Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1879 — Be Kind to the Living. [ARTICLE]

Be Kind to the Living.

We live in a world where nothing is sure. To-day our friends are about us, in the freshness and bloom of health and spirits; to-morrow we bend in anguish over their still forms; and it is well iFnobltter regrets mihgle~winr the tears we shed upon their white faces. Oh, life is insecure, and the brightest and most promising of all our treasures may, perhaps, soonest droop and fade. And when one dies, bow anxious we are to do him homage! We speak of his virtues, we excuse his faults, and spread the mantle of charity over his vices, which, while he‘ lived, we had no patience with. If we only had, we might have won him to a better life. Haa we exercised toward him a little of the forbearance and kindness with which we now speak of him, he had had fewer faults. How often his heart ached and cried out for human sympathy—for our sympathy — we may never know; and if we could, it is too late to undo the past, too late to Soothe and benefit him. We may not take up the broken threads of a life that is gone, and weave them into a web of nope and joy; but toward those who are still left to us, who have ears to hear, and hearts to throb with pain and'grief, we may be generous and just, forgiving, loving and kind. Do not wait till the faithful, devoted wife, who has tried so hard to make your home pleasant and comfortable, is dead, to show her kindness. No funeral pomp, no costly monument with loving words inscribed thereon, will make up for past neglect. Could the fond kisses that af&now imprinted on her cold llpq, and the murmured words of endear-

mont that fall unheeded have been here while would have been no v wide world fonder or Do not wait UH th patient mother an heart that has Joy, or beaten wil

account, to do memory of all t—she has perfr fancy all the womanhoodT * n deep and r V reverence tender In

ished upj 610 Toteni |o M p W ,nle<i by * c^*' r t * ,c l |>wer house of the general Thq with tbnstituiion, to that the only purpose’ best. properly bo considered by an honphere ,gi 4 ] a | Ol . t w |, n cares fur ths oath of of* while 8 J 18 ,Ov '‘’ * a ,he P n ” H B'‘ think, P <-‘losest- possible degree, will conform be brow only requirement of the conatitu-

Bek unforti:. Kind w them, f good.—) l ' K

It is a colty of massing the eouhttw, with j of English a U g population, to that an exact advertisement )e gC ci lre j ) j g perhaps close sffiT"\rin any case, and B * x diitricts with lew not only offers to gfive wiili less than 7,500, presses a willingness qo, and three with less beside. The contrast i >M)n dislriclg whu .li the custom in our own, ... marked that it never fafl” 0 1 the attention of the reader 1 ” t 0 a.senator cite comment. The idea of te etate. We ing oneself to a farmer for the 12,000 votpurpose of learning his “art” w w j,h over a very novel one to nine hund gil w | th ninety-nine young men out of ; sand in this country. Necessity f oo ’ mftk ’ gland compels a thorough knowt- 500 to of agriculture by those who propose* and follow it. The soil must be understood, -

and the most approved ways of tilling it must be adopted, else small is the hope of getting from the small-sized farms sufficient to remunerate for the time and labor expended and the capital invested, to say nothing of being able to compete in the markets with American products. The English farmer knows that we can raise beef on our Western plains cheaper than he can do it, and he distinctly sees in the near future a possibility of being wholly worsted in that competition any circumstances. To do IM' Itty best he can is his only alternative, and doing the best he can includes the keeping of his soil up to the highest standard of fertility and raising the very best cattle that the world can produce. To do this requires a high order of intelligence ana a thorough acquaintance with the general principles and with the details of farming. In this country there is no such incentive. Our prairies are vast, and as fertile as any soil in the world; and the country is not yet old enough for the soil to have become sufficiently exhausted to excite any apprehension for the future, especially among the unthinking. The more thoughtful, of course, deprecate our usual exhaustive system of cultivating the soil, and foresee trouble unless there is a reform. But no such fears will become with the masses while the erroneous 1

idea prevails that the country is nearly boundless in extent, and exhaustless in fertility and resources. Plow and sow, and the harvest must ripen, is really the belief of our people. They do not think that intelligence or even industry has any thing to do with it, except to perform these primitive acts. It is this belief that prompts the advice to the unemployed of all classes to go on the farm. It seems to weigh nothing in the minds of such advisors that those whom they advise have often passed the meridian of life when it would be thought the very height of folly to entej upon any new mechanical business, or indeed even to embark in any mercantile business in which they had no experience. Horace Greeley said that a man ought not to change his business after he w i as thirty-five years old, unless he was a horse thief, and he stated a very excellent rule of life. By that time habits have become thoroughly fixed, and are usually too stiff to be bent to any new course of living. If our people were crowded upon -a small territory as the people of England are, and if the soil needed as much intelligent care as the soil there needs, the entire population would not think, as they now seem to, that anybody can be a farmer, and instead of urging an addition to our agricultural ranks from those who are inexperienced in that line, some of those who are now farming would find it necessary to increase their knowledge or leave the farm. This—would not only be found true of many owners of farms, but itwould be alarmingly true of farm help. If our farmers were compelled by the smallness of their farms, the constant necessity of feeding the soil, and bv a competition in which natural advantages were against them, to reduce agriculture to a strict science upon every farm, that every foot of lana should produce the very greatest yield in that which was most profitable, where would they look for competent help in sufficient numbers? How many farms are there in this country whose owners would be willing to leave them in charge of the help—the best, perhaps, that it has "been possible lot~them to secure. There are thousands of them- A man who can thus be trusted with the care of every department of the farm-rwho knows what to do and how to do it, in the field, in the barn, in the dairy and among the stock —and happily, although tod few, there are many such—need nevdr be without a place or to work for low wages. His knowledge of his business is real capital to him, and usually it is not many years before he is his own master and the owner of a farm. But when there is one of this kind, there are ten who take no interest in the dischargeof their duties, and lack of interest Is a prolific source of general ignorance of any business. The day’s duties are performed in a mechanical way and the work improperly performed. The eye of the farmer must always be upon such help even to insure the work being imperfectly done, and at the end of the season ■losses are found in the neglect to properly cultivate-the crops, to properly garner the harvest, in the rough handling of the cows and other sjock, and from the general incompetence of men who are as unfit for the farm as they would be for the pulpit, and perhaps more so.— JFwteni Bur al. A merchant down town sella more of Dr. Bud’s Cough Syrup than all other medicinee together. It surely must.be the best remedy for • cough.-- —7 '

and a handkerchief. He chewed ,on B uo for tbe one • ntl used h * B thumb swallt i»d ex finger in default of the latter, his mejnedium within then shouted for light, ing subho curtain being withdrawn, revealed more eas_ l)a ]|y encalo j j n the habiliments of £wiEn’E nor ' Faulkner or meat out, u P on t 0 assist, and the two state duce immediaid the medium up, still bound is prompt actiond carried him to the foot- • hen asked to unbind “ Why should we gracefullyton’s birthday more than miuv. ® , tUMed a teacher. “ Because he never” xuggea lie! 4 ’ shouted a little boy.