THINGS THOUGHTFUL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17711, 4 December 1925, Page 3

THINGS THOUGHTFUL.

THAT ONLY. Only what we have wrought into our characters during life can we take away with us.—Humboldt. THE WANTON SEA. Man ,s works arc graven, cunning, and skilful On earth where his tabernacles are; The sea is wanton, the sea is wilful. And who shall mend her and who shall mar? Shall we carve success or record disaster On her bosom of heaving alabaster? Will her purple pulse beat fainter or faster For fallen sparrow or fallen star? —A. L. Gordon. GREAT THOUGHTS. Never, never do great thoughts come to a man while he is discontented or fretful. There must be quiet in the temple of his soul before the windows of it will open for him to' see out of them into the infinite. Quiet is what heavenly powers move in. It is in silence that the stars move on, and it is in quiet our souls are visited from on high.— Mounlford. A LIGHT THAT CANNOT BE RESISTED. Between our hope which shines afar. Against life's sky like some bright star. And fate's most stern, relentless bar, All joys and woes exist: So if our lives, which seem so bright, Sl/iould be obscured by some dark night. Remember there’s a brighter light, No dark ness can resist. ; —Bruce Whitney. JF WE WOULD HAVE IT WE j MUST WORK. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” Here is a curse, a promise, and a precept. It is a curse in that Gocl will not suffer the earth to afforc'J us bread without our sweat. It is a- promise in that God assureth us we 6hall have our bread for our sweat. And it is a precept, too, in that God. enjoineth us if we will have bread to swfeat for it. Before the Fall, indeed, man had to work, but it was only with pleasure of body and content of mind. —Sanderson. ACTUAL GOOD. It is,not enough that a human being should' abstain from gross, palpable evil; he must follow actual good. It is better to go dawn into the market, and - run your chance of the dirt that shall soil it, and the hands it shall pass through, in making vour one talent ten talents, than to hide it up in a napkin, and stand aloof from your fellow creatures, even though it should give you cause, like the Pharisee, to “ thank God that you are not as other men are.”—Whyte Melville. COMPETITION JEN OUR SOULS. It is a great mistake to think that t heartiness in competition is especially

connected with hardness of heart. You have only to compare the normal, uninternationaliscd, sporting Englishman with the folk who are preaching the dictatorship of the proletariat over here to see that. The greatest cruelties that have ever been perpetrated in the world have been done in our da}’ in the name of humanity and of a “brotherhood" which hates the other half of mankind. And these preachers are all enemies of competition and advocates of a state of things in which personal ability and character shall receive no favour. The British have become a great people because of their competitive temper. This temper, which still survives in the realm of sport, is distinguishable from mere combativeness and very different from a conscienceless passion for winning. We arc not a quarrelsome people, and we can take a fair defeat without any loss of dignity. But competition is in our very souls; and a Socialism which engages to rob us of this energy and turn life into a machine for grinding out equality can only establish itself here if it first un-English us.—Prebendary Gough. THE TRUTH ABOUT MARRIED WOMEN. In these days a good deal of public expression is given to the rights, wrongs, sacrifices and grievances of wives. It is pointed out that wives should have definite wages, definite hours of “.work,” the right to retain and use their maiden names, and so on. In those controversial statements there is often a great deal of truth; and sometimes a great deal of nonsense. There is no doubt that women with two, three, or four young children in a middle-class household with, say, the maid, could hardly receive adequate compensation for the work they do, the care they give, the utter immolation of self, day and often night too, for a period of perhaps five or six years at highest pressure. But there is something that the detractors of marriage usually forget in setting forth the hardships and the non-payment of wives. They forget that much payment that can’t be made in cash—for very material teasons is made in kind, for the most beautiful reasons of all. There is the payment of love. There are all the small things, the small thoughts, the small secrets, the small gifts, the small hopes of marriage that no outsider will know anything about. Miss May Edginton. novelist.