Tit-Bits.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 48, 24 August 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

Tit-Bits.

♦ There is a capacity in every man and woman, though it may often lio latent, to draw happiness from life in its various phases ; and his or her entire welfare depends very largely uroa the degree to which this power exis's. To lose faith in it is to be blown about at the mercy of the winds and waves pf life, and at hut to be carried away by its current ; bnt to feel it and exert it is to guide the halm and conquer the storm, bringing the boat successfully into port. The man who does this is not the mere pleasureseeker. A hasty word or an indisoreet action does not dissolve the bond, bnt that friendship may be still sound in heart, and so outgrow and wear off these little distempers. It has been my constant aim in all my writings to lash vice, but to spare persons. — Martial. No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least. — Horace. The student of American affairs to-day sees no influence at work save those whioh make for closer and closer union. The Republic has solved the problem of governing urge areas by adopting the Federal, or Home Rule, system, and has proved to the world that the freest self-government of the parts produces the strongest government of the whole. — Andrew Carnegie. In the man whose childhood has known caresses thero is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. A great deal of the animosity between nations has its source in a variation of moral standard. Eaoh nation, prizing its own particular type of goodness, indulges indignation against those who are lacking it, while each resents the censure of the other upon what appears to it a comparatively small or indifferent matter. As education develops the intelligence, however, this intolerant spirit diminishes, not because preference becomes weaker, but because imagination and sympathy grow stronger; and these quickened powers gradually realise to some degree a mental aud moral condition not known by experience. The intellectual faculty is a goodly field capable of great improvement ; and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles. There is seldom sufficient attention paid to certain stages of wrong- doing. Some of it is intentional and deliberate, some careless and thoughtless, some the blundering of ignorance. In the general condemnation of the first and most oulpable it is easy to forget the other stages, and to fail to recognise the easy way in which they merge into each other. This is very manifest in the many transgressions of truthfulness in word which are prevalent among us. From the premeditated lie, designed expressly to deceive, to the light exaggeration, or even the pooriy-ohosen expression which fails to convey the exact meaning, there is indeed a wide range ; nor is any one wise enough to measure the degree of oulpability in any special stage. Some make the intention tie only limit of criticism ; but not only is it difficult to discover this in any particular case, but it is also impossible to say at what stage thoughtlessness becomes oulpable, or how far ignorance might have been prevented.