The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-05

| shy Oh IlONollleS-HeW DOCKS, new races
new years-from some mental twist
which makes it difficult in me to face
| the prospective. Charles Lamb.
! Do you feel that way at all?
| To a certain extent I do.
| But l am very much ashamed that
do and very sorry for all who are of the
same mind with the old essayist and
me, for much as I love Charles Lamb
think that dread of change is a very
| wrong attitude and one very perilous to
| happiness.
| Let me tell you my own experience
along that line.
| do not think I have ever approach
| ed change in the routine of my life
without dread, and yet SO far I can
truthfully say that 1 have never passed
| through change in the routine of my
life which has not left me happier in
the end.
I can remember, for instance. how I
hated to leave my high school days be-
hind-how sad felt to think that when
the pupils gathered next year 1 would
not be among them.
And yet was far happier at college.
l can remember how 1 dreaded to
leave my college home-what a painful
day Commencement was to me and how
many tears I shed at breaking off the
old friendship. disseminating the ia
miliar routine and leaving the old
haunts.
And yet have been far happier since
In my work.
Several men. who by unexpected
time or another in their lives have been
jolted out of comfortable hooks and
sent to hunt for new opportunities. have
since told me that hard as the changes
seemed at the time they have lived 10
look back and bless them.
A woman who some years ago was
obliged to take up her household goods
from the home where she had lived the
first thirty years of her life almost
heartbroken. has since confessed that
the happiest years of her life have,
after all. been spent in the land of her
adoption
A girl who once worked in an office,
under what she regarded at the time as
ideal conditions, and who was obliged
by circumstances to leave that pleas
ant sheltered niche and strike out into
the world. admitted to me the other day
that the change she thought so bitter
at the time she has come to know as a
blessing. because it brought her into
touch with the opportunity to de
infinitely better work.
am afraid I shall nevY reach the
point where the first contemplation of
change will not strike some dismay
to my heart. but 1 think 1 have reach
ed the stage where l always try to
argue myself out Of this foolish atti-
tude.
And I think anyone who is inclined 70
dread changes should try to do the
same.
Does some change threaten you?-a
change of management in the business
ton, a new mode of living, the end of
some particular phase of your exist
ence. change Of residence. the neces-
s1ty for making new friends or doing
some new kind of work.
Then remember what has happened
fn nfhPr Nnnnla nd 10 Lot &c
be depressed. Remember that the very
road you are dreading to enter may be
the highway to the greatest happiness
Of your life.
And take with you as you go forward |
some words have learned to say toll
myself when I also come to an unex-
pected and undesired turn of the road |
The old order changeth yielding place
to new.
And God fulflls himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt
the world" -Tennyson.
"Baby-saving organizations have
been springing up everywhere like the |
eockleshells in Mary Contrary's gar
den. Isn't it about time now that |
second childhood received some con-
?"
1 saw that query in a mazagine the
other day and heartily approve of 1t,
only-before second childhood gets
us snare want 10 put In word for
another class-the least considered
folk of all, I think-the mfddIe-aged
people.
Childhood and youth are always in
the limelight because of their happi-
ness and their romantic quality. And
DID age gets more or less into the line
light by reason of it's infirmities, if in
no other way, but the middIe-aged
folk-the people who are neither ro-
nantically old nor Economically young
they seem to be perpetually cast for
the parts of scene shutters or at best
Of chorus and supers
And I think it's a shame, and
singing reproach on the younger gem
grafton, to whose selfishness the eter-
nal colorlessness of their elders lives
s usually due.
A woman came to see me the other