LIFE

As viewed by the

OPTIMIST           PESSIMIST

Love               Lies Independence       Ingratitude Fun                Foolishness Endeavor           Exertion

In traveling along a road in a motor car, there will be several cars ahead of you going your way, and there will be several cars coming toward you. Also ahead of you, going your way, there may be a hay wagon or a farmer in a buggy. As you speed along, you look ahead and declare to yourself that there is no logical way in which you can get through the spaces thus created. Yet the vehicles always form themselves into the right combination, and you pass through easily. This is the way with life. There are always obstacles that you do not see how you can pass without a smash-up. But you always get by.

"Stop, look, listen!"

The reflective man stopped to read the railroad warning.

"Those three words illustrate the whole scheme of life," said he.

"How?"

"You see a pretty girl; you stop; you look; after you marry her, and for the rest of your life, you listen."

             _The Magician_

  Life has such a subtle way   Of forming roses out of clay;

  Of taking tears that seemed in vain   And making of them April rain;

  Of getting from a heedless rafter   Echoes of dead bits of laughter;

  Of welding in a sunset sea   Lost loveliness and imagery;

  Of making out of crawling things   Butterflies with airy wings.

  Life has such a subtle way   Of turning darkness into day;

  Of bringing music, ocean-old,   To newness of a tale untold;

  And then, grown jealous of its trust,   Of changing roses back to dust.

  --_Vivian Yeiser Laramore_.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.--_Emerson_.

             _Life Is No Problem_

  Life is no problem to the heart     That understands itself,   That does not sit above, apart     Upon some higher shelf.

  And moralize on destiny     And other things obscure,   But has no more philosophy     Than changeless love and pure.

  Life is no problem to the mind     That knows the way to live   The habit just of being kind,     The joy of just to give.

  Life is no mystery at all     To those who do not doubt   But take this life as life befall     And smile and live it out.

  Do not with theories concern     Yourself as on you go;   There is but little we can learn,     But little we can know.

  Life is to live, to take the sweet     The hidden fates have sent,   To live each day the day you meet     And try to be content.

  So do not seek to tear the veil     And read the heart of God.   Enough that He is in the gale     And in the velvet sod.

  Enough that He has given you     The boon of days and years,   The world of green, the sky of blue,     And sunshine after tears.

  --_Douglas Mallock_.

             _The Match Box_

  Life is a Match Box, and the Matches     Ambitions, and unstruck desires;   Youth the material that catches     And kindles in the darkness fires.

  And Love is like an idle fellow     Who sets the match box in a blaze,   And sees the blue flames and the yellow     Shoot up and die beneath his gaze.

  But Age is like a man returning     Late homeward. Creeping in his socks   He tries to get a candle burning,     And finds he has an empty box.

The seven ages of man have been well tabulated by somebody or other on an acquisitive basis. Thus:

First age--Sees the earth.

Second age--Wants it.

Third age--Hustles to get it.

Fourth age--Decides to be satisfied with only half of it.

Fifth age--Becomes still more moderate.

Sixth age--Now content to possess a six-by-two strip of it.

Seventh age--Gets the strip.

             _Wisdom_

  When I have ceased to break my wings   Against the faultiness of things,   And learned that compromises wait   Behind each hardly opened gate,   When I can look life in the eyes   Grown calm and very coldly wise,   Life will have given me the Truth   And taken in exchange--My Youth.

  --_Sara Teasdale_.

LISPING

A young lady who lisped very badly was treated by a specialist, and learned to say the sentence: "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers."

She repeated it to her friends, and was praised upon her masterly performance.

"Yeth, but ith thuth an ectheedingly difficult remark to work into a converthathion--ethpethially when you conthider that I have no thither Thuthie."

LOGIC

"Sedentary work," said the college lecturer, "tends to lessen the endurance."

"In other words," butted in the smart student, "the more one sits the less one can stand."

"Exactly," retorted the lecturer; "and if one lies a great deal one's standing is lost completely."

Two men were hotly discussing the merits of a book. Finally, one of them, himself an author, said to the other: "No, John, you can't appreciate it. You never wrote a book yourself."

"No," retorted John, "and I never laid an egg, but I'm a better judge of an omelet than any hen."

<< Previous    1...   2  3  4  [5]  6    Next >>