When the sullen storm-cloud of
misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to
summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the
mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish
questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better
discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair,
the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious effort.
There never yet was a misfortune or an array of misfortunes, there
never was an entanglement wound by malign chance from which a man
could not escape by dint of his own unaided energy. By all means let
us pity those who are sore beset amid the keen sorrows that haunt the
world, look with tenderness on their pain, soothe them in their
perplexities; but, before all things, incite them to struggle against
the numbing influence of despondency. The early failures are the raw
material of the finest successes; and the general who loses a battle,
the mechanic who fails to find work, the writer who pines for the
approach of tardy fame, the forsaken lover who looks out on a dark
universe, and the servant who meets only censure and coldness, despite
her attempts to fulfil her duty, all come under the same law.
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