CHAPTER XIX.
THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES.
"'To-day' unsullied comes to thee--newborn,
To-morrow is not thine;
The sun may cease to shine
For thee, ere earth shall greet its morn.
"Be earnest, then, in thought and deed,
Nor fear approaching night;
Calm comes with evening light,
And hope and peace. Thy duty heed 'to-day.'"
--RUSKIN.
If people's first thoughts were but as good and wise as their
after-thoughts, life would be better and more beautiful than it is. We
can all see our errors more clearly after we have committed them than
we saw them before. We frequently hear persons utter the wish that
they could go again over a certain period of their life, saying that
they would live it differently, that they would not repeat the mistakes
or follies which had so marred and stained the record they had made.
Of course the wish that one might have a second chance with any past
period of time is altogether vain. No doubt there ofttimes is much
reason for shame and pain in our retrospects. We live poorly enough at
the best, even the saintliest of us, and many of us certainly make sad
work of our life. Human life must appear very pathetic, and ofttimes
tragical, as the angels look down upon it. There are almost infinitely
fewer wrecks on the great sea where the ships go, than on that other
sea of which poets write, where lives with their freightage of immortal
hopes and possibilities sail on to their destiny.
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