The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1897-10-14
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
BY MEMO"
re pgrighted by Dave & Tabor

10 1Di Til OF DOTH OEXES:-COlne
now let Fanny lead us over the fields,
barred of their crops. 1t is a human
privilege to think, and we do not
half live unless we live in order to
think, and most of us will not half
live unless we think in order to live
With this slight depression let us turn
to the bare fields. One thought at
least we must take away The win
ter is to me a type of old age. For
then do the people live on the crops
gathered in autumn after a summer
of attention following a spring of
seeding. That is old age eXactly-a
time for feeding on the stores Of mem
ory Little food in winter means
much hunger, cold and suffering.
Little of wise, kind noble action and
THOUGHT TO look back upon, means an
Oh ss,p-0sses pagging regrets, empty
hanCs aIld a shru1ken chilled heart.
Come now, there is no escaping that
conclusion. Every day is adding to
your store of old-age memories. What
are they to be? Firm grains on which
you can feed, or husks and off-scour-
Jugs unfit for human being?
-
Let us venture on another thought:
You cannot name a step in the whole
history of crop that is unimportant.
What about plowing? 1t must be
seasonably done and well. What
about fertilizing? Suited to the soil
and crop. Sowing? Done with the
best available seed. And as for culti-
waiting? Life and vigor are only
brought by apparently endangering
both in the seeding. And 50 on, and
so on:-your active brains having
already possibly outrun me. Turn
the thought on yourself, Why
should you venture in your spring
time to endanger winter stores by
letting the happy years of joyous,
wholesome youth become mere catch
alls for amusements and thoughts
that later you would fain forget.
The mind is so whimsical an organ
that those things we need to recall,
often most easily escape us and the
things that are of no gain to US we
must tenaciously remember.
*s*
Yet no field is free entirely from
weeds. We scarcely know how they
come. Nor can twenty years pass
over our heads in the spring-time of
| life without the accumulation of men
tai weeds. The chief thing is to rec
ognize the difference between them
and the good growth, and then, 'CuE
tivate, cultivate, cultivate" persist
emily covering the foul grOwths so
that they do not choke the good.
! You have to stern about such doings,
for you cannot possibly show me q
ood-plant that has anything like the
vitality of weed.
Work with a will; for the summer day
Slips like stealthy snake away,
Nothing will tell that its hours are by
| Nought but the grain or the famine cry.
i
How often too the husbandman act
ually endangers the growing stalk to
pull away from its very roots weed
that would soon rob it of its nOurish-
ment. He is cruel to be kind. He
endangers life to save it. Thus must
you do, if you would be wise and hap
DIV. Bad habits, some of them not
! only unwise but positively injurious
cannot grow, entwined around the
good. without weakening the good
Initiate the husbandman's ways and
wrench them out, though the doing
of it shakes your very stability for a
time. The good will intimately take
stronger and better growth; never
fear about that.
-. i
The little weed looks so harmless al
first, but the wise man sees ahead anC
knows the risk of unclean fields. The
flippant jokes about the purity O
men and women are small in theil
: way, but the end is an unclean mind
and an unclean mind in old age is ont
of the most woe-begone, unworthy
developed, and unsatisfactory pro
duets of human life that you can pos
sibly meet So wrench and tug at th'
things that universal experience say
are noxious, and not good for menta
food-wrench and tug and out will
them, however much it may hurt
, The end, in this case, will Justify h
means.
*x#
One more lesson from the field
e scarcely related to the above and ye
V useful perhaps to you in filling yo
y with the dignity of living. The graf
: q of the present fields has, under cult
walton, advanced somewhat upon tn
grain of the ancients. Its needs III
l. better understood, and etc. Yet il
n possibilities for improvement are OF