The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-11-21

pouring OF people who Wish TO live their lives again
because they went wrong at the first living. They
have narrowed in selfshness and uncharity they
have been basely content with ignorance and stag
nation 1t is conceivable tho doleful and is usually
due to ill health. But when prosperous. healthy
people 90 on in this strain as some of them like to
do in company, their repining sounds very much
like affectation. They have little to repine over.
This fashion Of bewaiing the loss Of earlier
years and past times in the first half of
the nineteenth century. It a literary habit,
belonging to Of sentimentalism that is funny
to us now Heroes of old are always choking with
emotion and the heroines bathed in tears for hours
lat stretch. But in these healthful, practical days
there is for the genteel miseries of
grandparents. We all have enough to eat and we
wear better clothes than our ancestors we live In
more comfortable houses, and have wider resources
in illness and troubles travel more easily and
|go much further; we can get a morning paper reek
ing with news for cent and later in the day
get another paper reeking with more news for
another cent; we are thousand times buster than
our ancestors ever thought of being and altogeth-
er much better off. We have more money and spend
it more lavishly; our lives longer. crowd
more into them, which is the thing; there
honest pleasures for all instead of for the few the
hours of work are shorter and the world is growing
better. Is the to be believed then, who
pines? or is his fearful manner to be taken as an
idiosyncrasy, resulting from dyspepsia lack of
proper employment?
Unless he pleads i'll health, his repining is
humbug He would be child once more! If he
we're suddenly put back into frocks and realized
what had happened to him, he would howl in
frenzy of protest. Would he think you, 60 back to
the monotony Of school life to parental restraint
and tyrannes suffered at the hands of larger boys
to the suffering and illness endured for lack of fore
thought and sense to the blindness of inexperence
that would close the eye and to much that is
majestic and beautiful to the closing against him of
the callings and enjoyments of the adult mind? Do
you think any man would live it over again? He
who complains will say that he would be a child
again that he might be free from care, forgetting
how big are the little of child he would be
a child that he might live in continual sunshine,
forgetting how menacing and dark trifes in
small eyes, He doesn't mean it. It is idle vapor
such longings for the past.
The fact is, memory is kind to u.s. she is a rose
colored jade. She selects for mental refresh
ment those things we like best to remember. Pain
and grief, anxiety and sin, disappointment and
shame, pass from leaving minds clear for
delight or duty. Schopenhauer said that when men
become more intelligent than they at present
they will realize the hopelessness of life and through
the medium Of suicide, extermnate the He
might have said that would when memory
ceases to gild the past and when learn the real
lesson it teaches. We totally unreconciled
to our lot, nor dissatisfied. We without envy
child playing realizing that he has Of the
that afict us; realizing, too, that happy future
may be in store for him. And there is pleasure
in the thought-even tho ourselves resigned the
idea of the presidency some years ago-that the
youngster may be destined to get what he desires
and some day occupy the White House. We re-
member the pleasures of youth because youth was
inexperienced in sorrow; not because youth was
intrinsicaly happier than maturity.
! Cease repinng, oh of elastic and tickle
memory! It is not good form, good sense. And
besides, you don't mean it. You might have been
great or rich, eff only such and such thing had
happened? Well make it happen, if you think it is
worth while. It is too late to mend. It is
hard to live in the present. of course, but it's the
only way. Give up dreaming of the future the
past; they seldom equal our conception of them. It
is todays sunshine that warns. It is absurd to
seek trouble to say believe that trouble is always
seeking u.s. to wall forth that life is all tears partngs
and indigestion, purgatory that fits for another
| life and no
! Life suffces to ITSELF It is absurd to deny it's
| I~s@ k~1- o14