1884.] THINGS WHICH SEEM WORTHLESS. 91 



to hold it, even though you can make no present use of it. And 

 on the farm the thrifty young orchard which represents a consid- 

 erable investment, and for the fruit of which you must wait ten 

 years, is pi-ecious to your thought. If it promises well you are 

 satisfied. Even in case of the forest growth, where a much longer 

 period must elapse before its worth can be realized, you are con- 

 tent. The fact is, we live very largely in the future, and if its 

 promises are distinct, even though distant, they satisfy us. 

 .But we contemplate with very different feelings those things 

 whose time of use and worth lies behind us. There is no going 

 backwai'd for us, and the thought, If I had only had this thing 

 last year it would have been of so much service to me, is very dif- 

 ferent from the thought with which we look forward to the future 

 use of things. 



There is, however, one class of things in regard to which we 

 ought to reconcile ourselves to the loss of value through the lapse 

 of time. I refer to those which have accomplished the service 

 they were fitted to render. The farm gives us many examples of 

 this class. Whatever has life grows old, and that which is subject 

 to use, wears out. The enfeebled old horse, the moss-grown and 

 decaying fruit tree, the worn-out mowing machine, once valuable, 

 but from which all value has passed away; what should be our 

 thought, and what our action toward these? Our thought must 

 be one of respect for the good work done, the service rendered, 

 and the value transmuted into other forms. Our action may not 

 violate this respectful thought. And I hold it to be no such viola- 

 tion, as to machine or animal frame, which has accomplished its 

 work, to remand its substance back to the great store of unwrought 

 material whence aU works of skill and strength, as well as all 

 forms of life have come, and to which they must all, soon or late, 

 return. The old mowing machine is properly no longer a machine; 

 it is simply a quantity of material. Its iron may go again into 

 the furnace and be recast into other forms for other uses. Its 

 wood may cook our food or warm our bodies, and after that its 

 ashes may fertilize our fields. "We feel differently in the presence 

 of the higher forms of animal life, and may hesitate to cut that 

 life short. Yet the time is sure to come when the kindest feeling 

 and the wisest thought unite in saying, that for these worn-out ser- 

 vants of ours a painless death is better than the life that remains 

 to them. 



