The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1912-07-18

The Banner is authorized to announce
Y THOMAS w. ROBERTSON
as reelection District Attorney for this,
the Second District subject action of the DEM
ocratc voters at the approaching primary election.
RAINY DAYS.
Let us consider little of 'trainy days."
It is especially for the young people who
will be the middle-aged people of fifteen
years hence and the elderly and the old
people Of twenty years hence. We who are
middie-aged and elderly already usually
are pretty we'll set in our habits and ways
and with nine-tenths of US talk is useless,
no matter how strong or sensible it may be
or how completely our sober judgments
may approve it. About one in ten of us,
men and women, who have passed forty
years have the character and strength OF
will to change our modes of life and meth
DDS Of conduct when convinced that they
are wrong or foolish; but the humping big
majority of US who have been living or do
ing some way between eighteen and forty
will 60 on to the end in that way, be it
good or bad. When habits of twenty years
are at war with judgment and conscience,
judgment and conscience must be REIN
forced by will stronger than moet of US
have before they can win. Therefore we
are talking now especially for the young
whose habits are not fixed, who have yet
the priceless privilege of fixing their habits
and shaping their lives.
In every generation of the countless
generations since the beginning every in
dividual who has lived to be forty years old
has looked back to twenty and sighed over
it and thought s. how different it would be,
how differently l would use these twenty
years if l had it to live over again, know
ing what know now" How many sins
which have stained our lives would be
stunned, how many mistakes which have
marred them would be avoided. All of us
know that our sins and mistakes are i'm
mortal. We can see that with our eyes and
understand it with our minds. The mistake
we make to-day will be felt by our children
and their children and will be handed
down and down through generations of our
posterity to the end, somewhere hundreds
or thousands or millions of years hence.
The mistakes of those of us who are living
and active now may be felt by our poster
ity ages hence. There is fearful RESPONSE
bility in living and doing and being. If We
could sin by ourselves and to ourselves a
reasonable and daring man might bring
himself to conclude that he would enjoy
the pleasures Of sin while they lasted and
when they we're exhausted take his chances
of a hereafter and accept his medicine at
the final accounting, if it is to be. But
aside from the fact that human limitations
make every sin and vice and luxury tire
some and deadly dull and q torture after a
while, is the other fact that we cannot sin
alone. Sean the Ten Commandments and
all the precepts of the Scriptures, the
teachings of every religion and the moral
doctrines of the people who undertake to
hold themselves above all religions. We
find no offense against even the primal and
most moral laws which does not involve
somebody else beyond ourselves. Even
the secret thoughts of our hearts, if they
are evil, infect us with moral contagion
with which all who come within reach or
speech of us must be infected. If we per-
nit ourselves to be moral or intellectual
thorns and thistles we cannot expect those
who feed on US to gather anything but
wounds and bitterness and misery. So as
we do wrong we promulgate and perpetu-
ate wrong doing in others, who in their
turns spread our baleful influence, precept
and example. Everybody accepts the
commandments. Even Bob Ingersoll in
his time acknowledged them to be sound
Study them thoroughly, from blasphemy
to covetousness, and say whether you can
violate any one of them without injuring
or injecting somebody else. And, going
beyond them, can you gamble or drink too
much or squander your money Or neglect
your family or tyrannise over it or talk
lightly of sacred things or unsettle faith
and belief, without injuring somebody
else? We have thought sometimes that il
hell was no more than the showing to us
of our own lives and the evil we have done
and the far-reaching miseries and crimes
resulting from it-maybe from mere idle
word or gesture or infection of the voice
there would be no need of fire or birthstone
to make eternal and poignant torture; and
that if heaven was no more than the op.
portunity to understand the far-spreadine
good results of the good we have done anc
tried to do and the opportunity to live agar
the lives we have lived in the light of the
experience we have had, with opportunities
to correct our mistakes, to undo the conse.
quence of our own i'll doing, to avoid oul
sins, to do as we should have done, We
would not need harps or crowns or golden
streets or even quiet and shaded pastures
by still waters to make US happy.
But to go back to the "rainy days." Il
is the beauty and the glory and the strength
and power of the average decent American
citizen to work the heart out of his body
anh tn oo chahhv md norhopo hnprrx