Norwich bulletin., 1914-05-30
THE MAN WHO TALKS

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 Did you ever ask yourself what 1 dtsner Isl You know your own dinner I iiers you might not be able to recog- nize. Perhaps you might not be able 1 to tell without paueing whether din- Ilef is an eating match or sociai function. A person who eats infem perately might regard . dinner as an instrument of death and be quite F1gnt. How much difference there is between the dinner the workingman sits down to and the dinner which ends with the retiring of the ladies while the gentle
 men smoke and indulge in little wine: but in the loftiest circles the ladies now stay smoke and partake.
 too! This is as it should be. for what
 is good for the gentlemen should pc
 just as good for the ladies. To most
 people every special dinner is stuf- fling bee. The dinners as well as the {! diners are of variable characfer.
 Strange, isn't 1t! A dinner in the dfc-
 tionary Is just the principal meais but
 in the dining room 1t may be pleasure or poison. You can't tell what It IS
 till the returns are all in. !. You mark my word, the man who
 wants war with Mexico is not hgnt-
 ing man as a general thing; he is only
 the fellow who enjoys promoting
 tIOQDlc, UT WllO Iid6 6011tO sAk~cSAAC ~
 prof1ting by it. He never had deep
 feeling of patriotism and love of
 country which might prompt him to
 sacrifice his life for the perpetuation
 of the government and it's blessings.
 Usually he is like ArteInus Ward, who
 was willing to sacrifice all his wife's relations in defense of the Union.
 There are men who cannot get any
 nearer home with their feelings of sac-
 rifice than that. War is what no sane
 man wants, and every wise man would
 avoid. There is no doubt many con-
 fiict of arms has been precipitated by
 asa exaggerated idea of honor: There
 is an old saying that there are great
 many more fools in the world than.
 knaves. or knaves could not exist" What the world is yearnfng for is sane action and order.
 What kind of conscience have you
 got? Maybe you have one which Just
 suits you and you never ask yourself
 how it looks measured by the best
 concept. of this spiritual monitor. At
 times everybody speaks of conscience
 as if 1t was real possession; but not
 always as if 1t was real force. Mans
 conscience Byron declared. is the ora
 cle of God; and yet, with seemingly
 good conscience men have committed
 the most brutal acts. If you have a
 conscience which warns you as a
 friend before it condemns you as a
 judge" you have a conscience worth
 having. There are people who mistake
 a wholesome fear of the law or of the
 police as conscience. Conscience should only prompt us to do right but deiud- ed men have often discovered that in the name of the Lord they were guilty
 of doing wrong. It is necessary to be
 acquainted with your conscience and to live on intimate terms with it 365 days in the year. It was not made for doxr n r1x,a rfoxa It may be that in Bovee's day books could be defined as 'embalmed minds;" but in these days the general reader runs across books which needed en-
 balming but have been neglected. When. asked what I read it has to be confessed am not reading the latest i novels out. I must confess I usually find a little something of value in ev- cry book read. read the books my friends commend, and often some they condemn, to get the measure of their
 prejudices. have been guilty of read ing most of the religious and frrelig- ious tracts handed to me, which gives me a good view of the conflict of opin- l Ions and the narrowness of folks who are anxious to do good, but do not seem to know how. I read some books which. are left in libraries by the pee- l pie to gather dust and bugs, and often l ind truths in them which are popular l ly repudiated I am careful not to fur l nish my mind with rubbish, whatever I read, fer it is the way the mind is used which gives giadness or gloom to life. An Egyptian king regarded books as medicine for the soul, but I regard them as quickeners of the spirit and cheerers of the heart
 l came near writing May, 1914, had been a disappointment, when 1t has ! r,rx kAl k..-- other Mays since the cays when Eric the Red sailed along the New Eng 1 land coast. May never skips the ap- pie trees in bloom or the song of the orfole or the cold lamb storm; the violets and the daisies and the shad l blossoms and the bees are ever con- stant. The brown thrashers indulge l in long-distance talks, the catbird news in the hedges, and the whip poorwill keeps up it's lively repeti- i tfons from sundown till the break of 1 day; the swifts come and the midges and the rhubarb pie. There are so ! many things regular and constant to 1 May the lines of James Russell Low 1 ell. saying May is pious fraud of the l Almanac ghastly parody Of real I spring" only seem true in those ex- ceptiona1 Mays when we have two or three inches of snow May is the
 month when the ferns and the flow l CTS unfurl and man is inspired with l the Thought this is a very lovely world. May has been described as the month of little rain and little sun and little pearly dew" and what she gives us we ought to ex- pect.
 l An ancient philosopher warned us 'to let our speech be better than si- lence, or else keep silent. We have no doubt much speech is not better than silence and that we suffer much afl- noyance and many trials in life in l consequence of worthless remarks If could not always have been so. for there must have been a time when words were few and conversation Iimit- ed Now we have s60,e9 words fn 1 the dictionary; but the average man has command of only 300 or 400 words and is expert in making the most of the few words at his command A German proyerb says. Speech is hu. ] man, silence divfnet" In these days speech is fo1derol and silence rare It 1 is queer, but writers of long sermons usually preach to people who prefer short ones. It takes a person of marked ability to know what he wants to say and when the period is reached it is time to sit down Many speaker has won repute as a bore when he might have won favor as a sage had he known when to sit down. l 1t is a good rule to think all you speak, but do not speak all you think
 An old and apparently competent authority says Evasion is unworthy of us,' and have been forced to it