Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1880 — Never Quite Content. [ARTICLE]

Never Quite Content.

Robert Collyer holds that it is both the curse and blessing of American life that we are never quite content We all expect to go somewhere before we die, and have a better time when we get there than we can have at home. The bane of our life is discontent We say we will work so long, anti then we will eiyoy ourselves. But we| find it just as Thackeray has expressed it “When I was a hoy,” he said, “I - wanted some taffy—it was a shilling—l hadn’t ‘S'M’ When I was a man I had a shilling, but! didn't want any taffy.” But ,w». say not one word against that splendid discontent* that all the while makes a man strike for something better. We like this iitoa that every boy l»oro in America dreams of being Preskiont. q man has any right to lie content to do his beet, - and not to dohMI ter to-morrow than he is doing to-day. But all that will come by keeping ajjpse manly and dutiful life. * While we are going steadily along Jtei whatever future awaits ns, the grandest thing we cun do is to feel sure that what we are doiug for a day's work, withal! that We do l>esides, is just tiie most blessed thing,* so far as we can do, and that we very likely having the liest time that cap ever come to oar life; that this work and wife and home and children, all they are and etii they mean, heat the world. The saddest thing in our life is our discontent when we ought to be more contented. It is our birthright to get the good of life as wc go along, in these simple and pare things that to all true man and womanhood are like rain and sunshine to an-" apple tree. But when we will not beliStte? this, and dream that the best of our lifejH to come when we have made our fortufly theu we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. But worse than Esau, the pottage gives us the dyspepsia, and then we lose the good of birthright and pottage together.