Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1875 — Making Excuses. [ARTICLE]

Making Excuses.

It has been said that a person who is good at making excuses is good for nothing else. Nature never accepts an excuse, the law seldom does, and yet in ordinary affairs of life excuses play a large and pernicious part. There are some people half their time in inventing excuses for what they do in the other half of the time. What a pity this inventive power could not be directed into a useful channel, and made to benefit instead of injuring their fellow-men! The habit of making excuses grows on what it feeds upon. ■ If excuses were never accepted they would be seldom offered; but, on the contrary, our whole primary school system is built on a plan that fosters the fabrication of excuses, many of w hich are little better than lies. There is a story of a school-master who called up one of his favorite scholars and asked him why he was late. “Oh,” said the little excusemaker, “ I dreamt I was going to California, and when I heard the school bell I thought it was the steamboat bell.” Glad to avoid punishing his favorite, this absurd excuse was accepted amfy the delinquent pardoned. We fear there are too many parents and teachers so w illing to accept excuses that they greatly encourage excuse making, and indirectly encourage lying. As these pupils grow older and begin to feel a personal .responsibility for their actions, they naturally fall into the habit of making excuses to their own consciences and of deceiving themselves. How quieklyran ingenious excuse heals the prick of conscience! We do not mean to assert that, frail and imperfect mortals as we are, we should require perfection of our fellows, nor, like Shylock, demand that the letter of the bond be fulfilled. Justice must be tempered with mercy, but sometimes we must be cruel in order to be kind. Nature’s law’s are inflexible; there is no escape from the severities of her just penalties. If we breathe infected air through ignorance, we suffer as much as it we had entered it with full knowledge; ignorance of the law does not relieve us from its Our statute and other laws distin^ii^l between murder committed with premeditation and malice from that committed without forethought. The insane escape punishment for their crimes, however heinous. The man who shoots his sister by accident is at once acquitted. But does the bullet discharged by accident, or by a lunatic, or by anyone in the heat of passion, prove less fatal than it would had murder been intended? 'The severed artery, the pierced lung, the congested brain listen to no excuse. To him that is murdered it is all one whether it w r as premeditated or not. The infraction of any and all of nature’s laws brings as certain punishment as. does Recorder Hackett's court, nay, more certain, if less speedy. The tight shoe, whether of satin or cow’hide, worn voluntarily or involuntarily, by a city belle or a rustic clown, is sure to produce the well-known corn. Undue exposure leads to consumption ; over-study and excitement produce brain diseases as frequently in the pulpit as in Wall street. How often are people engaged in Charitable w T ork stricken down by diseases incurred ip the fulfillment of a holy mission! Most undeserving of such a fate, we are inclined to exclaim; but nature ac.cepts no excuses. Violate her laws, and ye die! But what is the great harm in excuses? we thi'nk our reader begins to inquire. First, it encourages story-telling, untruth, prevarication and white lies. Second, it makes people careless. Railway trains are our best examples of punctuality; if you reach the depot but fifteen seconds too late, you are left and must wait perhaps for hours. It is of no avail to tell the doorkeeper that your delay was unavoidable, that the omnibus broke down, or the street was blockaded, er the car ran off the track. People know that the rule is as inflexible as the law of the Medes; they do not flatter themselves, as does pie tardy school-boy, that their excuse is a good one, and thus loiter along at a convenient gait. One of the blessings of railway travel is that it makes people more prompt and more diligent. The banks are another class of institutions that will not accept excuses; if your note is not paid by three o’clock it goes to protest. It matters not that the money promised you fails to come to hand in time, the train bringing your draft was delayed by snow-arifts, or the telegraphic remittance was stopped by a broken w ire, or the messenger on his way to the bank fell into an open coal hole and is maimed for life —the bank asks none of these questions, it listens to none of these excuses; the law is carried out. -

The poorest of all excuses is forgetfulness, and the best method of cultivating the memory is to resolve never to accept this excuse from yourself nor make it to others. “I forgot” and "1 didn't think” have caused untold misery, and should be stricken front the vocabulary of even - ambitious youth. Conductors and switchmen sometimes,forget that a certain train is due, and the next morning we read in heavy head-lines: “Fearful Railroad Accident! Dreadful Loss of Life'” The innocent (?) conductor is acquitted of the murder because he renders an acceptable excuse, and history on repeating itself. In some Eastern countries, it is said, when a house burns down, the owner, instead of getting paid for it, loses his head. Fires are not of frequent occurrence there. The old saw that where there is a will there is a way is true more frequently than is generally * supposed. Let a man know that no excuse will avail for the omission of duty, and nine times out of ten he will contrive to accomplish what he had supposed to be impossible.— Scientific American. . A member of. the German Parliament, who recently made a journey through Turkey, writes: “Our so-called Christian brothers are for the most part canaille, sheep-stealers and cut-throats; and the respectable people one meets in the Orient are generally Turks.” The Postmaster of Mulgrave, Can., will never abscond with the funds of his office. The gross revenue last year was, $9.01, while he was allowed $lO for salary.