Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1900-05-10


may plant our foot.
Whether Il man believes in human
like God or no is Il small thing. Wheth-
! er he looks into the mental and phys
! ical world and sees no relation be
tween cause and effect, no order but a
blind chance sporting, this is the
mightiest fact that can be recorded in
| any spiritual existence. 1t We're al
! most n mercy to cut his throat, if in
deed ne does not do it for himself.
We, however. do not cut our throats.
To do so would imply some desire and
| feeling and we have no desire and no
feeling We are only cold. We do not
wish to live, and we do not wish to die.
! One day snake curls itself round the
waist of n kaffir woman. We take 1t
in our hand, swing it round and round
and fling it on the ground-dead. Ev-
cry one looks at us with eyes of admi-
ration We almost laugh. Is it wonder
| full to risk that for which we care
nothing?
| In truth, nothing matters. This dirty
little world full OF confusion, and the
blue rag stretched overhead for a sky
| is so low we could touch it with our
hand.
Existence is great pot, and the old
fate who stirs it round cares nothing
what rises to the top and what goes
| down and laughs when the bubbles
| burst. And we do not care Let it
boil about. Why should we trouble
ourselves? Nevertheless the physical
sensations are real. Hunger hurts, and
thirst; therefore we eat and drink. In
action pains US; therefore we work like
| galley slaves. No one demands it, but
we set ourselves to build n great dam
In red sand beyond the graves.
| In the gray dawn before the sheep
are let out we work at 1t. All day,
while the young ostriches we tend
| feed about us. we work on through the
| fiercest heat. The people wonder
| what new spirit has seized us now.
| They do not know we are working for
life. We bear the greatest stones and
| feel a satisfaction when we stagger
| under them and are hurt by a pang
| that shoots through our chest. While
| we eat our dinner we carry on baskets
| full Of earth, rs though the devil drove
1
that at night n witch and two white
| oxen come TO help us. No wall, they
say, could grow so quickly under one
| mans hands.
At night, alone In our cabin, we sit
no more brooding over the fire. What
should we think of now? All is empti-
ness. So we take the old arithmetic,
| and the multiplication table, which
with so much pains we learned long
ago and forgot directly, we learn now
! in a few hours and never forget again.
We take n strange satisfaction in
working arithmetical problems. We
pause in our building to cover the
stones with figures and calculations.
We save money for n Latin grammar
and an algebra and carry them about
in our pockets, poring over them as
over our Bible Of old. We have thought
we were utterly stupid, incapable of
remembering anything, of learning
anything. Now we find that all is
easy Has a new soul crept into this
old body, that even our intellectual
faculties are changed? We marvel,
not perceiving that what man ex-
pends in prayer and ecstasy he cannot
have over for acquiring nowledge.
You never shed n tear or create n
beautiful image or CULVER with emo
tion but you pay for 1t at the practical,
calculating end of your nature You
have just so much force. When the
one channel runs over, the other runs
dry.
And now we turn to Nature. All
these years we have lived beside her.
and we have never seen her. Now we
open our eyes and look at her.
The rocks have been to us a blur of
brown. We bend over them, and the
disorganiZed masses dissolve into
many colored, many shaped, carefully
arranged form of existence, here mass
es Of rainbow tinted crystals half
fused together, there bands of smooth
gray and red methodically everything
each other This rock here Is covered
with n delicate silver tracery, In some
mineral resembling leaves and branch
es. There on the fiat stone, on which
we so often have sat to weep and pray,
we look down and see it covered with
the fossil footprints of great birds and
the beautiful skeleton OF fish. We
have often tried to picture in our mind
what the fossied remains of creatures
must be like, and all the while we sat
on them. We have been so blinded by
thinking and feeling that we have new
er seen the world.
The fiat plain has been TO us reach
of monotonous red. We look at 1t,
and every handful of sand starts into
life That wonderful people, the ants,
we learn to know; see them make war
and peace, play and work, and build
their huge palaces. And that smaller
people we make acquaintance with who
live In the flowers. The Ditto flower
has been for us n mere blur of yellow.
We find its heart composed of hun
dred perfect flowers, the homes OF the
tiny black people with red stripes, who
move In and out I'm that little yellow
city. Every bluebell has its inhabitant.
Every day the "karroo" shows us n
new wonder sleeping in It's teeming
bosom. on our way to work we pause
and stand to see the ground spider
make It's trap. bury itself In the sand
and then wait for the falling In of its
enemy. Farther on walks n horned
beetle, and near him starts open the
door of n spider, who peeps out care
fully and quickly pulls 1t down again. J
On "karroo" bush green fly is lay
ing her silver eggs. We carry them
home and see the shells pierced, the
spotted grub come out, turn to n green |
fly and fit away.
We are not satisfied with what Ma. |
ture shows us and win see something |
for ourselves. Under the white hen |
we put n dozen eggs and break one |
daily TO see the white spot wax into |
the chicken. We are not excited or |
enthusiastic about II. But man Is |
not 20 lay his throat open. He must |
think of something. SO we plant seeds |
I'm rows on our dam wall and pull one |
up daily to see how it goes with them.
Alladcen buried her wonderful stone, |
and n golden palace sprang up at her |
feet. We do far more. We put
brown seed In the earth, ana n living |
thing starts out-starts upward-why,
no more than Alladeen can we say
starts upward, and does not desist TIL
IL Is higher than our heads, sparkling
with dew I'm the early morning, glitter
ing with yellow blossoms shaking
brown seeds with little embryo souls
on TO the ground. We look at It sol
cmnly from the time It consists OF two
leaves pecping above the ground and