The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1913-05-29
WHEN THE DAYS ARE DARK
AND DREARY.
EDITORIAL: The Minnesota Mascot. }

1t is raining today.
The sky is overcast and a depressing
grayness fills the air.
You look out upon the landscape and
you feel chilled = the very looks of it
makes you shiver.
But you remember that it is May and SO
you put on your hat and step out.
You find that the chill you imagined
while you were inside is reality when
you come outside.
You turn back and you seek the shelter
of the place from whence you came.
You sit down and you hear the patter of
the rain upon the roof.
What day for meditation, thought!
Your mind refuses to take up the ordi-
nary work of the ordinary day and SO you
sit and think.
That is, you do not really think, you sit
as man who looks at panorama and
you see, with your minds eye, scenes
come and go-scenes from the early life of
one you knew years ago yourself of the
long ago. For you~are not the same self that
you were twenty, thirty or fifty years ago.
"The times change and we change with
them.''
You may not be a new man, but decid-
eddy you are another man.
As you sit there and view the passing
show how you wish you could once more
take an active part in some of the scenes
that Memory stages.
How differently you would do it all were
you to do it all over again!
How foolishly the actor who takes your
part, plays your role, seems to act.
How different the stage looks when you
view it from in front of the footlights!
1t is easy to see the mistakes when the
other fellow is doing the acting
But Memory soon shifts the scene she
puts on another reel and this shows you a
more pleasing picture.
You now behold yourself occupied with
things that please and surrounded by
friends who smile and make you glad, for
Memory has many pictures and can suit
almost any mood.
And as you look back, away back into
the years that are gone, you see faces
faces that have passed away, faces that have
''dispersed and wandered and you greet
them, salute them, with the soul-kiss of
dreamland.
These were the friends of your youth
and you think as they come and 60 upon the
canvas of Memory that there never were as
loyal friends as these.
Why is it that the scenes and the friends
of long ago grow more dear as time and
space twixt them and us increases9
Surely the friends of fifty years ago
were made of the Common clay that
now constitutes the rank and file of hu-
man kind.
But there is reason.
Somewhere, away back, you too were
young, you felt within you the fire and
fame of youth and the kindred spirits that
then associated with you were bound to
you with the iron cords of youthful fellow
ship. These faces and forms that come
up before your mental vision, as Memory
unfolds the scroll, are part and parcel of
your youth just as much as you yourself
are.
That is why you love them so = that is
why they seem truer, better, purer than
the friends of your later years. The
friends of your youth are dearer to you
than other friends because your youth is
dearer to you than any other period of
your life.
Softly the rain comes pattering on the
roof and you hear it trickle from the
caves You are about to break the spell,
about to tell Memory to fold her scroll and
be gone.
But just as you are contemplating this
Memory plays you a trick-she shifts the
scroll and you see before you the living image
of your first love. How many times have
you not laughed at your foolishness when
you have thought of this particular ex-
perence, but today you can not laugh.
You look deep into the brown eyes and it
seems that some strange voice speaks to
you, and although you know not what it
says and cannot hear sound, yet when
Memory folds the scroll and the young
face fades away you are not in the least GER
tain about having been foolish away back
there in your teens.
And still it rains.
Memory now shifts the scene once more.
She will not let you go.
This time she shows you adifferent view
1t is a small school room with wood
stove in the center and several rows of old
fashioned double desks with teacher S
platform in one end of the room.
How plainly you see those blackboards-
how well you remember, even to the cracks
| in the plaster of that room!
| And then there is teacher"
How you used to look up that teacher
and wonder how it was possible for one
person to know as much as that teacher
knew.
| Again the panorama moves and you see
large gathering of people. 1t is COM
mencement. You are no longer in the