Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1886 — Dead Souls. [ARTICLE]

Dead Souls.

An old physician remarked lately: “There is no study in human nature so difficult to me as a certain class of young girls. I spent a part of this summer with two specimens of this class. They had the usual amount of capacity for observing, and understanding, and feeling. They had been educated at much cost to their parents; both were constant attendants at church. “I saw nothing in their faces, manners, or bearing to argue that they were imbecile. Their mother was an invalid, nearing the grave. Nothing could be more touching than the patient, appealing gaze with which her eyes followed them, watching for some signal of affection. But they had eyes aud thought for nothing but a gown they were making. They were used to her love, her illness, even to the thought of her death. “I walked out with them through a great forest, under the solemn stars. They saw no beauty, no sublimity in them. They chattered incessantly of the new trimming of their bonnets. They were used to the meaning of the trees and stars. The only thing apparently to which they were not used were the changes in ribbons, puffs, and flounces. “I went to church with them, and listened to the great *Te Denm’ which has come down touts through many ages, and filled the hearts of countless worshipers of God. They nudged each other while they sang it to look at a beaded cloak in the next pew. “We physicians now test the temperature of a patient’s body, and if we find it below a certain degree, know that death is already in the heart. When I find so low a degree of temperature in the words, actions, and thoughts of a human body, I begin to fear that the soul within is cold and dead beyond recall.” Old John Eunyan taught us the same lesson in his picture of the man with tho muck-rake, who incessantly scraped together the foul, perishable stuff, and kept his eye bent on it, while the great world opened around him, and the wind blew, and the sun shone, and God waited for him behind them all. Do we, too, use this rake, and what is it that we gather ? Youth's Companion. Thousands Like Ilim.

She (in the morning)--Tom, dear, I wish you’d stop at Johnson’s on your way to the office and pay my bill for plants and seeds. It’s just $5. He —Five dollars! Strikes me that’s a good deal to lay out for that sort of thing. I should think half as much would have been amply sufficient. She (in the evening)—Well, Tom, did you pay that bill. He —No, I didn’t. Fact is, going down town I met Bob Bar, and bet him a Y that his head was smaller than mine. I lost —liis hat came down to my ears—and when I paid him I found myself dead-broke. lou’ll have to save the money out of your next month’s allowance for housekeeping.— Harper’s Bazar.