The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1916-02-11


or later become salt. No one goes for
water supply to Great Salt Lake in
Utah, or to the Dead Sea in Pales-
tine. Anybody can float in either of
them, but to get a mouthful of the
water is like swallowing the salt eel
lar and the pepper caster all at once.
Chicago really owes it's supply of
sweet water of Lake Michigan to the
river st. Lawrence. The old Scandi-
navian story is that some greedy sail
or bought from the fairies a machine
which would grind out salt. 1t filled
his ship. 1t made him rich-but, alas,
he forgot to buy the secret of making
it stop grinding. Ship and machine
are still grinding at the bottom of the
ocean, and that is the reason why the
sea is salt. The earth is such ma
chine, always supplying salt to the
springs and streams. The water evap-
crates and leaves the salt behind. For
the ocean has no outlet.
If lake without an outlet tends to
grow salt, so does a life. Some ty-
rant comes along in the flowing cur
rent of nations history and under
takes to do everything that is proper
for his people in his own time and way
He dams back energy. Then comes a
revolution. When certain volcanoes
that are much given to periodical
erupting cease to erupt, the people
who live near them and are familiar
with their ways, begin to predict a
violent outbreak and pack their goods
to move away. They know the fire is
there and that in time it will make for
itself the outlet it has lost and make
it with rush. When note the grow
ing tension on the countenance of the
Handicapped Mr.. Bang" | ex-
pect a speedy eruption. One of the
services his wife and children do for
the world is to act as lightning con-
ductors to defect his explosions from
friends and strangers to their own de-
voted heads. They afford an outlet,
and without such relatively harmless
vent Mr.. Bang might blow himself to
pieces, as more than one INSTRUCTED
volcano has done in the history of the
world. His wife will get no Carnegie
medal for heroism, but she may de-
serve one more than some heroes |
have known.
Note, however, that it is the people
who possess some elements of power
who need an outlet. There are placed
people who seem content to take life
as it comes to them, living like a fun
gus on the bark of decaying tree.
But think how much Mr.. Bang
might accomplish if his eruptive fore
es could only be harnessed, as Maya
ra is, and turned to some useful pur-
pose. He might have been a preach
er or a lawyer of the talking sort.
The fact of the matter is that the Sc
cret of our discomfort is often found
in the too partial employment of our
powers. We have salt moments when
ever an outlet fails. Everybody needs
some competent form of self expres-
sion. That is one of the trials of
youth, and also of special disability.
The young man feels that he is kept
under and cheated out of his right to
do his part. The energy expands with
in and finds an outlet. He does not
understand that he is still at school
and that he will get his chances at
last if he only learns his present les
sons well. The blind man feels that
he is throttled in his darkness. The
instinct of finding or of making, out
let's for our real selves is one of the
strongest of all human instincts. The
energy is there; the outlets are lack
out!
1t might be interesting to enumer-
ate some of the methods by which |
folks deprived of normal outlets have
tried to make or discover others for
themselves. There was man knew
about whose fund of energy was not
exhausted in his occupation as
schoolmaster. He found an outlet in
writing verse and sending it to edi-
tors. ! never saw any of his verse
in print, but he must have noticeably
reduced the deficit of the Post Office
1t had evidently become
to be kind of juggler's trick to see
how many poems he could keep on the
editors desk and in the mailbags. /
found my dear friend knitting yester-
day when / called. The click of her
needles made pleasant accompani-
ment to our talk about old times and
friends. Dorinda most
teaches class in Chicago
Sunday school, Rupert is Boy Scout
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