The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-08-22
" ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.
| Tragedy!
| It's dark spectre turks round every
corner.
! 1t skulks in the offing.
| 1t peeps through the blinds.
| All is fair, sunshiny, normal and
| pleasant in the seeming.
Then suddenly-you look up and
there leers it's black shadow. And it
bodies forth. Jumps at you. Has you
| by the throat Chokes and shakes
and harries you.
You fight it off.
But it overwhelms you.
And finally you succumb to it's
malignity.
| lign forces seem to concentrate and
spend their fury on some defenseless
personality.
The latter is sucked into it like
straw into a whirlpool and with as
little ability to resist it's force.
Say what you will the individual is
not free agent.
He is just as helpless in the hand
of fate as his fingers would be if
clasped in wise.
You cannot declare that life is to
do with it what you will.
When you say this you put yourself
with the unthinking and the foolish.
For everybody knows that your life
is not at your own disposal.
Life is a great, cruel, remorseless
Juggernaut which rides down every
thing in it's path.
Without mercy, without discrimina-
ton.
Into it's relentless NAV are fed ev-
cry kind, color and degree.
And think not that you will escape.
For the fiends will overtake you
sometime and fix their talons in your
hair.
Justice is an ideal state impossible
to either nature or man.
Nature is never just.
She goes on her course, blindly or
; intelligently as you care to look at it,
But never justly.
She eliminates or develops as suits
her purposes. Those strange, myster.
ious and inexplicable purposes which
, she directs through the ages.
But of humanity she takes no &C.
count.
We spend our time fighting natural
forces both within and without.
. And while we may tame and sub.
due, we never conquer.
Knowing, therefore, with how little
consideration we are regarded-in
truth not regarded at abby the god
of things, humanity, it might seem
would establish standard of it's own
And see that justice is melted out
, between man and man.
But is this done?
You only have to take cursory
glance at the history of mankind to
give the sardonic shrug.
Men have from the beginning fought
and bit and scratched each other
both literally and figuratively.
The ideal raised high to the world
by Christ is, supposedly, what human
, tits is struggling toward.
But although there is a seeming on
ward impetus it oftener than not look:
to the pessimist like the horse in the
tread-mill that appears to be evel
, climbing but is only standing still.
And curiously enough, his equilibri
UNI is maintained by constant slip
ping back.
Society is pitiful spectacle.
Pushing and hitting and envyin,
8 and hating and killing and snar1ing
l. Taking advantage of every infinitesi
:. NAL part of an inch. Arraigning on.
f another. Furnishing for it's own pc
e sin. One set of human beings tor
e turing and tormenting another set.
|. Everybody splitting venomously a
s everybody else and only smiling whel
|, they can push the other fellow int
y the discard.
a And always-never forget that-be
J. lieving the worst
d Always, always.
It Go to the police court, in instance
d Here is one of our boasted institr
tions wherein municipal justice is SUI
IL posed to be dispensed.
Aside from the circumstances whicl
n may or may not call you there, tn
n interest centers in the methods pul
o sued toward the alleged straightenin
out of the tangled skein which
h wound round the municipal spool eac
e day.
o 1t is interesting.
n Also amusing.
j. The judge portentously seats him
s self at the desk.
e In walks a Wonderful Being VIII
d strikes an attitude and begins
IS May it please your honor and thu
It and so and all the presidents to tn
d contrary and notwithstanding I kno'
absolutely nothing about the cas-
e. still / maintain that-but on accoun
ID of the previous ruling-therefore, as
% was saying and SO knowing that
IS must retire into the offing and consul
n Page S91, statutes twelve and thrice
If still l am positive-and so-and a
l was saying, as you know yoursel