Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1876 — Activity Is Not Always Energy. [ARTICLE]

Activity Is Not Always Energy.

There are some men whose failure to succeed in life is a problem to others, as well as to themselves. They are industrious, prudent and economical; yet, after a long life of striving, old age finds them still poor. They complain of ill-luck. They say fate is always against them. But the fact is that they miscarry because they have mistaken mere activity for energy. Confounding two things essentially different, they have supposed that, if they were always busy, they would be certain to be advancing their fortunes. They have forthat misdirected labor is but a waste"of activity. The person who would succeed in life is like a marksman tiring at a target; it his shots miss the mark they are a waste of powder. So in the great game ot life, what a man does must be made to count, or it might almost as well have been left undone. Everybody knows some one in his circle of friends who, though always active, has this want of energy. The distemper, if we may call it such, exhibits itself in various ways. In some cases the man has merely an executive faculty, when lie should have a directive one; in other language, he makes a capital clerk for himself, when he ought to do the thinking of the business. In other cases what is done is not done either at the right time or in the right way. Energy, correctly understood, ig activity proportioned to the end.—Scientific American. Mr. Jam,es T. Fields visited Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail recently, and learned from him that he had been a freat reader of blood-and-thunder stories. le had read sixty dime-novels, all about scalping and other bloody performances, and he had no doubt these books had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous acts. J I - ! - “Charlie,” said*little Annie, looking at a picture of Santa Claus, think he could waddle in so many clothes.” “ And then you know, Annie, every time fie goes down a chimney he gets a fresh soot. ’ Time*. Five brothers in 1 ork County, Pa., are the fathers of fifty-three children.