The Price of Wisdom

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 141, 9 March 1940, Page 15

The Price of Wisdom

“ ‘Bought experience is always best,’ said a London magistrate the other day fining a motorist five shillings. He was right, and his maxim covers a far wider field of life than is seen even from the bench of a police court,’’ says the “Evening News,” of London. "Everything, in the dawning years, Is experience to mould a man’s thoughts, outlook, dreams and hopes for the rest of the long, dusty road to old age and sleep. ‘•Then is the time that none can be taught except by himself. Each must buy his laughter as he buys his pain, by being bruised and hurt and shocked, by discovering that not all women are angels, nor all men kind, nor all newfound acquaintances sterling friends. “Thin and scanty is the armour which the young take with them at the beginning of their adventure. Someone hurts them or lets them down; someone lies or cheats; someone is cruel ami stupid and obstinate. “The world need not crash 'because one young man or woman makes these discoveries; but often it seems, to the young man or woman, that the universe’s foundations have been rent asunder. “There is no heartbreak like the first heartbreak, no valley or pit of the spirit deeper than that into which one travels at the first disillusionment, no disgrace more terrible than the first blunder in the first job. “Life is still life after all, very good and very sweet to know, and the heart can sing again, though never the same tune any more. A man or woman is a little older, a little subtler, a little wiser. Some experience has been bought, the account rendered, and the price paid.”