The Jasper weekly courier. [volume] (Jasper, Ind.) 1858-1922, 1899-02-10

''Wild heather bells and Robert Burns
The moorland flower and peasant
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant
From the life of Burns two beauti
full thoughts may be CLEANED, which
should be put in the notebook d
every youth and pondered by hin
every day. A bird, with the righ
meitle, may soar from the bott
of the deepest valley to the tip o
the highest mountain against ever,
opposing gale. But, having riser
so nigh, it may be disabled anC
come to an untimely fall. 1t neve
makes another such trip for th'
"bird with a broken pinion, neve
scars SD high again"
There never lived a man of poor.
er circusmtances than Robert Burns
born in the little, one-roomed, clay
cottage among the hills OF Scotland
His father, though poor, was "A low
er of books and had meagre edu
cation; his mother could read hel
bible, but could not write her name
Roberts youth was spent toiling al
his father side in the field, but
his labor was lightened by the beau
tiful words of his father as well a
his own rich thoughts. Probably
he did not "whistle and hoe" but
he did sing ard plow, and more thar
that he sang songs Of his own pro-
duction.
With such surroundings his prIm-
itive nature was model. His
poetry was the utterance OF sincere,
large hearted and essentially noble
nature; nature with more tnan
woman's tenderness, and with the
poets soul quivering at the throb
of pain. Carlyle has truly said
that Burns, indeed lives in sym
pathy; his soul rushes forth into all
realms of life; nothing that has
existence can be Indifferent to him. y
Even though in dialect and sub
iect his D, are local and provln-
cial, in spin. they are universal.
His poetry comes from the heart
and goes to the heart. He is read
by every lover of literature. Thus
we see that he shook off the weight
of poverty, cleared the clouds OF
distress, and raised himself to a
height where he IS universally rec
ognized.
But-he did this all in thirty sew
en- years; he came 10 an untimely
fall; he was cut off III the prime OF
life. What was the cause? Who
could throw stone at the pure
noble man we have seen pictured,
and injure him even unto death?
Is there need to ask? There is but
one thing which could be SO cruel,
and that is-the rum traffic, the
saloon,
Just as he was budding forth, in
his most brilliant spring-tlme, he
was called to Edinburg by DR..
Blackjack, who hoped to cultivate
his genius. Instead of that he in
troduced him to the saloons. Burns
hard to free himself from
its coils. "but he could not, for
strength failed" He had been vic.
torious in one struggle (that with
but he could not sustain
another. His pinion was broken; ;
his flight retarded; his hope lost.
So at th,rty-seven he sinks into the
grave which should not have been
opened for thir y-seven years to
come.
His death, and the great loss to
literature, lies at the door of the
worthy politicians of that day who
set this trap for him. 1t does no
good to "cry over split milk but
it does do good to take measures to
avoid spllling it again. We cannot
recall Burns to his unfinished work
by heaping curses on the heads OF
the men of that day, but can we not
prevent the Burns of the twentieth
century from coming to like fate,
by an appeal to the men OF this
day?
The literature of today, as com
pared with that of the eighteenth
century, is too meagre to allow one
drop to escape. Many of our auth
ors are now drowning their wits in
drink. II was shown in the late
war that there is no lack Of patriot
ism in America. Should there be
a lack Of pride in the literature Of
America? She ranks first in Other