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Show THE NOTICES SERVED ON MEN. In the rush of the world men are apt not to heed the notices served upon them. The average aver-age man of the eastern states would be perfectly willing to pay his share of the taxes were the Government to set its warships in array and at an expense of a hundred millions, take in some island isl-and of the sea of about the area of an average western state, an island peopled by savage tribes which it would require another hundred millions to subdue. But the same provincial when a proposition prop-osition is made for the government to advance a few millions for the purpose of converting a great area of desert land into fruitful fields, grows Indignant, and cannot see why the Government should "assist western any more than eastern men to cultivate their soil." He does not stop to think that perhaps his own son will want a section of that land, nor does he consider that if some spots are redeemed from the desert they at once become be-come a part of the heritage of the nation ; a better heritage than any sun-kissed island out at sea "where every prospect pleases and man alone is vile." But nature is keeping watch and on every spring time pour3 the melting snows down eastern rivers flooding the lands adjacent, wrecking villages, vil-lages, ruining crops, and leaving for the autumn a drought and a second failure of crops. These are notices to that same eastern man that ho must do something, that he must find a way to check the annual floods, in a measure, at least, and must learn to stop their destruction when they come. When he accomplishes tnat he will have learned that except for moisture all the earth would be a desert, and that an acre of land even in the east, with an inch of water under control to feed that thirsty soul is really more valuable than two acres without the water. When he learns that he will have broader views. Again, in the west, Nature long ago embossed her alphabet upon the rocks, and men who have learned to convert that alphabet Into words and sentences can study out where it may be profitable profit-able to search for valuable mines, even though they be guarded by the desolation which nature has wrapped them in to protect them from the search of the ignorant. Every man lost in alcoholism is a notice served on those who think they are safe from the drink habit to be careful lest destruction be just beyond. be-yond. Every rich man who has won wealth without honor is a notice to the world, no matter how he may seek to conceal the fact, that he is walking in the shadow of his own contempt and that bis soul is every day crying "Sleep no more," the Macbeth within "has murdered sleep." When one reads of the death of a child from diphtheria or hears of a man sent to the smallpox pest-house he is receiving a notice that people are suffering through ignorance and that Nature's inviolable laws are being broken by individuals and by the community. These notices are being served on every hand and the lesson from them all is that after all the greatest foe to humanity is ignorance and that man's dominion over the world must come through a higher intelligence and a closer heeding of these notices which are sent to be men's guides, for only perfect happiness happi-ness can come through the refining processes, not altogether of the books and schools, but of that learning which is supplemented with wisdom, and wisdom draws more real substance from the heart than from the head. |