The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1911-07-01
MIDSUMMER
PHILOSOPHERS
(By 0. Milton Smith.)

I
I've heard of the dismal, ghoulish
song Of that botaman grim who dwells
where the Stygian streamlet glides
along by the meadows of asphodels.
| I've read in books of ancient lore
of terrible fate that awaits the luck
less wight who's ferried o'er, and be-
yond the Elysian gates. I've been told
of lake of sizzling fire that burns
through eternity, with specially
caloric little grill they are keeping hot
for me. But I've made up my mind
in these later years that no matter
what fate i get TIL wait till it comes
before III howl, for they haven't got
me yet
One live man is worth, for all practi-
cal purposes, a whole cemetery full of
dead ones, but he must be alive, and
not merely pretending to be in order
to get out of the worry and bother Of
funeral A chap that is so conern-
ed about what is going to happen to
him after he has furnished days
work for the undertaken that he can
not do anything better than bewail
and bemoan his awful condition, ism t
much of help to society. He is neith-
er useful nor ornamental. Everybody in
my family has so many personal devil
ments to think about that none of us
will stand for having any of the 9th
ers even begin the relation of a tale
of woe. If the presumably intimate
relations among the members of a
family are not sufficient warrant for
unloading an epic of agony once in a
while then / guess the world at large
is not going to be especially tickled
with the job of acting at Father Con-
fessor for all our natural and acquir-
ed cussedness. We all have troubles,
and there comes to each Of us q time
when it seems that our inmost soul
is clearing house for all the trouble
in the world, but it ism t so. One day in
the summer of 1889 you were in the ut
termost depths of mortal anguish about
something or other, and you were
very sure that no other person on
earth had quite so much trouble as
you were having that day. Now, l
will wager three quarts of excellent
canned peaches that you can't tell
me, nor anybody else, just exactly
what it was that you were troubled
about that day. What do you sayf
All that remains of sorrow is mem
ory, and often that memory is more
pleasant than otherwise Life itself is
but a succession of memories, some
pleasant and some not pleasant, but
mostly pleasant. You can't taste the
delicious confections you ate on We'd
nesday, but you remember how good
they were--you Just remember, that s
all And so ! am not going to allow
myself to be fretted and worried out
of heaven today by something that to-
morrow will be nothing but a men,
ory, for look! it is almost tomorrow
now.
One day-it was July 4th, to be ex-
act and exactness is necessary just now
Colonel Breckenridge met one of
his old exslaves, an old man nearly
centenarian, and he gave the old
man, as was his invariable custom on
meeting him, dollar. He said to the
old darkey: "Well, now, Unc' Ben,
that dollar will about last you
won't its You must be about ready
amt you9' But the old man show
ed his toothless gums in wide smile
as he shook his w'ite wool, and re-
pI1eu: NOf SAL, MATS NunHci, hoi
sab! All ain gwine die dis yeah,
sab; aim gwine die dis YEAH"
"What makes you think you won It
die this year, unclef' the colonel ask
ed. "Well sab, Mars Kunnel, y'u see,
sab. All been notice fer de las seb I
yeahs dat ary yeah when All done lib
to reach de Fo'th oh July All alters
done libbed out de balance oh de
yeah, sah!" Maybe this sort of phil
osophy would not be sufficient to sus-
tain the more sophisticated among us
in the times of trouble, but, accord
ing to the intelligence of old Unc' Ben
it WASH t so bad. In fact, believe |
think it was pretty good for nearly
anybody. You get the scare-not
the fear, for that is born in you-of
death out of your mind and you will
be worth three Tins as much to your
self and society. You are only worth
about one third what you ought to be
because YOU are scared stiff about
dying all the time Tt is not that
you dread the pain of dissolution, or
what comes after death, it is simply
that you are not ready. Nobody ever
is prepared for death. Josh Billings
said "Thare is two (2) things in
this life for which nobody ever is
quite prepared, and them two (s)
things is--twins. He might have
made it three-twins and death