The Savannah morning news., 1903-02-08
THINGS THAT ARE NOT EASY,

It is not an easy thing, says a writ
or of home thoughts in the New York
Evening Post, TO live true to a noble
ideal of social honesty and sincerity
and be in blameless contact with your
world of business and means of
amassing wealth. 1t is not easy to be
severe against moral laxity without
arrogance and Pharasaic self-approv-
al. nor to be merciful in Judgment
without condoning the fearful faith
lessness of our day to marriage vows
and the duty of unselfish parental de-
votion to the lives which marriage has
evoked
J. rasier to sit at our own fire
side ere we talk, and lament, and
Gems and deride. and yet do not
one thing to clear a little luminous
spot where family life can be seen to
be joyous and innocent, and social en-
joyment invites by charms that wear
neither the pretence of pomp nor the
ornaments of extravaganza.
It is a personal and eminently prac-
teal matter. this individual influence
Of ours on the present and the future,
and the discussion of propriety and
improperly, decorum, and vulgar lack
of respect for it have very little to
do with 1t. We are showing what we
desire. by the places to which we take
our daughters. the plays they see, the
books they read, the tone of the con-
versation to which they listen.
"RPttar - said a dissenting critic of
Home Thoughts. that a woman
should shock a too sensitive ear by her
bold statement of disgusting details of
disease, than that she should emulate
the fine lady of former days, and
faint at the sight of blood" 1t was
the fine lady" in the sense
which makes those words a term
of derision, who became unconscious
when she saw a wound. We are not
concerned with them. They and their
affectations were of no use for any
high purpose. But a clean, pure
tongue, which leaves the evil things of
life unspoken and relegates the unsav-
ory and unseemly happenings of life
to those whose duty requires their
near approach, is an efficient aid to
higher form of common intercourse
among men and women.
The young people who hear the mis-
cradle QuarrelS and dlSgracetul 1n1del-
ity of wives and husbands talked OF
in their homes, and then go forth to
meet the very men and women so con-
demned, are not, by all the derisive
contempt which may have been pour
ed upon the offending lives, made less
ready to err themselves.
To be true to our times demands of
IFS that we shut the door on the SLAM
der and evil gossip which has brought
the "chaff" of many a modern social
gathering to the level of chapter
from a bad book or the dubious act of
an unworthy play.
The whole story of our lives has to
be the eXemplification of what we
would see the prevailing influence and
power of the days we live in and
those that are to come. We are each
in our measure personally responsible
for the DETECTION of our nation from
''its destined end and way" as an ex-
ample of what educated, elevated So
ciety could become if it adhered to the
higher plane which we were born to
occupy. Reality, truth in our relations
to each other, respect for the personal
privacy of every human beings indi-
vidual life, and dissatisfaction with
anything short Of the highest aims
these are the things without which
neither what is good in the past can
live again, nor any noble freshness
evolve from the present nor any di-
vine spark light the way of the flu
ture.