Connecticut western news., 1898-03-31

could have anticipated. Now all the
 they chuckle and they chatter and they
 say: "Aha, here is the old fellow who
 was so proud of his integrity and who
 bragged he couldn't be overthrown by
 temptation and was So uproarious in his
 demonstrations of indignation at the
 1efaloation 10 years agol Let us see l' | It Shall Be Measured.
 | God let's the man go. God, who had
 kept that man under his protecting
 ,are, lets the man go and try for him.
 self the majesty of his integrity. God
 letting the man go, the powers of dark
 ness bounce upon him. see you some
 day in your office in great excitement.
 One of two things you can do. Be hon.
 sst and be pauperized and have your | children brought home from school,
 your family dethroned in social infu-
 ence. The other thing is, you can step
 little aside from that which is right,
 you can only just go half an inch out of
 the proper path, you can only take little risk, and then you have all your finances fair and right. You will have
 large property. You can leave for tune for your children and endow col
 lege and build public library in your
 native town. You halt and wait and
 halt and wait until your lips get white. You decide to risk it. Only a few
 strokes of the pen now. But, oh, how
 your hand trembles, how dreadfully it trembles! The die is cast. By the
 strangest and most awful conjunction of circumstances any one could have imagined you are prostrated. Bank
 ruptcy, commercial annihilation, expo
 sure, crime. Good men mourn and devils hold carnival, and you see your own name at the head of the newspaper col
 umn i'll whole congress of exclamation points, and while you are reading the
 anathema in the reportorial and edi- torial paragraph, it occurs to you how | much this story is like that of the defal-
 cation 15 years ago, and clap of thun-
 der shakes the window sill, saying,
 "With what measure ye mete it shall
 be measured to you againp'
 Flesh Is Weak.
 You look in another direction. There
 is nothing like ebullitions of temper to
 put man to disadvantage. You, man
 with calm pulses and fine digestion
 and perfect health. cannot understand
 how anybody should be capsized in tenn per by an infnitesimal annoyance. You say, II couldn't be unbalanced in that way" Perhaps you smile at provoca- | tion that makes another man swear. | You pride yourself on your imperturb- | ability. You say with your manner, | though you have too much good taste to l say it with your words; II have great deal more sense than that man
 has. l have great deal more equipoise of temper than that man has. I never | could make such a puerile exhibition of | myself as that man has made" /"
 Let me see. Did you not say that you | could not be tempted to an ebullition of temper? Some September you come | home from your summer watering place
 and you have inside, away back ill your liver or spleen, what we call in our day
 malaria, but what the old folks called | chills and fever. You take quinine un- | til your ears are first buzzing beehives
 and then roaring Niagaras. You take
 roots and herbs; you take everything. ! You get well. But the next day you | feel uncomfortable, and you yawn, and | you stretch. and you shiver, and you consume, and you suffer. Vexed more than you can tell, you cannot sleep, you cannot eat, you cannot bear to see any | thing that looks happy, you go out to kick the cat that IS asleep in the sun. Youy children's mirth was once music i to you; now it is deafening. You say,
 "Boys, stop that racket. {" You turn
 back from June to March. In the family and in tho neighborhood your populari- | ty is 95 per cent off. The world says:
 "What is the matter with that disa- greeable man? What woebegone coun- tenancel 1 can't bear the sight of him. ' | You have got your pay at last-got your l pay. You feel just as the man felt, that man for whom you had no mercy, and | my text comes in with marvellous ap- | positeness, "With what measure ye
 mete it sha.ll be measured to you again. Victims of Circumstance.
 h the study of society have come to | this conclusion-that the most of the | people want to be good, but they do not | exactly know how to make 1t out. They ] make enough good resolutions to lift | them into angelhood. The vast majority | of people who fall are the victims of | circumstances. They are captured by | ambuscade. If their temptations should | come out ill a regiment and fight them in fair field, they would go out in the strength and the triumph of David | against Goliath. But they do not see the rio l ak h Temptation comes and says, ''Take these bitters, take this nervine, take
 this aid to digestion, take this night cap" The vast majority of men and
 women who are destroyed by opium and | by rum first take them as medicines. In
 making up your dish of criticism in re- gard to them, take from the caster and
 the oruet of sweet oil and not the crues
 of cayenne pepper.
 Do you know how that physician, that lawyer, that journalist became the i victim of dissipation? Why, the physi-
 clan was kept up night by night on pro- fessional duty. Life and death lowered in the balance. His nervous system was
 exhausted. There came time of epi-
 demio and whole families were pros-
 trated and his nervous strength was
 gone. He was all worn out in tLe serv- ice of the public. Now he must brace himself up. Now he stimulates. The
 life of this mother, the life of this
 child, the life of this father, the life of
 this whole family must be saved and of
 all these families must be saved, aud he stimulates and he does it again and
 again. You may criticise his judgment,
 but remember the process. It was not a
 selfish process by which he went down.
 It was magnificent generosity through | which he fell.
 Do Not Be Hard.
 That attorney at the bar for weeks
 has been standing in poorly ventilated