The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-05-16
SOAP BABIES.'

WE'LL known soap advertisement depicts a
shockingy nude child with a colicky cast OF
countenance seated astride of bath-tub reaching
with all his might for cake of soap on the floor a
little distance away. The reading matter gives us to
understand that the youngster will never rest con-
tent until he has landed that soap. There is COM
panion picture, wherein the child, now wearing an
diotic grim has the soap in his hand and this time
we informed that he is happy. Perhaps the
artist set upon by enraged popuace after
perpetrating the second picture perhaps he just
plain died, but at any rate the series was never
carried to its logical conclusion. Had it been, we
should have seen that innocent, yet very human
babe eating the oaphis tender years preclude the
possibility of his desiring it for the sake of cleanli
ness-and have been compelled to follow him through
the tortures of violent stomach -ache, paregoric
spanking and bed
Since the child is father to the man, we may
assume that the soap baby grew rich in this worlds
goods he advanced in years. He certainly was
successful in his first enterprise.
The picture, insstant and aggressively annoying
as it undoubtedly is, points moral that is worth
while considering We are all "soap babies and all
are bowling for something just beyond Our reach,
and, strange to say, we won't be happy till we
II. SUCCESSFUL.
not the words success and happiness synonymous?
There is always piece of soap lying just beyond
our grasp on the carpet. We shake and SILVER with
the cold, bestride the tub at the imminent risk of
falling and running the carpet of our best rooms, and
perhaps finally succeed in picking up the prize,
only to find that it tastes nasty and breeds abdominal
pains.
This is an age when the words success and
happiness are on all mems tongues. We pick up a
daily paper to read that Mr.. Smith made million
dollars in two weeks through successful fnanciering,
that MI. Jones successfully raised himself from a
stoker to a railroad president while Mr.. Brown is
the most successful miner in the world On another
page of the same paper find Frenchman with
an Irish name telling us how to be happy though
married. and in the next column passionate poeess
discourses at length how to live happily on $1.lO
a day.
It is most creditable in Messrs. Smith, Jones
and Brown to have raised themselves to the positions
they now adorn, but think you they any more
happy than on the day they first put foot upon the
ladder? To say the, comfortable, would
be closer to the mark. You may be sure there is
still another piece of soap just beyond their reach
And the effusons of the poetess and the French
gentleman not going to make them content with
their lot.
Happiness and success, in the truest sense of
the words not of this world. The former is too
violent an emotion to be long endured, while all
thought of the latter is set at naught by visions of
''the petty done, the undone vast'' The best one
can hope for is state of peasurable quiescence and
the moderate comforts of fe If we can attain these
conditions, we must needs be philosophers to con-
tinue in them.
But, after all is said and done, there is some
thing very consoling in the thought that we are
soap babies that we continually striving after
something just beyond reach, and that we 'wont
be happy till get it," What does it matter if we
do fall now and then, if the soap be worth striving
forP If it makes us sick today, we will know better
than to eat it tomorrow, and If we can still 90 after
it. preserving our childish belief in it's worth the
while, we will at any rate have the satisfaction Of
knowing that did little best towards reaching
it, and that perhaps we leave some more fortunate
brother nearer the goal : aet' aaisE