My Father, it is dark.- Child, take my hand. Cling close to me; I'll lead thee through the land; Trust my all-seeing care, so shalt thou stand 'Midst glory bright above. My footsteps seem to slide.— Child, only raise Thine eye to me; then in these slippery ways I will hold up thy goings; thou shalt praise O Father, I am weary.— Child, lean thy head Rest, live for aye above. ANONYMOUS The heart of a man changeth his countenance, A cheerful countenance is a token of a N° man. I wish her ECCLESIASTICUS xiii. 25, 26. Days that in spite Of darkness, by the light Of a clear mind, are day all night. 'Bove all-nothing within that lowers. RICHARD CRASHAW man is more constantly unhappy, or makes others more so, than the impatient He is out of harmony with things; and all things fight and worry and wound him. He feels himself dishonored, too, by his impatience; and he does lose, so far as he indulges it, the true dignity of life. He is not cast, indeed, like the victim of sensual vice, into the slough of dishonor; his garment perhaps is not soiled; but it is burnt through, in a thousand spots, by the ever-dropping little sparks of petulance; and it is in tatters and disorder with the ever-crossing flurries of angry passion; and he seems to himself and to others as one who scrambles through life, rather than as one who walks in the calm and dignified robe of conscious self-possession. Constant fretting and fault-finding and breaking out into sarcasm and anger may bereave a house of all honor, peace and comfort, almost as effectually as gluttony and drunkenness. Or suppose that the fretful temper be hidden and smothered in the heart; then it wastes and consumes the springs of the inmost life. ORVILLE DEWEY All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. HEBREWS xii. II. One day thou wilt be blest; So still obey the guiding hand that fends Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends. KEATS TH HE first remedy for impatience is distinctly and deliberately to settle our minds to the expectation of difficulties. It is for this reason, in part, that I have endeavored to lay open the plan of human culture by little tasks and trials of our intelligence and virtue, and to show that this is an inevitable part of the common lot. The impatient are always surprised by their difficulties and disappointments. Nay, they often go to the length of imagining that trials and mishaps are their peculiar ill luck. They complain as if untoward chance made them its special mark and butt. "It always rains when they want to travel. The harness always breaks when they ride. The water is always low when their corn is to be ground. Their neighbor is always engaged when they want him. The smith is always shoeing a horse when they want him to make a staple." Nay, it goes to the length of being a sort of superstition; and the man says, "I knew it would be just so: things never do come right for me." ORVILLE DEWEY The preparations of the heart belong to man : PROV. xvi. 1. If thou wert in the current, Where God's purpose floweth, His will divine,— How quiet would be thy voyage, Thy harbor safely found; Thou wouldst never meet with shallows Nor fear to run aground. MARY FRANCES BUTTS OW what I have to recommend to the im NOW patient man, in the first place, is that he work out and eliminate from his problem, as fast as he can, this element of surprise, this notion of a peculiarity in his case, this idea that he is honored with the special attention, as of some hostile power. It is not so. His is the common lot. Let him calmly say, then, in every crisis, at every turn of his hand to a new thing, at the threshold of his apartment when he enters it, "Of course there will be difficulties here: nothing is perfect; no condition, no place can be free from obstruction or inconvenience; no task can offer perfect facility; and what I have to do is to meet, to disentangle, or to overcome the difficulties of every task, of every situation and emergency, as a part of the very thing I have to do. ORVILLE DEWEY Acquaint now thyself with him and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee. Didst thou watch the blowing, O soul of mine, Of the winds of heaven, What speed were thine! Billows tossing round thee JOB Xxii. 21. MARY FRANCES BUTTS You are not vexed because you have to build a house, or to entertain friends or distinguished persons in it, or to conduct an active or prosperous business in the world, or to fill an honorable office. It is when mistakes, crosses, disappointments, are to be met that you are vexed. But this is a part of the very thing to be done,―of the building, the entertaining, the business, the office. This meeting with mistakes and crosses, I say, is a part of it. I think if every man would fairly settle this with himself, and could learn to say to every petty mischance, 'Yes, of course, something must task and try me at every step," he would find great help in that single conviction. And then, too, if he be a wise man, he will see to it that he does not go on constantly making and multiplying trials of this sort, by his own improvidence, negligence, and carelessness. 66 ORVILLE DEWEY |