor imagined
Poverty is no bar to breadth mind or
Of helpfulness. The poor have always
given proportionately more 10 each other
than the rich have bestowed upon them.
The widows mite is no solitary instance
in the world. And as for giving, whose
pleasure is greatest; they who give and
are glad to have money take the place of
fello wship, or they who suffer in order
to help2 Real giving means sharing.
Or as the Master says in Lowel's poetry:
For the gift without the giver is bare.
Who gives hims with his aims feeds three