Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1874 — Against the Tide. [ARTICLE]

Against the Tide.

The Chicago Interior says : “ We have great respect for that large class of the human family whose energies are given to ‘ bearing up.’ It is a fine thing to do things, but a finer thing—to just stand it. Host people are in that defensive attitude. We all start out aggressively; events push us hard. First we slacken; then we halt; then back up against a wall and bear it. “ The castles inr the air drift into darkness, and ambition's pictures become dissolving views, and the man finds himself under the sober skies of forty with empty hands, bending shoulders, unmarked days in the present,' uncertain odes in the future. The fame of fortune that nerved his young life is under the horizon. The stimulus of hope that held him up is wasted and gone. Forge and anvil, spade and shovel, from morning to night. The mortgage clings io the cottage, and hard work cannot lift it. Doctors’ bills take the surplus. Grayhairs are col mg, and the monotonous years wear on. There is nothing ahead to look to, and nothing in the present to notch the days save a little harder work, a more restless night, and gradually failing strength. Under this gathering gloom the than does nothing fine, thinks nothing greaf,; he only bears bravely up. If the neighbors ever give a man a thought it is only to say: ‘Poor fellow! things go hard against him.’ But blessed is the man who can go against things and hold

his way with buoyant heart t under * skies that are ashen and sober,’ over '-leaves that are withered and sere.’ In God’s reckoning of the human lives there will doubtless be a great reversal of estimates, and for the comfort of those who make no-headway > against wind and. tide it will appear at last that ‘they also serve who enly stand and wait.’ ”