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editorial and Gitv Cite Section of Rearst't Sunday American, Atlanta, December 2$, wtt.
Time Stays—You and the Years Pass On
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Copyright. 1913, by Star Company. Great Britain Rlghta Beserred.
OME of us drift, like chips on a
stream. Others at least try to
think, and swim, striving to
steer their own course in life and
not let fate or luck, so called,
control.
Thiels a ioiemn time of year for those that
think and are not content to drift.
Three days more and another year will be
ended.
Three days, and all the plans made a year ago
will come to ask us what we have done and how
the year has been used.
The most fortunate among us look back with
bitterness and disappointment on a dying year. It
has “-one like the wind—especially for those that
have°passed early youth. Only a moment ago we
were planning for a whole year, and now that
year is almost among the years that are passed-
hardly days enough left in which to plan and
-rinare for another year.
A serious thought for the man who takes life
seriously is in these lines of Austin Dobson:
“Time goes, yon say?
“Ah, No.
“Alas! Time stays, we go.”
Upon that quotation the artist has based this
picture to illustrate the death of a year.
; We say that time passes. But old Time passes
•.aver He stays and we go.
“ He knows neither beginning nor end, and
watches us pass, as he watched the passing of our
savage ancestors half a million years ago or the
passing of the ages millions of years long before
life on this planet began or the eternity of time
—never beginning—before this earth, this sun,
this universe had taken shape.
The earth’s journey around the sun we call a
vear our little lives we call a generation, and a
century we call a long time. A billion years are
as one second to Time that was never young and
Wi Fo e r Ve us b ther d e is but a moment, a fleeting of
days, then darkness and the end of our chance.
* # £
You are in the stream of life that flows across
The Year Is Ending, One More Bead on Your Chain of Life Slips Through
Your Fingers---Nevir to Come Back. All That It Might Have Been Will Be Only
Memory Four Days from This Moment. The 365 Days of Possibility Have Gone
—All but Three. But in These Three Days We Can Plant a Determined Effort of
the Will That Will Add Value to Every Future Day of Our Lives.
Let Us Do It.
the bottom of this picture. A few moments and
you will have passed out o. the picture and an
other will take your place in the long procession.
Dull minds and lack o' courage say “What is
the use? What can I do. Shall I strive and
struggle, only to vanish—knowing as I do that
the greatest, like the l'.ast,, are forgotten?
But courage takes a different view, and says:
“I am only a drop of water. But Niagara is made
up of drops of wa „er and the ocean is only so
many drops of water.
“I am going tc be a respectable drop, and try
to develop my share of power at Niagara or be a
great ocean wa/e or help to bring life to some
desert spot. I’.l not be a stagnant drop in a mud-
puddle, waiting for time and evaporation to end
,,
me.
* * *
You mus', bid good-bye to the old year and wel
come the r.ew year with courage, earnestness and
renewed r esolutions, fresh effort of the conscience
and the will—or be included among the stagnant
part of aumanity, the human gutter water.
No natter about the failures in the past, the
sneers of others, the disappointment that has fol
lowed effort.
Tbme is but one hopeless man—he who no
longer tries. When we no longer try and make
resolutions, the mainspring is broken and we are
fit jnly to be broken up and melted down, like a
watch that can’t keep time.
But as long as we do try there is hope.
No man need despair who is dissatisfied with
himself.
Sit down this day of rest and make it a day of
thinking. Advise with your best friend, father
or mother—the best of all—and advise with your-
yourself.
The fact that you want to do better, that you
long to make the coming year worth while, honor
able and successful, is in itself the greatest help
and asset.
Determine with all your power, earnestness and
hope that you will arise above the level of the
years past, and you WILL do it. The spirit of
man is a force above all material conditions. Men
have risen from the very gutter to rule nations,
and have come back from degradation and fail
ure to honor and good work.
Listen to your ambition, to your conscience, and
determine that as Time stands and sees you pass,
he shall see you striving, not drifting.
* * *
No man can advise another. “The heart
knoweth its own bitterness.’’ Each of us knows
himself and what he needs—and we cannot in
dividually direct or help each other.
But the road to success and hope has milestones
and signposts like any otherr-and those we may
read.
“Work as nature works, in fire,” said Dante.
And so you must work, if your work is to count.
No cold work, no easy work will change failure
to success. Failure is like scrap iron, that must
be melted with fire and made over into another
shape.
Nature works in fire, volcanic fire of heat in
conceivable has shaped this earth.
The burning heat of Summer gives the crops.
Nature works in fire, and you must work and
burn as you work. Your own soul and body must
be the fuel supplying the heat for success and
ambition accomplished.
What you do easily is cold. It is nothing. Pain
and worry, heat, effort, struggle, burning deter
mination alone will make that New Year a real
year and the beginning of freedom from failure
and the slavery of anxiety.
Old superstitious hunters believed that a bul
let would always hit the mark if it were dipped
in the blood of the hunter.
Your effort and ambition are bullets that must
be dipped in your own heart’s blood to hit the
mark.
Nothing in this world worth having is easy.
And the whole miserable history of failure is
spelled out in the words, “love of ease.”
To be successful you must be uncomfortable—
resign yourself to that thought.
To pass others you must run faster than they
run, endure shortness of breath and heartaches of
misery.
If success were easy all would succeed. If self-
control were easy there would be no jails,
asylums, poor houses, no white-haired old men,
pitifully humble, taking insolent orders from the
young.
But victory in the battle of life must begin at
home. Man must conquer his own heart first—
and that is the hard fight.
A A A
From the resolutions of this new year ten
thousand successes will spring and endure. Let
your success be among them.
You know what you should do. And you
know what you should not do.
A A A
You know that you have given your energy
to things that did not count or that hurt you.
And you know that you have given only the
residue, the dregs, of your power to your real
work.
There is no trouble in “framing resolutions.”
It is easy to say, “I shall not do this, I shall
do that.”
The thing is to find in your will—which is the
captain of the boat—the power to do the things
that you know you should do, and to leave un
done the things that you know you should not do.
“Time goes,” you say?
Ah, no.
Alas! Time stays; we go.
Dreary words. But a fight is not dreary, and
life is a fight, and a fight worth while.
We go, it is true, and our day is short. But
we can make of it a fighting day worth while
You read of that fighting demon in the battle
of Chevy Chase, who “fought upon his stumps”
after both his legs had been cut off. He was
bleeding to death and his moment was short, of
course. He passed, and Time staye:’. But Time
would have taken off his hat to him, if Time
had worn a hat.
Be like that old fighter, and keep at it, de
termined to use the minutes, hours and years un
til your fighting day is over.
Work in fire, but work in hope.
Here comes a new year. New to us all. It
can be made a good year. It will be a good year
for those that combine good resolves with de
termined will.
1913 dies and 1914 will soon be bora.
Each year sees its dismal failures^ its bright
successes.
Be amdng those to whom this new year will
mean good work and success.
Old or young, the year and its chances are
yours. The will plus the idea will win your fight.
..-jwwiaiu .