Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — A PARABLE FOR THE YOUNG. [ARTICLE]

A PARABLE FOR THE YOUNG.

Once there was born a man with a great genius for painting and sculpture. It was not in this world that he was born,*but in a world very much like thia in some respects, and very different in others. The world in which this great genius was bom was governed by a beneficent and wise ruler, who had such wisdom and such power that he decided before each being was born for what purpose he would be best fitted in life; he then put him in the place best suited to the work he was to do; and he gave into his hands a set of instruments to do the work with. There was one peculiarity about these instruments; they could never be replaced. On this point this great and wise ruler was inexorable. He said to every being who was bom into his realm: “ Here is your set of instruments to work with. If you take good care of them they will last a life-time. If you let them Set rusty or broken, you can perhaps have lem brightened up a little or mended, but they will never be as good as new, and you can never have another set. Now you see how important it is that you keep them always in good order.” This man of whom I speak had a complete set of all the tools necessary for a sculptor’s work, and also a complete set of painter’s brushes and colors. He was a wonderful man, for he could make very beautiful statues, and he could also paint very beautiful pictures. He became famous while he was very young, and everybody wanted something that he had carved or painted. Now, Ido not know whether it was that he did not believe what the good ruler told him about his set of instruments, or whether he did not care to keep on working any longer, but this is what happened: He grew very careless about his brushes, and let his tools lie out overnight w'hen it was damp. He left some of his brushes full of paint for weeks, and the paint dried in, so that when at last he tried to wash it out, out came the bristles by dozens, and the brushes were entirely ruined. The dampness of the night air rusted the edges of some of his verv finest tools, and the things which he had to use to clean off the rust were so powerful that they ate into the fine metal of the tools, ana left the edges so uneven that they would no longer make fine strokes. However, he kept on paihting and making statues, and doing the best he could with the few and imperfect tools he had left. But people began to say: “What is the matter with this man’s pictures? and what is the matter with his statues? He does not do half as good work as he used to.” Then he was very angry, and said the people were Oily envious and malicious; that he was the same he always had been, and his pictures and statues Were as good as ever. But he could not make anybody else think so. They all knew better. One day the ruler sent for him and said to him: “ Now you have reached the prime of your life. It is time you should do some really great work. I want a grand statue made for the gateway of one of my cities. Here is the design; take it homo and study it, and see if you can undertake to execute it.”

As soon as the poor sculptor studied the design, his heart sank within him. There were several parts of it which required the finest workmanship of one of his most delicate instruments. That instrument was entirely ruined by rust. The edge was all eaten away into notches. In vain he tried all possible devices to bring it again to a tine sharp edge. Nothing could be done with it. The most experienced workmen shook their heads as soon as they saw it, and said: “ No, no, sir; it is too late. If you ha~ brought it to us at first, we might possibly have made it sharp enough for you to use a little while with great care; but it is past help now.” Then he ran frantically around the country, trying to borrow a similar instrument from some one. But one of the most rein ark able peculiarities about these sets of instruments given by the ruler of this world I am speaking of, was that they were of no use at all in the hands of anybody except the one to whom the ruler had given them. Several of the sculptor’s friends were so sorry for him that they offered him their instruments in place of his own; but he tried in vain to use them. They were not fitted to his hand; he could not make the kind of stroke he wanted to make with them. So he went sadly back to the ruler, and said: “ Oh, Sire, lam most unhappy. I cannot execute this beautiful design for your statue.” “ But why cannot you execute it!” said the ruler. “Alas, Sire I" replied the unfortunate man, ‘‘by some sad accident one of my finest tools was so rusted that it cannot be restored. Without tbat tool, it is impossible tomake this statue.”' ’ • ‘ V' Then the ruler looked very severely at him, and said: “Oh, sculptor, accidents veiy seldom happen to the wise and careful. But you are alsb a painter. I believe Perhaps you can paint the picture I wish to have painted immediately, for my new palace. Here is the drawing of it. Go home and study this. ' This also will be an opportunity wortny of your genius. ” The poor fellow was not much comforted by this, for he remembered that he had not even looked at his brushes for a long time. However, he took the sketch, thanked the ruler, and withdrew. It proved to be the same with the sketch for the picture as it hau been with the design for the statue. It required the finest

workmanship la. parts of it; and the brushes which were needed for this had been long ago destroyed. Only their handles regained. How did the painter regret his folly as he picked up the old defaced handles from the floor, and looked at them hopelessly I Again he went to the ruler, and with still greater embarrassment than before, acknowledged that he was unable to paint the picture because he had not the proper brushes. . . This time the ruler looked at him with terrible severity, and spoke in a voice of the sternest displeasure: “ What, then, do you expect to do, sir, for the rest of your life, if your instruments are in such a condition ?" “Alas! hire, I do not know,” replied the pour man, covered with confusion. “You deserve to starve,” said the ruler; and ordered the servants to show him out of the palace. After this, matters went from bad to worse with the painter. Every few days some one of his instruments broke under his hand. They had been so poorly taken care of that they did not last half as long as they were meant to. His work grew poorer and poorer, until he fell so low that he was forced to eke out a miserable living by painting the walls of the commonest houses, and making the coarsest kind of water-jars out of clay. Finally his last instrument failed him. He had nothing left to work with; and as he had for many years done only very coarse and cheap work, and had not been able to lay up any money, he was driven to beg his food from door to door, and finally died rs hunger.

This is the end of the parable. Next comes the moral. Now, please, don’t skip all the rest because it is called moral. It will not be very long. I wish I had called my story a conundrum instead of a Earable, and then the moral would have een the miswer. How that would have puzzled y" i all—a conundrum so many pages long! And I wonder how many of you would have guessed the true answer. How many of you would have thought enough about your own bodies to have seen that they were only sets of instruments given to you to work with ? The parable is a truer one than you think at first: but the longer you think the more you will see how true it is. Are we not each of us born into the world provided with one body, and only one, which must last us as long as we live in this world ? Is it not by means of this body that we all learn and' accomplish everything ? Is it not a most wonderful and beautiful set of instruments? Can we ever replace any one of them ? Can we ever have any one of them made as good as new after it has once been seriously out of order ? In one respect the parable is not a true one; for the parable tells the story of a man whose set of instruments was adapted to only two uses —to sculpture and to painting. But it would not be easy to count up all the things which human beings can do by help of the wonderful bodies in which they live. Think for a moment of all the things you do in any one day; all the breathing, eating, drinking ana running; of all the thinking, speaking, feeling, learning you do in any one day. Now, if any one of the instruments is seriously out of order you cannot do one of these things so well as you know how to do it. When any one of the instruments is very seriously out of order, there is always pain. If the pain is severe you can’t think of anything else while it lasts. All your other instruments are of no use to you, just because of the pain in that one which is out of order. If the pain and the disordered condition last a great while, the instrument is so injured that it is never again so strong as it was in the beginning. All the doctors in the world cannut make it so. Then you begin to be what people call an invalid; that is, a person who does not have the full use of any one part of his body; who is never exactly comfortable himself, and who is likely to make everybody about him more or less uncomfortable. I do not know anything in this world half so strange as the way in which people neglect their bodies; that is, their set of instruments, their one set of instruments, which they can never replace, and can do very little toward mending. When it is too late, when the instruments are hopelessly out of order, then they do not neglect'them any-longer; then they run about frantically as the poor sculptor did, trying to find some one to help him; and this is one of the saddest sights in the world; a man or a woman running from one climate to another climate, and from one doctor to another doctor, trying to cure or patch up a body that is out of order.

Now, perhaps, you will say this is a dismal ana unnecessary sermon to preach to young people; they have their fathers and mothers to take care of them; they don’t take care of themselves. Very true; but fathers and mothers cannot be always with their children; fathers and mothers cannot always make their children remember and obey their directions; more than all, it is very hard to make children realize that it is of any great importance that they should keep all the laws of health. I know when I was a littje girl, when people said to me, “ You must not do thus and thus, for if you do you will take cold,” I used to think, “ Who cares for a little cold, supposing I do catch one?” And when I was shut up in the house for several days with a bad sore throat, and suffered horrible pain, I never reproached myself. I thought that sore throats must come now and then, whether or no, and that I must take my turn. But now I have learned that-if no law of health were ever broken, we need never have a day’s illness, might grow old in entire freedom from suffering, and gradually fall asleep atJast, instead of dying terrible deaths from disease; and I am all the -while wishing that I had known it when I was young. If I had known it, I’ll tell you what I should have done. I would have just tried the experiment at any rate, of never doing a single tiling which could by any possibility get any one of the instruments of my body out of order. I wish I could see some boy or girl try it yet; never to sit up late at night; never to have a close, bad air in the room; never to sit with »wet feet; never to wet them if it. were possible to help it; never to go out in cold weather without being properly wrapped up; never tc go out of a hot room into a cold, out-door air without throwing some extra wrap on; never to eator drink an unwholesome thing; never to touch tea,or coffee, or candy, or pie-crust; never to let a day pass without at least two good hours of exercise in the open air; never to read a word by twilight nor in the cars; never to let the sun be shut out of rooms. This is a pretty' long list of “nevers,” but “never” is the only word that conquers. “ Once in a while” Is the very watch-word of temptation and defeat. I do believe that the “ once-in-a-while” things have ruined more bodies, and more souls, too, than all the other things put together. Moreover, the “ never” way is easy, and the “once-in-a whije” wa is bard' After you have once made u 3 your mind “never” to do a certain thing,

thaUs the end of it, if you are • sensible Craon. But if you only say, “ This la a d habit,” or, “This Is a dangerous indulgence; I will be on my guard and not do It too often,” you have pul yourself in the most uncomfortable of all positions; the temptation will knock at vow door twenty times a day, and you will have to be flgliting,the same old battle over and over again as long as you live. This is especially true in regard to the matter of which I have been speaking to you, the care of the body. When yon have once laid down to yourself the laws you mean to keep, the things you will always do, and the things you will “ neoer" do, then your life arranges itself in a system at once, and you are not interrupted and hindered, as the undecided people are, by wondering what is best, or safe,' or wholesome, or too unwholesome at different times. Don’t think it would beasort of slavery to give up so much for sake of keeping your body in order. ‘lt is the only real freedom, though at first it does not look so much like freedom as the other way. It is the sort of freedom of which some poet sang once. I never knew who he was. I heard the lines only once, and have forgotten all except the last three, but I think of those every day. He was speaking of the true freedom which there is in keeping the laws of nature, and he said it was like the freedom of the true poet, who “ Alwayc sings In strictest bonds of rhyme and rale. And finds In them not b inds, bat wings.” I think the difference between a person Who has kept all the laws of health, and thereby has a good, strong, sound body that can carry him wherever he wants to go, and do whatever he wants to do, and a person who has let his body get all out of order so that he has to lie in bed half his time And suffer, is quite as great a difference as there is between a creature with wings and a creature, without wings. Don’t you? And this is the end of the moral.— St. Nicholas for November.