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Life Is a Short Welk’ Along a
Narrow Thread of Destiny, Be=
ginning and Ending in the Mys
terious Unknown.
Hope Keeps Us Balanced as We
Walk the Narrow Line. Life Is
Short as We See It, but in Reality
It Is Without Beginning, and
Never Ends—And, Long or Short,
It Is AU That We Have.
OU, reader, are the figure walking
on this slender thread. Every
one of the hundreds of millions
of human beings on this planet
is represented in this picture.
I
of u g wa |j iS a ] one and
must balance himself through life. Many mil
lions walk but a few steps and fall back into the
infinite whence they came. Other millions walk
half or three-quarters of the way—a small per
centage finish the full natural span of a normal
life.
If you are old enough to have finished half
the journey you know that this is a good pic
ture of life as it is.
Hesitating, balancing, leaning to this side and
to that side, you go along the span that leads
from birth to death.
e # t
Th is is a picture about which all the writers
have written, all the poets have sung, all the
philosophers have speculated, and all the law
makers have legislated.
Wc have all got to take the journey, walk the
span, whether we like it or not.
We are not asked when we come here
whether we want to come. And it is not left to
us to say when we shall go. We come without
knowing why, we go without knowing why,
and we travel our journey balanced on a thread
stretched between the finger and thumb of
Destiny. *
♦ * *
We are not, however, mere machines wound
up and set in motion. Something is left to our
ov. n decision. We get an inheritance from
fathers and mothers through thousands of gen
erations, and it is true that we can have only
what they give us.
But we have above everything, and in addi
tion to everything, WILL POWER, the power
of thought based on observation and guided by
conscience.
We can use our inheritance of character and
temperament as the sculptor uses the block of
marble, and we can carve that inheritance as
we will and at least make of it the best that it
can produce.
This you see illustrated in the portraits of
human beings taken in childhood and in old
age. You may find two pictures of children
much alike—the faces filled with goodness
cheerfulness, kindness and hope.
And the same two faces in old age will be as
far apart as vice and kindness. One will have
grown stronger and better, and the other will
show the stamp of the evil thoughts and the un
controlled passions and wasted will power
♦ * «
Those that are the most fortunate among
men are able, in (he brief span of life, to accom
plish work that lasts for centuries, helping
others (hat follow on the shaky walk a ss (he
taut thread. Some have been able, in one life
to benefit endless millions of lives after them
These have been the great teachers, discoverers
explorers, scientists, philosophers—and. above
all, the fearless tellers of new truths.
Blessed are those able to do in one life a work
that will help hundreds of millions.
Bui there is good work that EVERY human
being can do, there are rules that all CAN FOL
LOW and each man. as he walks life’s thread,
should make these rules for himself and follow
them.
* * #
Do your duty as well as you can dn if—and
THE SEAN OF LIFE
CapjT'gln 1912 by Amen< an Journal Examiner. Great BnUun Kijhte Reserved.
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begin ny not hurting others in the effort to
please or help yourself.
the first duty is to those nearest you. If
every man of strength would help the half
dozen human beings nearest to him the prob
lems < ' the world would soon be settled, the
help must be of the right kind, not merely
charity—although that is needed—but also
sympathy, a good example, pati-nee with weak
ness and dullness, and just dealings even with
those that are unjust.
It is possible for every human being who will
TO DO Ills DUTY, to think not only of him
self but of other*., of the whole race and of the
future race. In that fa< t there is complete com
fort tor every one of us.
Each CAN do his duty, and he who does
THAT has done all that can be asked and all
that any man ever ,; d since the world began.
A A <
Life is tiresome, troublesome, full of care,
disappointment and bitterness for those that
carry responsibility and realize their short
comings. But it has its rewards as great as its
worries.
To possess the friendship and affection of
one sincere and loval human being, to put the
welfare of another ahead of your own, finding
happiness in that, and to feel, when you reach
the end of the siring and Ihe time comes to fall
off into the grave, you have done what you
could, have not neglected those that had a T' ( M
to count upon you—that makes life woi*n
while and wipes out its disappointments.
What every man must learn unless his I.<«
is to hp a failure is to control himself and pm
his selfish desires and feelings in second phi- ’•
The man who controls himself through his
w ill, who realizes that the shortness of life in
creases resnons’bility for the use of every hour,
and who finally lives, day by day, as he we H
live if he knew that that day was the last—si.*-’
a man is happy and his life worth while.
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mig l
and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”
—Proverbs XVI., 32.