GOOD WORDS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XVII, Issue 835, 18 July 1890, Page 7

GOOD WORDS.

It is not so much the length or the variety of our opportunities as the way in which we use them that will decide how much they will benefit us. To a man with a disposition bent toward melancholy ■> the choicest of earthly blessing cannot bring happiness. Over the contented mind fate has no power for hat'm. How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure ! — Marcus Aurelius. Good nature disarms enmity, allays irritation, stops even the garrulity of fault-finding. It more than half overcomes envy. A really good-natured man is the most troublesome morsel that the malign passions ever attempted to feed upon. He is the natural superior of irritable persons. Life is short, considering how much is to be done in it, how much there is to be put iuto it, how much there is to be won from it ', its work requires despatch — the prompt thought, the decisive will, the instant deed. The winged hours, the approaching end, rebuke our dawdling and punish sloth. Morality cannot flourish without courage ; criminality certainly thrives upon the lack of it. Tf we cannot go so far as to believe with the Frenchman that every mistake in life may be traced to fear, we can at least agree with 'the philosopher who said, 'Great talents have been lost for want of a little courage.' Propose to yourself an object that is noble, pursue it from motives that are high, let what is best in you take the mastery,, and you shall bo ranked with the wise and good long before you are fully either". And, as you go on in the course of improvement, the idea of your better self will become more definite, and the life of this idea of wisdom and goodness will be dearer and stronger in you. Of Doing Good. — If it be in our power to communicate happiness in any form, to wipe away the tear of distress, to allay the corroding fear, to corafort, .to help, to guide, to encourage, to inspire anyone, the more speedily we set about it the more good we shall do. The emotions of love, compassion, and sympathy soon die out in the In-east of one who withholds or delays their natural expression, or they turn into useless and sickly sentimentality ; while in the heart of him who hastens to embody them in his life and actions they will become living fountains of joy to himself and of good to others.