Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1907-09-17
The OPEN CAFES.

hE UPEN GAIeS.
A New York girl has disappeared
leaving behind her diary that tells
of years of self pity and melancholy
musing. She was the child of parents
that had become estranged, and was
have offered her great opportunities.
She had graduated with honors from
great university, and was intellectu-
ally capable. Lately a legacy of a
considerable amount was left her. She
devised it by will and disappeared.
From the will and the diary she lief.
behind, it is thought that she has sui
cided. Here are few sentences from
her diary:
I was an adopted child. All my life
I lived with the doctor and his wife,
who were my foster parents. I was
the burden of two wrecked lives. l
have been left alone-alone to bear
the shame. -. AS I started to
cross a street a white hearse emerged
from the trucks and cars and passed
before me, the wee white coffin. and
it's forlorn little offering of flowers al
most lost within it. Behind it came
two carriages with sad, sympathetic
faces peering from behind the win
dows. Its brief length passed the open
space, the waves of traffic closed be-
hind 1.-THE balm of spring descended
poor little lonesome funeral!
Good-by, Old World, l am going home!
What is home? Where is home? Home
is a thing have never known, thing
I shall never know. What's the use of
it all? Other girls make themselves a
home; other girls can stand it to live
continually Earring, never having
things they want, continually giving
up their way to some one elses
1t is likely that this girl will be
found alive. Thru her diary there
runs an undercurrent of selfishness
that forecasts her temperance, for
the selfish rarely kill themselves But
the noticeable thing in it all is the
habit of self pity. She went about
seeking sources of dissatisfaction with
life. She saw all that other girls had
that she imagined she had not, and
gazed at others in such jealous self
absorption that she saw and appreci-
ated none of the manifold blessings
and opportunities that fell to her own
lot She saw the loneliness of the
scanty funeral and not the tenderness
and love that followed behind the lit
tie white hearse, and would always
follow the little white soul that had
departed. She felt loss and forgot
hope, knew sorrow nor remembered
memory So with her life. She sat
beside the carrion of disappointment
in the, light of the corpse candles,
while the stars shone without.
Hers is a morbidity of selfshness
not altogether uncommon. Men, wom-
en- and youths who center entirely up
on themselves manifest much of the
same sense of life that the girl wrote
into her diary. The woman who eats
out her heart in envious jealousy of
her social rival, the business man
whose chagrin over a competitors
success is greater than his happiness
in his own prosperity, the school stu
dent always ready to knock" a school
mate, are manifestations of the same
spirit.
Self pity, envy and brooding are the
open gates to sorrow and discomfort.
The greatest lesson that any of us
learns is the truth that happiness lies
in wrat we do for others more than
what we or others do for us. 1t is
better to give than to receive. There
is more true pleasure in comforting a
favor than in receiving one. Some
men and women always win smile
and 9. hearty greeting wherever they
appear. These are the ones who for
get themselves, who see the smiles,
and il they meet frown turn from it
and forget.
So much there is of good and con-
tent and pleasure in the world, that
those who sit apart in self pity are
as tho they passed a garden of roses
and lilies seeking dog fennel. That is
what the girl of the diary did. There
were many to love her and be kind.
She hid from them in her seltishness
to write her discomfort and envy in
diary and cultivate self pity And in
time she reached the open gates.