Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1875 — The Unsuccessful Family. [ARTICLE]

The Unsuccessful Family.

They were all unsuccessful, as the word S. Neither in their lives nor in their hs, in their marriages ar in their business, were they generally fortunate or happy. They had not inherited that Yankee elasticity which recovers instantly from every strain and misfortune. Whenever they entered upon a struggle they surrendered beforehand by expecting defeat, and thus they grew painfully familiar with the word “tail.” One son promised to lie an exception to this rule. A hardworking and honorable lawyer, he gathered together in early life a practice of which most veteran lawyers would have been proud, and made a new fortune as soon as he lost the old in unfortunate investments. But his brothers and sisters never enjoyed in their homes even a glimpse of his transient prosperity. The other son, a modest Methodist clergyman, had no clearer idea of prosperity than distant perspective could give him. Privation of luxuries had been so long his lot that he ceased to think of them as attainable. He even suffered privation of things necessary almost to life itself, and knew what hunger and thirst and heat and cold were as few men know them. His income never exceeded that of a pert and “ smart” boy in a New York banking house, though he was one of the best scholars his college—through which he worked his way—ever sent out, and his mind was stored richly with knowledge which he never displayed to dazzle the simple people about him. The sum total of the earnings of his lifetime a shrewd stock broker would make and lose five times a day. He never wrote any books or received any degrees; he did not live where there was a newspaper to report his sermons, and it is safe to say they were never advertised in advance. His life was a plodding and painful one, full of care and anxiety, unbroken by any pleasure save that which he drew from the love of his wife and children, and uncheered by the society of any but dull villagers. The eldest of the'sisters married young and foolishly. But of the story of the labors, the trials, the heart-breaks and sufferings of the woman who learns too late that the treasure of her heart has been poured out in vain, who shall write? The long years of hope that are without hope; the constant struggles which are foreordained to defeat-, the slow and reluctant transfer of love and watchfulness from a drunken husband to heedless and thoughtless children; the constant outpouring of affection where there is no return; the work of the worn fingers, stitching under the midnight lamp; the hunger for education and lor bread for 'her children that denies her either—these are to be read in more than one white and weary face you whirl carelessly past in the street The other sister was the happiest of all, for she had no history. The kind fates sent her quiet and obscurity. As a school-teacher she lived a sheltered life, save when one or two great storms broke over the barriers of her retreat. She never did anything remarkable, or achieved even in her limited sphere anything more than the half success that seemed to be the family characteristic.

They are all dead now, and the earth that so seldom seemed to have a restingplace for them lies green and peacefill above their dust. They were gone and their places were filled, as one wave follows another: they were gone and there * was no more trace of them than of the lines in the sand the wave washes away. They left no fortunes behind them, or fractions of fortunes; nor any fame —their very names were only known to a few score people. They had not even the happiness of a quiet decline. The lawyer lost his mind apd his fortune at one blow, and died uncomforted by a heartless wife and no less heartless children. The clergyman suffered in the body the equal of all his former distress of mind, and passed away as poor as he had come. The sisters lived oat their lives in the patient way of women to the very end. Failures? Wrecks? No! The minisawas carried to his little church on the tk hillside by loving parishioners whose hobnailed boots crunched. with a coarse, unfeeling sound the frozen, yellow

mud beneath their feet. The church Where he had labored was filled with mourners, for every child in the neighborhood waa in grief, and the very winter winds that moaned about the building seemed an echo of their mourning: No Spurgeon or Beecher could be more lamertted. If his memory dies it will not be. bacanre'it was unworthy to live. His brother was followed by all the laments tions of those whore helper he had been when he was able to others. His charity was original and even whimsical; it.sought out people who were not reached by the charitable machines, with their long titles and many officers— profane little newsboys, broken-down men and struggling The two sisters lived in the hearjH of all the children who knew 1 -them, and in the memories of all those wboifadloarted th recognize their silent Christianity. HeSaven is filled with failures like these. They were princes, but not of this earth. Their crowns glitter with the eternal-glory of thei stars.— N. Y. Tribune:.