D.L.F. CLUB PAPERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2690, 4 October 1905, Page 83

D.L.F. CLUB PAPERS.

IDEALS

(Being a Paper Bead Before the Dimedim Literary and Debating Club.) By Jessica. "We have not wings, we cannot soar ; But we have feet to seal, and climb, By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our t -le."

— LOIFGFELLOW". We all ha,ve our ideals— at least the majoJ rity of us have. We would be but poorf creatures indeed if we stood at a standstill' always, and did not aspire to make our lives' better and purer and nobler as the days ancl the years go by. Who is there among us who has not an ideal of what his or her life can 1 become — what we intend our lives to become —some day ? Ah ! that "some day" : it 13 so very far away with most of us. We are all young; we are going forth to the battle of life, and our hearts, are filled with the fire of youth, vith hope, with energy, with good intentions and high ideals. "Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime."

We, too, intend to "make our lives sublime."Our intentions and ideals are good; why do we fa-11 so short? Do we aim too high? No, we can never do that. But what we do do isf this: We set up within our hearts our ideals j we mean to attain to them — some day. But! in the meantime, in the performance of our daily lives, we shirk the unpleasant tasks, step aside to get out of the way of the rough, places on Life's pathway. We want to tread only the rosy paths, and leave others to tread the thorny ones. Too often we neglect to speak the cheering word — to do the kind'y deed — forgetting that,

"Whene'er a noble deed is wrought. Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise." We forget that only in the cheerful performance of the duties which lie nearest to us, unpleasant and distasteful though they at times may be, and by yielding our weak human wills into a Highei Hand can we ever hope to attain to our ideals, to make our lives the grand, the noble, unselfish existences which God intended them to be.

Let me quote a few passages from the Eev. J. E. Miller's book "The Building of Character." "If we but toiled and tried and wrought in our efforts to get our visions of character transplanted into reality as artists do to paint their visions on canvas, or hew them in stone, we should all be very noble. . . Yet it cost.^ always unsparing toil to carve the beauty God shows us as an ideal for our life. T " costs self -discipline, anguish, Offttimes; as wa must deny ourselves, and cut off the things we love. . . There must ba a wasting of self, a chipping awpy continually of the things that are dear to our human nature, if the things that are true and pure and juFt are to be allowed to come out in -us." So we see that if we have set up high- deals within us the path we must tread ii we -ish to reach them will be the path of duty, 'he path of sacrifice. We shall have trials to en--dure and obstacles to overcome. Sometimes, maybe, the path will be rugged and stony and ' difficult io tread. Shall we give up the struggle? No— a thousand times no! Letour ideals be high; let us ever look upwsrn, and never downward. What "though we % iv failures? Has it not been said that "Men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things" ? Let us keep our eyes fixed away far up on the heights above us; let us put on the orniour of Truth and the shield of Endurance, and lot us ascend right manfully and courageously to the suniini'. of our ideals, thereby making our earthly careei one long pilgrimage of endeavour, and ever bearing in mind that "All common things, each day's.events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents. Are rounds by which we may ascend." We must toil and struggle and persevera day by day, knowing that some day our highest ideals of all that is purest and noblest and best shall be most fully realised, if not in this world, then most surely in that which is to come. "Fear not to build thine eyrie in the height?. Where golden splendours stay, And trust thyself unto thine inmost soul In simple faith alway ; And God will make divinely real The highest form of thine ideal.' —Selected.

BOOKS. " (Being a Pai^er Read Before the Dunediu D.L.F. Literaiy and Debating Club.) By Boy. "This books can do. — nor this alone; they, c give New views to life, and teach us how to live; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and cojifirm the wise: Their aid they yield to all; they never shun The man of sorrow nor the wretch undone: Unhke the hard, the se'fish, and the proud. They fly not sullen fioni the supplicant crowd ; Nor tell to various people various things. But show to subjects what they show fo kings." t» — Cr.vbbe. It were difficult 1o estimate the power oi books toward the formation of national character and the perfecting of civilisation. There is no limitation to the influence of a book <br good or bid. It has been said that to know a people onemust know its language. To understand and thoroughly appreciate any nation one must certainly know its literature. How true is the aphorism "Th^e pen is mightier than the sword" we realise when mentally reviewing the hibtory of our own nation. When the past wells up in a long panorama of events the mind instinctively dwells upon those characteis most closely associated with literature, those epochs devoted to research an<l education ; and, gradually, as the mass of historic event is by urgency filtered and retorted, the sword gives orcdeiice to the pen, a-nd finds its grave m oblivion. The sword) rescues a nation from momentary oppression; the pen is an everlasting weapon against per? sistent evil, against giadual decay. When the English have fulfilled their mission upon this earth, and have given place to a more worthy successor — and who shall! say that the day may not come? — he shall 1 gave- from the wreck us purest oenis: Shakespeare and Scott as a comprehensive and! illustrative memento </ ifs national character and history •' " «, 3nd nothing; more. Nev-sr in the history of the world as nowi has literature been so abundant, so diffuse-.j and so free to all; navor has education beer;;

so exhaustive. So much literature is annually placed at the disposal of the public, co much is its tastes and sympathies catered for, that the danger is no longer ignorance, illiterateness, but the opposite extreme, gorge — fclio evils attendant on indiscriminate reading. With books is necessarily associated reading, and what to read is a more puzzling question nowadays than how to obtain the means. Iv Horace Lorrimer's "Letters'" the old merchant's advice — "In reading read the newest books of science, the oldest of fiction" — is •worthy of acceptance. "Then I shell get bej hind the times; become quite antiquated," I hear someone say. Indeed, no ; have you not the prc-ss? If you wish to be living always in the present, on the forefront of social intrigue, to have your opinions on all subjects coined for you cheaply, without Ilia labour of thought and the din of present contentions always in your ears, then I commend you to the daily press; it is always available. But if, on the other hand, your soul finds joy in the cho&en, preserved thought of depart:d masters, you will quickly find also the rcvorence they command even in the happy-go-lightly exuberance oi! up-to-date-ism.

"Of making many books there is no end." wtrote Solomon; "and much reading is a weariness of the flesh" — a fact much more evident to-day, I should say, than at that remote period. Then, plainly, one must discriminate in tlie choice of loooks, and, above all, avoid useless brain-cloggiiig trash and hurried reading. If a book can be read more quickly than it is written it is scare worth reading, and the practice of reading -what 's merely sensational and of no practical valueis most hurtful, as such practice so dulls the faculties that they lose their power of absorbing what is at all ponderous, and the mind becomes demoralised even in the appreciation of the most beautiful thought. Amongst the many fine axioms of Professor J. S. Blackie is this : Avoid miscellaneous reading. Eead nothing you do not care to remember; and remember nothing you do not mean tc use. Just as the mind is correctly exercised m reading, in exact proportion will be the benefit and enjoyment of what is read. Books are varicras, but the measure of their worth is different in the scale of each reader. All written matter is a negative, with negative specialties, which is transformed into beautiful pictures upon the souls of its leaders just accordingly as the sun of knowledge translates it to them. The field of healthy literature is a large one, and all who go there in the right spirit will find friends untold, sympathies for their every mood, and joys impossible to recount. " 'Tis J)coks will cause the flag of peace Through earth to be unfurled 1 ; Produce the ' parliament of man,' And federate the world."