Phantoms of Hope

PHANTOMS OF HOPE. BY ALBERT R. LYMAN. "When I'm a man," the stripling cries, And strives the coming years to scan "Ah, then I shall be strong and wise, When I'm a man." "When I was young, ".the old man sighs, "Bravely the lark and linnet sung Their carol under sunny skies, When I was young." "Hope springs eternal in the human breast" — hope that the great unknown future will remedy every ill and satisfy all the longings and ambitions of the human heart. There is a popular belief in the minds of young men, that life will realize her dearest hopes, "some time, some way," that they may come as a thunderbolt from a clear sky, induced by nothing but the idle wish. This belief overlooks the fact that success, whatever it may be, if come at all, must come as the it natural and only result of the manner of life preceding it,— as the inevitable outgrowth of actions that will produce it, as a seed will bring forth after its kind. It makes no allowance for the existing relationship betwen present and future, nor considers that "to- morrow stalks abroad in today." There is a great fitness of succession in human affairs, as if some huge balance wheel were placed to preserve their^sequence and harmony. A change cannot be introduced too*suddenly; it must come by degress as the way is prepared and made possible- yes, favorable to its coming. The events of change must "cast their shadows before," because they are the counterpart and

902 IMPROVEMENT ERA. successors to existing conditions. They are the result of present action, and must be exactly what this action can and will produce. The key to the mysteries of the future is a proper appreci- ation of the present, an understanding of what the shaping factors are now, coupled with knowledge of what these same factors a have done and are doing. We may know what to expect of a thing with whose nature and history we are familiar. There are boys whose faces beam with hope and cheer, and they have no doubt that the great mysterious future will bestow — upon them the things they prize most highly, that their old age will be a great monument of achievement and worthy labors; yet the only material with which this monument can be erected is be- ing sacrfiiced to the idols of cheap pleasure and sinful excess. The fund of physical and mental strength entrusted to their care for this especial purpose is lavished on vain and perverted appe- tites. They treat it as a great sum of money bestowed by chance upon them, not knowing its worth or what it can purchase; not thinking from whence it came or how soon it will be exhausted; but feeling that it is limitless, and may be used for anything and everything that will gratify the present moment. They do not invest it in any profitable business, nor turn it to the accomplishment of any great labor. Yet they foolishly sup- pose that, though they are crippling and wasting it today, and opening no avenues for it tomorrow, it yet will achieve, without any trouble to them, all they have desired to do and become. They are glutting the present with things intended for a greater devel- opment and nobler use at a later day; and aside from building no place of refuge for the future, they are robbing it of power to stand in its own defense. Every force that could gain the things they are so confident of having, is placed on the altar of present dissipation, and they are approaching, every day, that period when their lives will be empty and desolate, and painful to behold; yet they continue their course and hug the phantom of blind hope. There are boys who fully expect sometime in this world to — perform labors worthy of true manhood, to reach some of the highest stages of human attainment; yet the hope — we cannot say it isfounded on falsehood, for really it has no foundation or sup- port, it simply has never been called into serious question and its

— PHANTOMS OF HOPE. 903 inconsistency thus revealed — has not yet met the sterner realities that will brand it as a freak of the imagination. These bovs have reveled in thought of success and great things, and have not considered that the first steps towards that goal are the steps they scorn to take. They have not asked them- selves whether they are approaching it today, or if there will ever be a more opportune time to start in that direction. Thev have not discovered that success, in the Lroad sense, is barely gained by a life of devotion to its principles; that it is built by each minute of opportunity, and each gem of truth that men can bring from the- depth of their endeavor. They have not recognized it to be a life of small opportunities embraced with all the heart; a great multi- tude of trifles diligently moulded into "the perfection that is no trifle." but have looked for wind or time or accident to do what the well directed skill of man has hardly been able to achieve. In short, they have hoped to reach a definite end, whose features their day dreams have pictured, by pursuing no kind of course, definite or indefinite. Oh, phantom hope! It is leading boys to miserable failure exactly the same failure which many older men have reached by following blindly after it. It would be difficult to find a boy who would picture a life of debility in all its hideousness, and wish to follow it; but they are easy to find who covet worth and skill, who at the same time are adhering rigidly to the ethics of ruin. No boy with unwarped intelligence looks for the climax of his hopes through avenues of tobacco, or intemperance, or dishonor. These things are proven bad by all who test them; they are the very poison and blight of failure. Yet there is pleasure in them— there is the voice of the siren that calls with magic persuasion. She does not point out the ghastly end of this course; it would frighten her clients away for- ever. She does not point to the stooping, shrunken wrecks who have listened for years to her sweet music; nor does she make mention of the prisons, and hospitals, and madhouses where she to hide their cadaverous has sent her most devoted followers she does not tell of the broken hearts and faces from her view; and despair and pain; of the mother blighted lives, of the defeat

4 90 IMPRO VEMENT ERA. who waits in sorrow alone for the child of her hope, whom she loved, and nourished and prayed for as only a mother can. Oh, no! All these things the siren hides with the cunning of Lucifer, and repeats with oily enticement, "some time, some way," assuring her victim that it is only for today —that all the tomorrows will be turned to counteract the evil, if really there is any evil. It is not the promising end that leads men on, and on, but the short-lived pleasure and dissipation in spite of that end, from which they turn their eyes to gaze wistfully away at the light; while they are drawn subtly into the darkness. This is no strained metaphor. This phantom of hope has soothed and assured men, while they were lowered smoothly and easily to the depth of disease and depravity. It has led the most passive, timorous natures to pursue most unfalteringly the path of destruction. Who has not seen miserable, vascillating old age. that was yet as positive as fate in clinging to the sources of its misery? Who has not seen youth that was true to no work, and diligent in no cause but the cause of theiroverthrow? who, iiowever idle or indolent they are in other respects, never miss an opportunity to poison their bodies and minds with things they know to be bad. In many cases they are so much in earnest, they filch tobacco from a friend, or wait in a saloon for hours at a time to be given a drink. They deceive their superiors, and neglect their work to seek entertainment from the vilest mind. They are slow to learn anything that may do them good, but can readily memorize a vul- gar song or an obscene story. Yet they hope that chance, the unintelligent floundering of the good affairs, will bring about works their physical and mental organism is failing everyday to accomplish, beside removing the injury they are inflicting on themselves. Of course, they may reform; that is often their intention, and they suppose it will be an easy matter. They may do it they can — do it; but drawing these stakes will be more difficult than driving them. The deeds of today will be part of the past eternity ab- — solutely unchangeable; and as established precedents and accom- plished facts, they will stand out with the resisting power of cool lava, against proposed future changes. They will cry out in aw-

PHANTOMS OF HOPE. 905 ful protest against them, —a protest so terrible that very few men have been able to silence and overcome it. We know hosts of men and boys who have hoped, and still hope, to develop a strong and vigorous manhood; yet, hugged more closely to their breast than the hope, was one little member of a fam- ily of vice, that afforded pastime and pleasure and seemed a harm- less thing. It may have been the cigarette, it may have been liquor, idleness, novels, cards, or something else; but whichever it was, it has grown in favor with its master till it has been promoted to the place of Master Habit. It has then proceeded to instal all its brothers in the places it caused to be vacated. This same little habit has grown and been promoted from Master Habit, to Master of Passion, Master of Mind, Master of Man — body and soul, and has placed a limit to his going, commanding him in all things. And the man, or more properly speaking, the creature that was a man, during all this time, has been soothed, yes chloroformed with the hope of providence or something else intervening to do what he was stupidly, yet positively, refusing to do. We have observed the workings of this phsntom hope till we are alarmed, — this deception that is stalking boldly among the joung men. It is depriving men and boys of the essential fea- tures of manliness, causing them to cripple their will power and canker the tissues of brain and body. Imagine a man without a will, and power to accept or reject with any decision at all,— without a mind to appreciate the good or fear the evil,— without the physical force to execute any wor- thy design; yet there are hosts of men and boys laboring diligently and earnestly and unceasingly to reach this very condition. They do not fail or forget to lower the standard of their mentality one more notch, whenever it is suggested by perverted appetite. Whatever good labor or worthy cause they slight, they are never untrue to the suicidal policy they have adopted. They serve it faith- If there is anything that is elevating or that savors of im- fully. If there is any movement on provement, they promptly reject it. the mind or body, in them it finds no sympathy. foot to cultivate are easy prey. But to a mind and soul-destroying practice they Slang is 'nothing; idle talk is Popular excess is not rejected. opportunity are matters of nothing; squandered time and wasted

— 906 IMPROVEMENT ERA. small importance. The germs of decay and ruin implanted in body and mind are nothing of serious consequence at all. Yet, as there are laws of eternal truth that have been placed by God to govern the affairs of human destiny, just so sure will all these things stand in spite of the phantom of hell- inspired courage and argu- ment, as unfailing prophecies of the wreck and downfall of every man and boy who perverts his God-given hope to soothe and quiet his mind, and paralyze his sense of fear, while he surrenders him- self, body and soul, to the manacles of that agent who has never made of man anything but ignominious failure. Grayson, Utah. OREGON. {For the Improvement Era.) Heart's chosen home, I see thee in visions; I see thee in dreams, when night drifteth down: Once more I wander on dear old Mount Tabor, While shining afar are the lights of the town. I list to the sound of the wind in the fir-trees, (God's Aeolian harp that speaks to the soul,) Soft as the slumber-song of childhood, Over the heart doth the melody roll. Thy mountains — blue as the deep sky of summer, Inspires the Psalmist-spirit of old, And my heart goeth out to thy river in longing, Thy river that gleams like a river of gold. A river of gold, when greeted bv morning; A river of opal, when day is nigh done; But a river of silver that mirrors the heavens, Aquiver with gladness, beneath the bright sun. a part of my heart and my soul art thou ever, Thou didst foster my youth in days that are past. 1 awake from my dreaming, but memories linger, And like attar of roses, forever shall last. Maud Baggarley. Waterloo, Utah.