Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1875 — Mind Your Own Business. [ARTICLE]

Mind Your Own Business.

When you begin life make two resolutions and stick to them.* First, to mind your Own business. Second, to lit the business of other people alone. These people who are always med"dHng with the aflhirs of others are a nuisance, and ought to be legally u abated,” like any other nuisance. We would as lief live near a soap-fat boiling establishment, or a petroleum refinery, as near one of them. If you belong to that class of nuisances we pity you, for your life is an uneasy and unsatisfactory one. You can never be happy, because it is utterly impossible that you can find out everything which is going on in your vicinity. What is it to you if your neighbor does bring home a brown paper package and a covered basket? You wUI live jtfst as long if you never know what they contain. It is none of your business. Suppose Mrs. B. has got anew bonnet? How does it concern you? Your life, liberty and sacred honor are in no way imperiled by the fact. Suppose she did pay ten dollars for it? The money does not come out of your purse, and consequently it is none of your business. If the minister does call on Ann Eliza Smith twice a week, why exercise your brain over it? What if he is courting her? Let him court away. Suppose she has got an awful temper and powders her face, as you say she does? Her temper wiU not trouble you; and as for the powder—why, just you find us a woman who doesn’t powder! Don’t be forever poking your nose into other people’s business! If one young lady “ cuts out” another young lady, it is nothing to you. That is for the young ladies themselves to settle. If neighbor Small keeps two cats, and feeds them on beefsteak, don’t let it har row up your feelings. That is Small’s affair, not yours. If Mrs. Small throws her dish-water out of the front door, let her do it, and enjoy it; it doesn’t concern you. Don’t sit up nights to see how long there is alight in Miss Bell’s parlor when the young lawyer is there. If Miss Bell thinks him worth the oil burned, it is nothing to you. He isn’t making love to you or any of your folks. What if they do have three pairs of stockings apiece every week over to ’Squire Hill’s? Haven’t they a right to? As long as you don’t do the washing it need not trouble you at all. And if Hill’s shirts are three inches tynger than common, don’t excite yourself about it! If you hadn’t been watching the clothes line you never would have known anything about it, and “ where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” Mind your own business thoroughly, and you will find little leisure to attend to the affairs of others. When you feel as if you must learn what they are having for dinner next door, take the Almanac, or the President’s message, and read it through faithfully, and by that time you will feel as if you didn’t care a picayune about anything—not even the affairs of your neighbors. — Kate Thom , inN. T. Weekly.