NECESSARY DISCOURAGEMENTS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 17 March 1913, Page 3

NECESSARY DISCOURAGEMENTS.

What mistaken views we take about what is called the commonplaces of life! Some of us (wrote Dr Porter) are often discontented because of the insipidity of our existence. To-day so iiko yesterday, and to-morrow will be but a repetition of to-day. We are always wanting something to happen. We say, if anything would but occur to-day to < stir the stagnant pool of our life! ' We want to get out of old ruts and ordinary modes. Here tho men to whom somothing has happened and are afraid! Wo could not live sensationally. Men can bear shocks and sonsations only now and thou. In life there must Do great breadths of commonplace and ordinaries. ' We could not stand a shock every day. It is enough, now and then, to bo_ stimulated and shaken out of what is common and usual, and what lias como by reason of its commonness, to bo undervalued and contemned.

There are necessary discouragements. How awful it would be if some men were never discouraged! Thoy could not bear themselves, and they could not act a beneficient part .towards other people. It is' well, therefore, for the strongest man, occasionally, to be set back half a day's travelling and to have to begin again to-morrow morning at the point he was to-day. If he could go on with continually enhancing strength, ho would become an awful critic of other men, and would himself be turned into the severest discouragment, which could be inflicted upon competitors. It is well, therefore, that some supposed bargains should turn out mistakes; it is best that some strokes that were going to cleave the rock right in two should strike the smiter himself that he may tremble- under the force of his own blow. Otherwise wliA could live with some men.

"For everything you have missed you have gained something else," savs Emerson. The whole story of earthly existence- is one of compensations. Many a_ gif t we craved and were denied held in its train ills we are glad to have been spared. Many a sorrow that has darkened- our way, though its memory may still remain bitter, has wrought some change of character or conditions that we would be unwilling to give up. The allotment of joys and griefs is more carefully measured than we are accusto think, and tho lives of men more nearly equal.

Of all the lessons that humanity has to learn in life's school the hardest is to learn to wait. Not to wait with the folded hancls_ that claim life's prizes without previous effort, but having struggled and crowded the slow years with trial, see no such result, as effort seems to warrant—nay, perhaps, disaster instead. To stand firm at such crisof existence, to preserve one's jelfpoise and self-respect, not to loose hold or to relax _ effort, this is greatness, whether achieved by man or woman—whether the eye of the world notes it, or it is recorded in that book which the light of eternity alone shall make clear to the vision. If it were—if it might be—if it could be—if it had been. One portion of mankind go through life always regretting .always whining, ahvays imagining. As it is—this is the way in which :ho other class of people look at the conditions in which they find themselves. I venture to say that if one should count tke ifs and the ases in the conversation of his acquaintances, he would find thp more able and important persons among them—statesmen, generals, men of business—among the ases. and the majority of conspicuous failures nmong the ifs.—o. W. Holmes.