Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1880 — Hard-Headed People. [ARTICLE]

Hard-Headed People.

Thu hard-headed man is almost in“oorarfnL ”L»ekr” he sayslucre 8 shod w * rinceu* No him with bugaboos or tha dark; and no, clergyman’• talk of remoefle -or the judgment-day affects him now. flfi Wait nr done wrong; why should he be afraid? Nobody ever mistook his oharaoter. He was known a* a “ longheaded fellow” when he played nram-ble-the-peg and wore petticoats. His father never romped with him; and his mother, telling the dear old Bible stories, stammered when she caught his keen, incredulous eye. Angels, she remembered, did seeyi so very unlikely after all, when one looked at thing* in a common-sense way! and as for the old heroes and martyrs she was ashamed to let him see the glow of soul with whieh she thought of them. Could they have really found no more pr&ctl cal method of introducing the Gospel than by going through the rack and fire?

He was a cynical little doubter as a boy, but now, as a man, he Is well knewn as a Christian to all his customers and as a tradesman to all Christians. Not that he is a hypocrite. But he prefers church-going people as patrons; they pay their bilU promptly. And he thinks that the Christian religion teaches sound business principles. It is honesty that wins in the long nm in the market; and it is the fair dealer whose profits are the biggest. He is so successful a man that the public always {pvo him credit either for genius or uuk; but he has neither the one nor the other. He simply knows the market, and has no higher aim than to please it. If he is a tradesman, he catches the farthest glimpse of the coming whim of fashion and fills his shop with it. If he is an author, his are the “made” books, which nobody can do without; his pictures, if he has given himself to art, are those popular studies of babies and young mothers at prayer which are first marked “sold” in exhibition rooms. If he has devoted his life to science, he seizes the crude invention of some visionary fellow, gives it a practical use, Eatents it, and makes his fortune. If e is a physician, he is always at hand as an expert on trials; yon will seldom miss his name out of the papers. If he is a clergyman, he is always master of the sensation of the hour, ready to preach upon any subject upon which the publio has temporarily gone mad. It really does not matter to him where the horse goes, so that he sits astride it. Other men, in short, tumble sometimes upon good fortune hiding in the field; he lies in wait for it, catches it wjien it is fattest. He knows how to bide his time; he is le chat qui dort. If he happens not to be a man, bat a woman, you usually find this shrewd hard-headed citizen a thin-lipped, paleeyed leader of the “ best society,” whether fast and fashionable or sternly Sious depends altogether on the accient of ner position. She is usually, however, so immaculate as to her own morals as to have no mercy for any shortcomings in others. The New Testament system of charity, in her opinion, is crude and lax. If she had been there she would have given the man beset by thieves a ticket for work to a ward committee, instead of oil and wine; and she would have handed the Magdalene over to a policeman, to make sure that she sinned no more. This lady is always known as a capital manager of servants, seamstresses, church suppers or her sons’ wives. She can get an incredible amount of work for small wages out of the people in her kitchen. Her neighbors (easy, thriftless creatures, to her mind) look on with envy. Neither she nor her masculine congener has at heart the slightest faith in any man or woman but themselves. It is they who can lay an unerring finger on the one black spot of character which your friend keeps hidden, be it freckle or bloodstain. They know human nature. You shall not humbug them!

The possessions of wealth, of public esteem and of ideas of this hard-head-ed citizen are all so substantial that he is the man whom the world always envies most. It does not love him probably half so much as some luckless, lovable, sinful Lazarus starving at his gate, who had not the crumbs from the rich man's table here, and is net at all sure of Abraham's bosom hereafter. But what of that? He has been shrewd, rational, praotical. He has sought solid goods in the world; money, influence, respect—and he has gained them. As for that vague, cloudy world of love, friendship, imagination, he knows nothing about it; he has invested nothing in it' and he expects no dividends. His neighbor, a widow in rusty black (one of the easy, irrational sort), gave all of her labor and thoughts to a sickly husband and son, who are now both dead. What improvident folly that was! NoV, the most real things in the world to her are the love they gave her, the Heaven to which they are Sone, the God who cares for her and lem. He listens to h§r as to a dying man who babbles of green fields that live only in his fevered fancy. God and Heaven and love are only poetic names. Perhaps, as he nears the end, the withered little atom of a heart in him stirs feebly, and craves a late tenderness front some one, a son, or more often a grandchild. It is not often ?'ven. It was net for love he worked. hen, one day, he lies down in the middle of his solid goods and goes out. They all are left, but he is gonb. His hands yonder must be quite empty. His forlorn little neighbor is gone, too* but people talk with a smile of the’ home which was ready for her and the friends who were waiting. There are certainties which outlast money or goods upon which our hard-headod friend did not lay liis hand.— N. Y. Tribune.