The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-05-09
OLD TIMES AND THINGS.

TRADITION OF THE TREASURE
 TRoFE OF MORRIS COVE. Life's sombre and Jocose Sandwich Philosophy, Religious Faith and old Time Packet Days.
 By Old Mortality. Jr)
 "when time who steals our years
 away
 Shall steal our pleasures too,
 The memory of the past will stay
 And half our joys renew"
 The queen of sorrows queen is the
 memory of happy times in the
 days of Dole"
 Two opinions chose ye, oh son of an &C.,
 cldent,
 But is it not better to "conjure up
 pleasures that fit like bright phan-
 toms OCT memories glass than
 the phantom of disappointments
 that dole us to the Doles?
 "How few think justly of the thinking
 few, ,s,.,. -elg #. How many never think who think they
 do?"
 Is not life at best gamble? How many of us as we draw near the last of our pile of life's chips feel that hoe 70 Sufficiently comfortable to risk another stake. The panacea of life is hope and the fact we can always see in others ills we would not exchange. Some find happiness in the morn of life; some in midday. To some lifelis desert with out an oasis. One compares his happy youth with the present and is dissat- isfied one feels injured that his youth was not happy; very few of us are sat- isfied with this existence. Why? Be- cause we are so constituted by nature we really do not know enough of life to appreciate it's blessings until too late. Of all sad words on the page of fate are the sad, sad words to hate and too late. We are like the child who licks the areacle from his bread and then not lik- { ing the stale old bread, cries for more treacle. Are we not guided through this sandwiched enigma of good and evil by our ever smarting reminder, ex- perience. Does not experience teach us we are predestinated victims of unre- lenting self-devouring, self-producing nature. Why does the duck scamper from the shell to the mud puddle and the chicken shun it, both from the egg i? Are we not as we are formed body and mind; influenced more or less by fear of Jaw, natural and human; "the whip that keeps the. coward in his track?" Figs will not grow upon thistles if you do sugar the roots. Have we not in our egotism placed poor human nature upon higher scale than we can sus- tain.
 Are we really in the great balance of nature any more than the mite that feeds upon the cheese, wriggling and squirming over and under, twisting and writhing with each other, few reach ing the top, only to lose their identity and go back to mother cheese.
 Are we not of the earth earthly?
 Are they not of the cheese cheesey
 Are we not handicapped at birth with thefcurse of the fathers upon the chfi- dren even to the third and fourth gene ration; our own transgressions, may we not hope in another existence we will only suffer for? Are we not the children of circumstances over which we have no control? Is life what we make it or was it made for us by some monster throwing in just enough hap piness that we may realize our misery by comparison? Is not conscience the child of education? Is not the mind the child af that exquisite organism known as the human body? Snap the lute- string, the harmony is lost. SSnap the heart-strfng or let the golden bowl be broken, where is the mind? Do not the strongest have their deplorable weak flnoments. Are we then free moral agents?" Destiny should allow us all fair start, then let us rough-hew our own end with the unfaltering trust. If we do well here we will do well there Is not life the divine spark that will go on, ever on, without shadow of turning till our hope finds the goal of our long, ing and yearning. Is it not far, far better that two-thirds of the so-called civilized race should sleep the blessed sleep of Nevana or drink for e'er the restful waters of Lethe than to retain in another existence the memory of the tortures and ren1orse of the present (so-called) life; why will we follow the Ignis Fatuus" of the schools hunting with a taller dip for the truth when the broad book of nature is spread wide open before us ''so he who runneth may read?. know I am off soundings, but there has hung ever the cunning cure upon my soul to ask questions ethical questions upon the old, old time riddles of life, some of which are answered with emphasis by the old lady in her own quaint style. Talk, talk, talk. l wish talk cost money; then there won't be so many alarmed foolish questions asked except by folks who earn their living mixing people up and gittin' well paid for on-mixin' un. There now, I've said it.
 The old heath-in Marcus A Real GUS" meditated on these things as we'll as did one kind of folk and some think he fetched out lee-tle ahead. He