Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1877 — Hidden Resources. [ARTICLE]

Hidden Resources.

“ There is so much economy practiced everywhere in the universe, where we know waste to be impossible in the tranaformation of matter, and feel that it must be correspondingly so in spiritual affairs, that -it is exceedingly doubtful whether there are any individuals on earth who are not possessed of some special aptitude, if they could only find it out. Even idiots may have their peculiar uses for some future generation to turn to account,‘if ‘that to which they are turned in the ,present in cultivating a divine .patience in the human breast be not sufficient; nur-can we quite think that is sufficient, since that is merely their use to others, and we fancy that every soul must be of some sort of use also purely to itself. But the majority of our lives are so tranquil, going on like the weather, driven try superior force from day to day, :«nd seldom taken in hand aad positively • directed by ourselves, that we have little . occasion to discover our one talent, the less so if it is anything at all out of the way," Women, especially, 'are so well taken care of by husbands, fathers, brothers, that they are not often piqued to any of -the discovery by much necessity . In girlhood they are occupied with little pleasures, interests, vanities, loves; as they .grow older, their day is filled with the care of parents, or of children, or of nephews and nieces; and thus they have mo opportunity to attend to the possibility of ffie discovery, and usually, so, no need •of «L And when this Is not the case, pleasure frequently refuses to resign with youth, or necessary attention to the poor occupies the time when the instincts that betray the aptitude might be obeyed. A lady of our acquaintance, then just on the edge of ft rty, discovered one day by pure accident her skill in dabbling in clay, made immediately her own tools, worked to make up for lost time, and is ■ow one of the distinguished sculptors of the world. Another lady that we know, thrown by a reverse of fortune out of a perfectly tame life among perfectly tame people, and in a tame part of the country, where art was little known, saw a piece of fine wood-carving for the first time, and examining it in a rapture, proceeded —like one inspired, but for her patience and her first failures—to draw hgr own -designs and execute carvings that now go far toward satisfying those who know the old Florentine and Veniti&n wood-carv-ing, and now has not only a certain source of good income, bat a delightful resource for all the rest of her life. And,. to proceed with our statements, an oM lady, wife the snows of eighty winters on her head, who honors us with friendship, lately took up the hew needle work, and ajthnngh feeling herself too old for completeexcellence, 'delights herself and all about her with her wonderful picture embroidery. Yet we think she need not despair of excellence, for another lady whom we have met, who had never known that she had any further ability with her pencil than that of giving her sitUdsen their early drawing lessons and evening amosemakta, on smog to Europe.

after her seventieth birthday, free and unencumbered by care, was so wrapt and And by the wander and beauty of the paintings in the galleries that she straightway took to easel and mablslick, and became In less than two years quite an accomplished copyist, and is still painting merrily away to about as much purpose as most of the crowd of younger students, probably painting all the better, too, while her outer senses last, for the deep experience of emotion and comprehension that her longer years give hes to Inclose with an illuminating power within her work, Nearly all of us think, after a little, even after to very little as forty years, that “ nothing is of any use now, and we are too old to make fools of ourselvcrs,” if we do not quote the old saying about Us being “ hard to teach an old dog new tricks,” and we sit down to rust out the rest of our days. Yet for certain things we may be too old—for those, indeed, that require supple joints and swift movements—but perhaps for nothing else. It is not positively sure that because this one is superannuated at threescore and ten, therefore we shall be, and that there is no time to do, if there is will. Old Parr —for whom fate had to step in and conquer a " confirmed habit of living,” with every organ in perfect health at one hundred ana fifty-two—is not the only longlived inhabitant of this planet; human life, under "to easier conditions, is lengthening with every generation. None know for a certainty that they may not be as long-lived as llupazoli, who had the good luck to have a share of three different centuries, whose gray hair changed to black at one hundred, and whose teeth returned to him at one hundred and thirteen, who wrote and worked to the last, and who must have looked on himself with awe, it not with fright. There are, indeed, a round dozen of names of various men and women who have lived well and happy all the way from one hundred to one* hundred and sixtynine; and a book of English statistics tells us of twenty-oue persons dying, between 1700 and 1839, over one hundred and thirty years old, thirty-nine more at one hundred and twenty, thirtysix at one hundred and ten, and fifty-four at one hundred. And if at Pliny's time there were, accordingto census, more than one hundred people between the Apennines and the ro over a hundred years in age, what shall there be in this day, when there is everything to encourage life ? Of course these few instances are but beggarly ciphers in comparison with the millions of the earth; but nobody knows who is to figure among the ciphers; and if it should happen to be our own chance, how very agreeable it would be if at any station, the fortieth, the fiftieth, even the seventieth, when the world acquitted us of care, we had discovered any peculiar talent, with all our powers fresh and vigorous to pursue it, and had not neglected to cultivate it because it was “ all nonsense at our age” to begin, and we didn't want people laughing at us! And even if we are not going to live to these antediluvian bounds, it is as well to put ourselves in condition for enjoyment .for the ten or twenty years that we probably shall live after passing that Rubicon where we thiuk it is too late to learn. Tea years, in comparison with these vaster numbers, seem but a breath; but in reality there are very many long weary days and weeks and months in them, as looking back on any last ten years, and all they have held,* will show us; and whatever will legitimately lighten and brighten those ten years of life, if ten they are, it is safe to say should never be neglected. Moreover, we cannot brighten time for ourselves without brightening it for others, for everybody around us; brightening it not only by interesting them in our pursuits, by giving them something more to take pleasure in than they otherwise might have, bnt by giving them also the sight of a cheerful face and a contented spirit from day to day, than which there are few things to make a house pleasanter, and whose opposite can imbitter life spent in a palace. Let as all feel, then, that it is flever too late to begin anything that is in the least within our powers or desires; and, as the days pass on, let those of us who have not found it be looking about ns for the secret seed that time has not yet developed within us, but which imbaftial Nature must have given U 9, which we shall bring to Hght as our hidden resource of pleasure in those days when the grasshopper may be a burden.— Harper's Bazar