Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 14, Number 85, Decatur, Adams County, 8 April 1916 — Page 2

From My Narrow Little Window By THE HOOSIER OBSERVER LAST YEAR’S BIRD’S BEST.

Out in our back yard cherry tree ; < there is a last year’s bird’s nest. We s might just as well unmoor It and i throw it out first as last. The bird t which dwelt therein last year turns up its dainty little nose —It It has one i —and flies away to other forks where . it begins all over again, its annual task of building a new nest. Never would it rejurn to the old one. And : it’s not worth keeping for a souvenir, either. 1 thought as I peered into its fadedbrown sparse and shriveled-to-grinning shallowness, how happy we would all be, if, like the bird, we would throw to the universe, all our last year’s bird’s nests, figuratively speaking. Figuratively speaking, of course. I do not mean how fine it would be, to up and away, like the gypsy, or like the cheaper-to-move-than-pay-rent-folks; or the miserable fly-away man or woman who every year finds a new affinity and divorce —for the birds, themselves, remain true to one mate through life. » What I really mean by last year’s bird’s nests, are all those memories of things that sorrow and haunt; traditions and habits and all that hamper and bond our growth, and pin us to the dead past. • * * « Oliver Wendell Holmes told it more beautifully than that, in his poem on "The Chambered Nautilus.” The nautilus is one of the mollusk family. The shell is spiral. Internally it is divided into chambers, by traverse curved partitions of shelly matter. In a very young state, this structure does not exist, but as the animal increases in size it deserts its first habitation, which then becomes an empty chamber, and so proceeds from one to another, still larger, occupying the outer only, but retaining a connection with all by means of a membranous tube which passes through the center of bach partition. The head and arms

I ONE HALF THE TIME HAS PASSED IN THE Big Furniture Sale at Yager Bros. & Reinking’s THE UP-TO-DATE FURNITURE STORE Come in and let us prove it to you, that our prices are right, cut d wn in Price everything marked in plain figures from which we will give you a great reduction. OUR GOODS ARE ALL NEW. Many have bought for future delivery. You will miss it if you overlook tins, the greatest of Furniture Sales Decatur has ever hid.

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• r a Polished Oak China Closet at $28.75 was $36.00 China Closet at $26.00 was $34.00

YAGER BROS. & REINKING — : I Opposite Court House, East Side. DECATUR, Ind liitiillil ' ' ’ """”

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can bo protruded from the shell. The shell begins very small in the center and increases, the building being spirally around it. In his closing verse, Holmes draws therefrom his lessou for the soul: “Build thee more stately mansions. O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.” But the bird's nests are more com monly known by us. And every per son is harboring and saving and pre serving somewhere in his life, an old out-grown, faded, meager “bird's nest” that is of no use or ornament Why not throw’ it away and progress' » » * » Os all the miserable “bird's nests.' "pasts” are to me the most foolish By "pasts” I do not mean some deei and awful crime-covered life, such ai is portrayed in every stage melodrama by a black-haired, hand-rubbing Rc lentless-Rudolph type of villain; 01 black-robed, red-eyed, tear-stained checked Magdalene. I mean the things in life, whether mistakes 01 uplifts, things that are dead and gons and can never come back, or nevei be altered. Why worry or even be glad over them? Why not forge them, and taking them as steppin! stones, pass upward and over then and higher. What you have done ii the past, profiteth nothing further What you do tomorrow, means much If you must worry, worry over wha you should do now and not what yoi did yesterday. The mill can neve grind with water that is past. Livi in the present and future and not ii

the past, however pleasant. • * * * "Habits and customs" are last. ‘year's bird’s nest, it is well to -get | ■ a good habit and keep it, but habit I can become too stereotyped, too wallI enclosed for growth. Keep enlarging j the circle of the habit or custom tin- ; til life’s spiral becomes larger and larger. Because somebody else is doI ing something and it has been done j that way for years and years is not ■ a hide bound reason why you should keep on doing it that way, without ; change or improvement. Inventions [and discoveries come by doing things I “your” way and enlarging on them I once in a while. ■ * * • « ’ Os all the last year's bird’s nests r tho most to be deplored, because of ’ i the vast ill it works to the individual and the community in general, is a protracted and exaggerated “mourning.” Os course bereavement hurts, i, and its influence when free from bitterness may have a hallowing effect. There are memories that soften and refine. But a useless, ceaseless e mourning for what is dead and gone, has a blighting influence. The living are with us yet, and need a cheering 1 uplift that is not provided by the gloom and trappings of mourning. A woman who lost her daughter, years ” and years ago. seems never to have risen above the sorrow. She weekly visits the tomb and lays thereon 1- flowers and sheds tears above it. r- Her hours at home are given to planB- ning for her next visit there and the 1. flowers she will take. She neglects s her living family; she throws a mantle t. 'of gioom aver all arid gains nothing !? —not even her own peace of mind — rather accentuates it. She did what „ she could for the daughter when she ' was living. There is nothing more 1 she can do to help her. Her sorrow • I) iR is selfish. a** * * e- There are some who cherish use>r less, foolish mementoes —souvenirs. I- if you please—of the departed people ,e or events. They cherish “last words.” >r however trivial and meaningless they le may be. They cherish the clothes >r the person last wore, even though they ie may be harboring thereby a race of at germs and thousands of their offig spring. I think that tuberculosis and ra other things that were once supposin ed to “run in families” run more in r. the rags and trappings and heirlooms h. of the deceased which the bereaved it relatives cherish according to the cus>u tom of sentiment and against the 3r sound sense of science —than anyre thing else. How much better it would in be to rise above the material thing

|LS»w va. a 'S. ?. W* !...*>*• ' .. •■ w ■ JMu . ■ - v ■ ■ - - . - . •_.;. ..'A asl* ' . ■■ '' Now is the time to buy the Piano you must buy—remember now wc can save you from $75.00 to SIOO.OO on a good first-class instrument. iiinirir i 11 Win I ■ - iit -| li—■!■■■——m — —IM ■■! i I iii-j nruir i*w» * «•«■«** -mu T »|» ■a< W’ifrM im in mrwnw wu»> j. i twr: i- .

” ( and think of the spiritual. Such uor-[ row and mourning savors of idolatry, which requires a visible, tangible something upon which to bestow affection and worship or for the involution of memory. ♦ » » » in Pennsylvania, where I visited several months with relatives livid n maiden holy who “mourned” for the death of her sistci. Their little rooms retained the furniture; the closets the clothing, the sugar bow! the sugar, and everything was left just, as it was when last the deceased slater saw It. The sugar was molding, the j clothes in the mahogany chests were becoming moldy and moth eaten and worse than useless, although there were many needy ones around; and the grief of the living sister was ae centuated vtith every glance she cast about the room. Not long ago I met a woman who told of the loss during shipment of her clothes of her recently deceased daughter and how she had lain awake the entire night in worrying and crying about it. Yet she has many pleasant memories of her daughter's life and goodness to : her, a more lasting comfort than ma- : terial habiliments that brieflly stir- ' vive the body and then, too, pass ■ away into dust could bring. i • * » * ’ The other day I dragged out a ' whole box of “last year's bird’s 1 nests.” It was, and probably is. the ’ custom for sentimental young girls to save and drag away to a “memory box” souvenirs of various occa--5 sions. This box was one of many ? years ago. We girls carefully saved ’ every paper napkin used at a party or club and “those present” wrote their * names on them. Then there were 3 little favors given; and candy hearts with mottoes that boys used to give r to their “girls;” and pressed roses and carnations and other flowers that boys and girls had given us; or may- - be some were from the bouquets laid . on the caskets of deceased friends, a And there was a piece of a splinter ” from the horribly wrecked train in y which several scores of persons were s' killed—that a woman had given mo y and I had painstakingly wrapped in f cotton and laid away. There was a small bottle of some sort of medi 1 cine as a keepsake from the case of -a deceased physician which some 1 morbid woman, had bestowed upon s me, knowing I was a friend, and 1 wh|th I had 'conscientiously saved. - There was a piece of silk bolting tak--3 en from a mill on the historic Mis- - sissippi wnich a boy friend had once 1 visited and described to me so glow- ? ing in the fanciful language of ybuth;

[then. too. there was "• P”'' , (h( J I j abber ring on wheih one | I Jones’ twins had choked ■' i when a baby. 0, there and yet uuothci si "< ■> • )t > that "memory box. H” “, .. ... to look them ov.-r and »’ulX foolish a..:’ trliw tW „ow. With some 1 „„ associate any memory. Umy much rag, or dried greens or j«”3.” It was good that I could not retain ail those little, memor'es The passing of J•' ■ little the beginning of the> spiral , they were all JaEt years birds ne ,to be abandoned for. something new. Like last year’s bird’s nests, should' be all grievances and fancied sUghU ( and injuries to the feelings a.d junthatreds. Better that they ■ never be. but like sparrows nests, . they oftentimes find, lodging where they should not and make things unpleasant. So. if ,he> ' be. hurry them into things of the. ’ past. I always remember In our La > in translations, iHiout "Juno “ urs >"B . her wrath to keep it warm. 11 - bird’s nests of wrath and hatred ami i anger, if kept in snug condition, become brooding places for still nion and all sorts of horrible things are j j Hatched out. .i♦ ♦ * * ,' Like last year’s bird’s nest should , be the boast of "faallly achievements -'and blue blood." It is well to come .' from a "fine" famHy. There is muc . Jin that. 1 am otie of the strongest 1 i believers in eugenics—in fact I think r I it is a crime for people to mate tinr less physically, and therefore mentalP I ly and morally perfect -hut it is all s j foolishness to boast of those in the ' family who have lived before us. uns less we ourselves come up to the t notch. Make a last year’s bird’s nest ■- of your ancestors’ achievements, the i great things they said and wrote and i did. Get busy yourself, building your r own new nest and chirping your own i song. Leti what your forbears did. e avail nothing to you, beyond a good o example. n * * ♦ * a S, - ing is here —the time of rehab i ilitation and the new birth. The new if onion sloughs off the old skin; the e new potato leaves behind the wasted n shell of the old; the butterfly leaves 1 the old cocoon; they all leave “last year’s bird's nests" to which they - never go back. e WANTED —Hang your pape:, lie pet bolt. Clean paper 75c a mom, cal ; phone 14-R--Jim Ccverdale. -46 t

WE T ONIG rtT ONLY DE’ RUE bRO ideal minstrels Spectacular ‘ 2E™ Singers. Dancer- and tsupe.-b lutrodueinS OUI orchestra, und < Os BOBBf Dfi RLE BILLY’ DE Rl E 4ND -A Satan for the lilin-s’’ .. Tha t Talkative Man AetB _ -Eight TURNER BROS, mneararne with tins Company First American APPea-. b WM. SEARb o_nANCERS AND COMEDIANS—B ••Sunflower Coons ALLEN & FLAHERTY • ( ■ > Gold Dust Twins -, , || i rnl npx city QUARTETTE}!/ Webt-r u:d Tenor; Coffin, intone; \\eb«r, Deifeffitorf, basso. i / L FMPiRE SICAL TRIO i VONDER & BELMARE / Wo-Id’s Champion Comedy Barrel Jumpers «n M XI wc. NEW. STARTLING FEATt RES t (’uarar.tetd Best Minstrel Show Ever Here 1 GRAND STREET PARADE AT NOON ” ‘ Remember the Date Tickets now on sale at Holthouae Drug Store • 1 ppices —2sc, 35c, 50c and 75c i J I

i VHitwITO THOSE INTERESTED IN ADP AMS COUNTY INVESTMENTS. e Dear Friends: d We have an investment that we are r sure will prove attractive to some n one who is not satisfied wife a sma . 1. farm but who wants a farm that gives d him an opportunity to make some money as a purely farming propose tion, and at the same time gives him )- a chance to make some money as if an investor. e This particular farm that we have d in mind is one of l? 0 acres, situated is two and one-half miles from Berne >t (which in itself is a sufficient explay nation as to location, pleasant neighbors, good market, good schools, churches and people). This farm is ” in a good state of cultivation, has 1 been well kept and well managed, ti The fences have all been rebuilt and

•’ '■ I I d ' Wt r c , i I . Jl'-U » Uh .' I IT Sas' ' »»«—wJar i ’’ ; ! ■ -' I' 1 ! i 11 r I : W * > W f d^X e quite a number es these fins Kitchen Cabinets during sale. 1 Cahinlt 66 t^ n . ew Porcelainiron Table 1 top Cabinet. Reduced in price. -—... li

■ r ’ the buildings repaired and kept ia I I good c ondition. The tarni has betx I ; v. i ll clovered and drained and »•>«-. I iof the opinion that it has many sp a I ' rurcs that will appeal to an axubi 3 | tious farmer and investor. This farm if for sale at reasons!!, | ; figures and it is in the market pral ' trade. In fact, we will be glad u I have you tall at our office (next ta:| I to the postoffice) and'taik to ug abot l ’lit. Or if you drop us a postal earil we will come to see you about it I Yours sincerely. II THE BOWERS REALTY CO. | F. M. Schirtaeyer. | : 8312 French’ Quiiiu. PLEN TY OP MONEY. s' To 'loin on farms. 10 years' tlni ; g without renewal, no commission, puH tial payments any time. t ’ -A.-ts ERWIN OFFKE. " r— —, ."■.— x _ - -- -■■■ -.-- - *r- %r*9