The State Rights Democrat

PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE.

Human nature is selfish, vain, envious and jealous. One or all of these monstrous passions to a great extent control the feeling and actions of a large majority of the human family. Where we have known one man free from selfishness, vanity, envy and jealousy, we have known a hundred whose hearts were filled with these destructive passions. We have mingled much with the world of mankind about us, and we have known a few men who were altogether free from these devilish propensities of our fallen nature, and we thought they had better be in heaven where they belonged. Nothing is half so worthless, miserably worthless and empty as protestations of human friendship. Words are not signs of ideas, uttered voices of true feeling and genuine sentiment. They are used to mislead, deceive, ensnare and destroy. The tongue is an "unruly member," and often it gives utterance to the most beautiful sentiments of friendship disinterested, and pure, and the unsuspecting and uninitiated hear the sound, love the "heavenly tune," and foolishly imagine that the head which coined, and the heart which coined those beautiful words, are fountains of holy thought and pure feeling. Men are sometimes weak and simple-hearted enough to mean what they say, and brave enough to say what they mean. This may be honest and true, but it is great weakness, and opposed to the ethics of modern times.— Its singularity renders the one guilty of it, liable to the charge of simplicity of character, ingenuousness, and eccentricity.— We have known men—confiding, simple-hearted souls!—pour the story of their sorrows into sympathizing ears, and fully and freely as to the best plan to succeed in life, when, alas! future developments gently remove the scales from their eyes, and they see and feel that their sympathizing friends were in no way interested in their sorrows, plans, or advancement in life.

Kind reader, let us advise you—sub rosa—"paddle your own canoe." If there are hundreds sinking down around you on life's stormy river and around you hear the cry for help sounding above the crash of blighted hopes, like—