Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1887 — The Misanthropist. [ARTICLE]

The Misanthropist.

He lived like a hermit, crab-like in his gilded shell of a mansion, and said he was a misanthropist. He devoted his entire time to gloomy forebodings and was never so happy as when drawing grnesome comparisons between the* times that were and the times that are. He would pinch a cent, deprive himself of the common necessities of life and preach sermons on the subject of economy to , the veriest beggar who applied at his area door for food. Across the wav lived a little widow whose sole delight in life was to bring up her only child—a sweet little girl—as a sunbeam. The misanthropist detested the child, her glow and warmth, her red cheeks, round limbs. Her merry laughter was saw-teetli to his ears; and her appearance of a bright summer morn when the sun shone brightest, when the birds sang sweetest and when the skv was bluest, was an eyesore to him as lie drew his dingy curtains apart and looked forth from his cheerless room upon the loveliness of nature in her gayest robes. Some men begrudged human kin the light of supreme bliss because the song, the light, and gayetv are choked out of their natures by the weeds of misanthropy. This was the sort of a man my liermit-like Crab was. He hated to see a single human being enjoy life, because he had tasted of the sour. The cup may have been of his own brewing; the misanthropist’s generally is. Day after day the gloomy man sat in his dull room, brooding on days gone away back into the dusty, musty past. Day after day he conjured black nights of woe and shadows of despair as he chewed the cup of discontent and advertised himself to the world as a hater of mankind, a genuine specimen of the real misanthropist and—- ******* A grand transformation scene has taken place. The misanthropist has gone away. He is here, yet not here. From the windows the cobwebs have been dusted. The green grass has been cleared away from the area steps and the milkman flirts with the rosvcheeked waiting maid through the bars of the gate. The little widow lives in the grand mansion; the owner of the mansion is daily trying to win the widow’s lassie to call him “papa” and—another misanthropist’s frail structure goes to smash; and another mystery remains unsolved. —Detroit Free Press.