The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1905-07-01

mon Circumstances.
BY LUCY ELLIOT keller
Editorial Writer for the YOUTHS Com
panion)
Copyright. 1895, by Joseph B. Bowies.1
Rufus Choate, when a boy. used to
drive his fathers COW. to pasture. More
than once, after he had thrown away
his switch, he returned to find it and
then carried it back and threw it under
the tree whence he took it. For he said:
Perhaps there is, after all, some yearn-
ifg Of nature between them still" The
same boy, grown to a man, once stopped
ii a book store to look over some class
les. He did not quit the place until he
was compelled to by the store closing
ae having read Gine hours at a stretch
without food or drink.
John Arlington symonds read Latin
readily in his boyhood. The radiant fig
ure of the young Ai,oilo, doomed to pass
his time with shepherds, serving them
and loving them in plain ways of pas
toral toll, this boyisn version of the
Latte sun-fable fashioned his whole
after life and career.
John Richard Green passed the last
winter Of his life at Capri. Cold, COM
fortress and i'll, the brilliant historian
amused himself by a childlike make
believe. In the evening he would sol
amnly draw up his chair and pretend to
warm his toes at an unIighted hearth.
10 nJI
drill your thoughts, shut out the gloomy,
and call in the bright. He got an ex-
traordinary amount of pleasure from
thus playing at being gay.
Hugh Miller found a bed of rough
garnets and used to fling himself down
on the Scotch shore and press his fingers
over the larger grains Of the patch ard
bethinlz himself of the heaps of sgems
n Aladdin's cave, and of Sinbad's val
ley of diamonds. There existed then
no popular digest of geology, and the
ambitious lad had to grope his scientific
way without any guide; but a certain
amount of fact once acquired enabled
MIN to assimilate to the mass every lit
tie snatch of information Then the
vegetation Of the coal measures began
to form within his mind where all had
been blank before He had read Gull
liver, and now faneied himself a Ii1li-
putian, roaming under ferns that had
shot up into trees. 1t was thus that the
future geologist got his first conception
of the forests of the carboniferous age.
i.
What is there in these incidents be-
yond the mere aneedote which appeals
instantly to every youth who reads? Is
it not the glimmer of a new power by
which, like Choate, we can ester into
the life of tree and twig;; or spirit our
selves from a dusty bookshop back to
the age of gods and heroes? Is it not
a restorative that will enable us, like
the historian Green. to rise above soil
tude and discomfort and pain? Is it not
the ability to leave behind, like the
stone mason's apprentice, poverty and
toll and intellectual privation, and ex-
perience all the joys of Sinbad's wealth,
all the marvels of the prehistoric for
ests? Shall anyone say, then, that self
enchantment like this can play no part
in prosaic daily life?
Here is the question for each reader,
whatever his age or condition: How can
I rise above the drudgery and the
routine of my life? How can I, in the
midst of poverty or illness or anxiety or
lack of opportunity stand superior to
them all and work out my own ideal of
what an individual life should be?
Emerson,s first volume ends: Build
therefore your own world Can we?
Yes; emphatically, yes, How? First,
by a determination which shall be
daunted by no obstacle; then by read
ing the best poetry and the maryels of
modern science; by close observation
of Nature in her varying forms; by the
exercise of active charity and kindness
toward others; by filing up the hour
with useful work; and by the cultivation
of the Imagination and a perception OF
spiritual things.
We are so apt to suffer the mean
things of life to overgrow the finer ma
ture within US. that Goethe struck the
mark when he said that we oughtevery
day to read a little poetry, sing a little
song or look at a good picture. 1t is too
commonly believed that poetry is a
thing apart from mans daily life On
the contrary, il has a directly helpful,
inspiring, educatiVe influence; and no
person who desires happS, useful,
rounded life can dispense with it, Let
me suggest a very short list to begin on.
Tennysonts ''IdylIs Of the King Shake
speare's Antony and Cleopatra, .
Wordsworth's ode to Immortality.
and Ballad Of Poor Susan, Arnold's
s'Forsaken Merman,' and Millions Al
legro." Add to these the ennobling es-
says Of Emerson in the volume, Let
tiers and Social Aims"
No less inspiring than the best poetry
are the maryels of modern science.
Prof. Farrar, Of Harvard. once greeted
his class with the excited exclamation:
Il toss this bal. into the air; the earth
rises up to meet It, and the stars bow
down to do it reverence. Such state
ment of the theory that action and re-
action are equal was as absolutely ac-
curate as it was magnificent. In a re-
cent address Sir Oliver Lodge pictured
the wonderful work of the ant and the
worm, noting that these toilers are en-
tirely unconscious of the very existence