Topic : Futility
Ice Palace
On November 25, 1895, a cornerstone of ice was laid in Leadville, Colorado, the beginning of the largest ice palace ever built in America.
The town was in the doldrums; the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 had ended its glory days as a silver-mining center. In an effort to keep their city alive, the citizens staged a winter carnival. On New Year’s Day, 1896, the town turned out for the grand opening. The palace, costing more than $40,000 and measuring 450 feet long by 320 feet deep, covered more than three acres. The towers that flanked the entrance were 90 feet high. Inside was a 16,000-square-foot skating rink.
But there was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. The thousands of visitors who came to see the spectacle spent very little money. The town that put its hope in an ice palace saw that hope melt away.
The Thief
One night a thief broke into the single-room apartment of French novelist Honore de Balzac. Trying to avoid waking Balzac, the intruder quietly picked the lock on the writer's desk. Suddenly the silence was broken by a sardonic laugh from the bed, where Balzac lay watching the thief.
"Why do you laugh"? asked the thief.
"I am laughing to think what risks you take to try to find money in a desk by night where the legal owner can never find any by day.?
Futility of Life
Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow
creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death
Out, Out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury.
