Items of Interest.

Lake County Press, Issue 2185, 5 September 1907, Page 7

Items of Interest.

j J OPE for the best, get ready for the fj | worst, and take what God sends.

Friendship without discretion is dangerous; even a prudent enemy is preferable.

One of the most wonderful things in the world is the amount of good advice we can get along without taking.

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and most delicate ways, also improve yourself.

The only way to shine, even in this false world, is to bo modest and unassuming. Falsehood may be a thick crust, but in the course of time truth will find a place to break through.

Have you ever had your path suddenly turn sunshiny because of a cheerful word? Have you ever wondered if this could be the same world, because some one had been unexpectedly'kind to you ? You can make today the same for somebody.

It is extraordinary how lightly man y people look upon a promise. The old proverb about pic-erust seems to fit the case exactly to these people’s mind ; they will make a string of promises in the course of half-an-hour. not one of which they have the very remotest intention of keeping.

When a woman i'cels, purely and nobly that ardour of hors which breaks through formulas too rigorously urged on men by daily practical needs she makes one of her most precious influences: she is die added impulse that shattered the stiffening crust of cautious experience.—George Eliot.

0 blest communion ! fellowship Divine ! .n? We feebly struggle, they in glory shine ; Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. And when the strife is licrcc, the warfare long, Steals on the ear, the distant triumph song, And hearts are brave again, and arms are stvc ng.

Human beings live up to our ideas of them. If you require much of a man, the chances are that he will try to meet that requirement. You pay a tribute to the manhood or womanhood of an individual everr time you show belief in them ; and since even the lowest has a spark of bigness in bis nature, he cannot but bo touched by that belief. It is, if you will, a subtle sort of flattery to expect goodness and truth and wisdom from poor human beings, but it is flattery in the right direction; it is nut selfish ; it tends to aid the flattered, and not the flattering. Cynicism and disbelief are, on the other hand, an invitation to the cowardly. They are nothing more than a condoneraent of wrong.

On behalf of savages, and our ancestors in general, there may be room for some apology. If wo reflect how large a part of human knowledge consists of human emotion, we may even say that they possessed some form of knowledge which we have since lost. The mind of man (it lias been well said) like the earth on wnich he walks, undergoes perpetual processes of denudation as was as of deposit. Wo ourselves, as children, did in a sense know much we know no more ; our picture of the universe incomplete and erroneous as it was, wore some true colours which we cannot now recall. The child’s vivid sensibility, reflected in his vivifying imagination, is as veritably an inlet of truth as if it were an added clearness of physical vision ; andthough the child himself has not judgment enough to vise his sensibilities aright, yet- if the man is to discern the poetic truth about Mature, he will need to recall Ins impressions as a child.—F. \V. 11. Myers.

Life has two ecstatic moments—one when the spirit catches sight of truth, the other when it recognises a kindred spirit. People arc for ever groping and prying around truth, but the vision is seldom vouchsafed to them. We arc daily handling and talking to our fellow-creatures, but rarely do wc behold the revelation of a soul in its naked si meritr and fervid might. Perhaps also these two moments generally coincide. In some churches of old on Christmas live two small lights, typifying the Divine and Human Nature, were seen to approach one another gradually, till they met and blended, and a bright flame was kindled. So likewise it is when the tvm portions your spiritual nature meet and blend, that the brightest (lames is kindled within us. When our feelings are most vivid our perceptions arc the most piercing, and when we sec the most. Perhaps it it only in the land of Truth that spirits can discern each other, us t is, when they are helping each other most, 'hat they may best hope to arrive there.—A. and J, 0. Hare.