Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1883 — The Death of Little Children. [ARTICLE]

The Death of Little Children.

I scarcely know how it is, but the deaths of children seem to me always less premature than those of elder persons. Not that they are in fact so, but it is because they themselves have little or no relation to time or maturity. Life seems a race which they have yet to run entirely. They have made no progress toward the goal. They are bornnothing further. But it seems hard, when a man has toiled high np the steep hill of knowledge, that he should be cast,-like Sisyphus, downward in a moment; Ibat he who has worn the day and wasted the night in gathering the gold of science, should be, with all his wealth of learning, all bis -aocumulions, made bankrupt at once. What becomes’of all the richness of the soul, the piles and pyramids of precious thoughts which men heap together? Where are Shakspeare’s imagination, Bacon’s learning, Galileo's dream. Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton’s thonght severe ? .Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last a thousand years! I am content to believe that tike mind of man survives, somewhere or other, his clay. I was once present at the death of a little child, and when its breath was gone, its life (nothing more than a cloud of smoke) and it lay like a waxen image before me, I turned my eyes to its moaning mother, and sighed out my few words of comfort. But I am a beggar in grief. I can feel and sigh and look kindly, I think; but I have nothing to give. My tongue deserts me. I know the iiratility of too soon comforting. I know that I should weep were I the loser, apd I let the tears have their way. Sometimes a word or two I can muster; a “Sigh no more j” and “Dear lady, do not grieve!” but furtlier, I am mute and useless.

A French chemist has analyzed the juice of the so-called milk tree of Central America—to the nutritive qualities of which attention was first drawn by Humboldt —and has found that the vegetable product really possesses many characteristics of cow’s milk. •* No crop Bhould be grown which leaves the soiljpermanently poorer, or, in other words, which does not pay enough,over end Above cost of g«wa§ to maintain fertility.