The age-herald., 1898-11-13
THE MURMUR
 OF THE WORLD

Yesternight there came to me youth who swore that he was unhappy. Most likely he meant that he was miserable, that he was in the fullest measure uncoms fortable Happiness and unhappiness are spiritual quantities not dreamed of by most men and women in this life of ours. The tu and ego of this world may have the toothache, a nervous headache, a touch of neuralgia, disordered liver, what not, and the minimizing amongst us call 1t un- happiness. It is not unhappiness; 1t is merely physical discomfort. Unhappiness Is @s the mind, not of the gross physical substance that aches and sickens and dies. This physical substance may be in life beautiful In death it bears the mark Of the skull and cross bones, and is hideous beyond all expression, almost beyond all belief. Bahi the thing is loathesome. It is not worthy to be discussed on a glad Sunday morning when all the bells are ringing, however diseordantly these same bells may break upon the morning air. One may recall from the halcyon days some lines of Scott:
 Oh, merry were they in the good green
 wood
 When the mavis and the merle were sing
 ing;
 But merrier were they in Dunfermline
 gray
 When all the bells were ringing.
 
 You do not know of Dunfermline, the ''auld grey toun" in Fifeshire. It is just as well. You do not know of the winding streets, the darkling courts, the myste- rious "wynds;' the toun hoose, the Guild hall and the dear little club; the library, and the ancient abbey hard by; the abbots hoose and the brig; the grass-grown God's- acre upon the beautiful hillside beyond the noisy railway station, wherein sleeps the fairest dead who ever yielded her beau- tiful life to Him who gave it; the distant river throbbing like lake of living silver: and yet further away "Auld Reekie," clothed in the glory of sun for ever gold en when it shines at all! It is just as well for you-it is better, perhaps; for 1t leaves with you some lessons twere better not learned at all.
 Forgive the digression, the picture wreathed in the smoke that rises from the briar-root pipe when the telegraph in the outer room has grown silent of its tick ticfety-ticx, tick-tickety-tick, and even the morning newspaper day Is done. These pictures of the other years will come back; the curtain will be rolled aside, and you are brought to face with the scenes held sacred in the album of days one would not wish to forget. Come! You may be wife and mother now; you may be husband and father. You, neither of you, Would yield up some memories of the other days long passed by and gone into the storied vista of the things that were and are not.
 
 There is for ever that other one, and the tu and ego are glad of it. In the smoke that curls from your pipe and shapes itself in cloud of glory above you there is formed face you love to remember. Around it is the aureole of her golden hair, or the nimbus of dark locks always rest less. It matters not. In the fire that glows upon your own hearthstone, If God has given you a hearthstone and wife, there is the face of that other one. That other one is omnipresent, and you are the better that she is The prattle of your children may be sweet music to you, the voice of your wife be as a blessed benedic- ton; but still the memory of that other one abides with you and cheers you on your way to fame or the blank negation of nothingness. There is no breach of faith in tenderly watching the face in the smoke of your pipe, or the slumbering embers that cast their soft glow upon the hearth where the cricket chirps through the glad hours.
 Mercy is cried of you for further refer ence to the tobacco pipe: you have not heard the last of 1t from this slave of the graphite pencil. He is sorry for any man who knows not the joy of the pipe of to- bacco. After smoking many pipes of to- bacco,' Carlyle was at his best. An, blessed hours of a bright day beside the grave in Ecclefechan church yard! But that is another story.
 Sublime tobacco, which from east to west Cheers the tar's labor and the Turkman's
 rest.
 That man who knows not the pleasures of the briar-root pipe denies himself one of the luxuries of this life The cigar is rub- bish. Only the pipe leads us to the portals of the enchanted palace wherein the gods do dwell. Only the pipe wreathes it's smoke into shapes that we love to con- template when silence has cast her spell upon the arth.
 This is frightfully aggressive. Something was said about the youth who thought himself to be unhappy He was not un- happy at all. The woman he loved means to marry the other man, and that stern and relentless fact clouds his young life like the shadow of death hangs above the cradle of hope. Such sorrow is intensely real. It is grief that strikes deep down at the vitals and chills and benumbs until hope goes behind the cloud to weep. Hope told a fattering tale that joy would soon return; but hope told a common, little, ry-day lie to him who came to me with his little story of unhappiness. Through many a day he will not see the light, but ultimately he shall see 1t as assuredly as his bright young life shall last. He may take it from one who has sounded the QeepS ana IOySu WILL lne SHdiiOWS- Ol tHiS worlds dsappointments He may take it from one who has groped in the dalnnabest shadows of physical and mental unrest md who comes at last into the radiant dawn of life as it really is, and who sees only the sun shining goriously and hears the birds singing the songs nature has taught them to sing; who is deprived of bitterness toward men and things and sees nothing but the bright side; who has look ed into the gulf where misery is enthroned. and whose eyes are now turned to the heights where joy .robed in the radiant gar- ments of truth, shines resplendent in the full glare of that which is not a lie; whose boyhood is renewed, and whose experience leads him to a more catholic view of life and it's duties and responsibilities: one who in spirit knee1s at the confessional and ac- knowledges the sins of the flesh, not hav- ing any great burden of spiritual sins to name to Gods priest. or to the man within the breast.
 This must not be taken mere sermon- izino If is fact gathered from a larger