Items of Interest.

Lake County Press, Issue 2176, 4 July 1907, Page 7

Items of Interest.

ONE secret net oil sclf«denicl, one sacrifice of inclination to duty, is worth all the more good thoughts, warm feelings, passionate prayers, in which idle people indulge themselves. Never attempt to do anything that is not right. Just as sure as you do you will get into trouble, If you even suspect that any. thing is wrong do not do it till juu arc sure your suspicions are groundless. There arc two ways of attaining the important end—force and perseverance. Force fill's to the lot jf only a piivileged lew, but austere ai»d sustained perseverance can bo practised by the most insignificant. Its silent, power grows irresistablu with time. Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sympathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silont victories over favourite temptations, those are the silent threads of gold which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God approves.

The best sort; of happiness is rarely visible to the multitude. it lies h'dden in odd corners ami quiet places, and the eager world, which presumably is tcckiug if, hurries past and never recognises it, but continues to mistake lor it prosperity and riches, noise and laughter, even fame and more cheap notoriety.

Some of you have seen those famous gales in Florence which Michael Angelo declared lit for the gates of Paradise. They arc covered with exquisite pictures and noble imagery in bronze. Now those gates wore once gilded, and Dante speak.* of them as 'golden gates ;' but the centuries have worn away tine gold—you can hordly di.-ccrn a gleaming particle. Still, the splendid work of the great artist abides in the solid bronze, looking, perhaps, 'til the more impressive in its own severe, undecorated simplicity. So years rub away the gilt from usull ; but inwrought graces, faithful work and noble deeds abide untouched by time and change; these I'ics years cannot mar, they shine forth the more effectually as the fugitive, superficial adorn" ing cease

How many men feel that there is nothing in the daily round of work that calls for the exercise of their best powers ? They do today precisely what they did yesterday, and what they will do to-morrow and in ten years' time. They will sit at the same desk, add up the same figures, go through the same routine day by day for years. They are merely so many cogs in the wheel of the great machine v.'e .-all civilisation. >"o One wants their, to think 3 all that is required of them is to use one little section of their brain in earning daily bread. It is an unspeakably depressing life. There is nothing that so wsighs on the soul as monotony, especially the grey monotony of a mechanical life. Hut it is in the power of every youth tu break Ibis spell <;f monotony. He can live uu intellectual life of his own. He will find the hospitable doors of literature always open. He can make his narrow lodgings a temple oii truth and wisdom. If only one little section of his brain is employed in earning money, ail the more cause and opportunity for tins rest of his brain to address itself to nobler tasks. If this is not done, the brain will become atrophied. He will literally become it irero calculating machine, a cog in the mechanism of life.—licr. J. (Jranbrook.