TIT-BITS.

Evening Post, Volume XLI, Issue 103, 2 May 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

TIT-BITS.

As if the natural calamities of life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest ; and have seen a man in love grow pale and lose his appetite upon the plucking of a merry - thought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics — a rusty nail or crooked pin shoot up into prodigies. — Addison. Nothing is more moving to man than the spectacle of reconciliation ; our weaknesses are thus indemnified, and are not too costly — being the price we pay for the hour of forgiveness ; and the archangel, who haß never felt anger, has reason to envy the man who subdues it. When thou forgivest, the man who pierces thy heart stands to thee in the relation of the sea-worm that perforates the shell of the mussel, which straightway closes the wound with a pearl. Time past, how transient; time present, how evanescent ; time to come, with many how uncertain. Gold can buy pretty nearly everything in this country except that which a man wants most — viz., happiness. Obstinacy is ever more positive when it is most in the wrong. The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet. The rules of etiquette are not nonsense—they are to smooth the rough ways of life, of which there will be enough at best. The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken. Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill — Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill. —Emerson. When you make a mistake don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your own mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. Men are esteemed for virtue, not wealth. The growth of faith can only be gradual. There are glances of hatred that stab, and raise no cry of murder. — George Eliot. How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seedtime of character ? The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine ; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness — the taste and stain from the lees of the vat. — Longfellow. The more originality you have in yourselves the more you see in other people. If women took as much pains to make nests as they do to weave nets, more husbands would remain lovers. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit. Diligence is a fair fortune and industry a good estate. In matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution. To be undetermined where the case is so plain, and the necessity so urgent; to be always intending to lead a. new life, but never to find time to set about it ; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed. He that can quietly endure overcometh. "I see in this world," says John Newton, "two heups— one of human happiness and the other of human misery. Now, if I can take but the smallest bit from the second heap and add it to the other, I carry a point. If, as Igo home, a child dropped a halfpenny, and if, by giving it another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel that I have done something. I should be glad indeed to do greater things, bis 5 will flot neglect this," The gop4 things of life are not i o.niy those that delight the eye or ear, o? commend themselves to the palate, but also those that cause a joy fulness to the heart.