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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (May 1, 1878)
lESSBW 378 "Once hit, twiok but." Vol. vii, . . . taAr&t f -,.j:j i-r. . .". ij4M:&Limi we do ii thing constitutes mantlets, the root of milliners is our inmost thoughts mill foldings. Those may bo disguised at timus, but sooner or laior they will ap pear in some common, unpremeditated act. Metastasis says: "All is hnhil in man. kind, even virtue itself," and the force of habit is strikingly shown in one's man ners. A person may become .so accost, oined to performing cet tain acts and cour tesies that he repeats them instinctively; but if they are not prompted by genuine goodness mid unselfishness, the manner of their execution will soon lead one to un do stand their true motive. Sku.M'. " ONGE HIT, TWICE 67'." It is a happy provision for weak hu man nature that with experience for a teacher there is no necessity of being caught twice in the same trap. When even" the unintelligent brutes can scarcely be entrapped a second time in the same place by the same means, why should not ire, using coiiuik.ii sense, cool heads, and steady hands, prevent a sec ond disastious mistake? Of what nc is experience if not to teach us how to avoid the breakers on which so many have been wrecked Its lessons should all point to the dangerous shallows and sharp edged rocks lying all around our pathway. And these lessons Ave should becnrciul to remember, taking 'he past for our toucher, that we may the better prepare ourselves to meet the exigencies of the future. Or, as Alice Caiy lias said : Whut thy experience teuchee true. Be rinlleut to heed: The wjhdom that we differ too, Is It-er thun u creed. Why is it that we are constantly mak ing so many mistakes? Why are so man y lives almost useless, wholly frittered away, producing no fruit, with no gar nered sheaves to show at the close of tho harvest as the result of labor well per. formed. Surely not because men may not loam, if they only will, that success do pends to a great extent, if not entirely upon the personal exertions, foresight, and crnunon sense reasoning of each in. dividual, Hint they may win in the battle of life and come oil' conquerors, for life is what we make it. Some one has said: Trying, trying, ulways Hying, falling down to save a fall; but why may we not have it: Winning, winning, always win niug, triumphs through our failures rise? And these failures of others, if rightly used, might become the stepping stones to many more. One man's fault is an other man's lesson, and the defeat of the one becomes the victory of the other. No ship at sea, following in another's path way, need be wrecke I on the same shoals or strike on the same rock and sink to the bottom. If your neighbor's house be struck with lightning and destroyed, for want of proper protection, it is your own fault if, during the next storm, yours too falls to the ground. Upon the reasons of your brother's fail tire ,ou may build your own success. Experience would teach the world, if her inllueiicc were not overbalanced by ambition and foolish pride, those lessons which, if faithfully learned, might save many ot the grave mistakes constantly committed. The porvenity of human nature de stroys, in a great measure, the beneficial results which would follow if her pre cepts were fulfilled. Vanity, also, too often leads one to dis regard the wise teachings of experience, and to blindly persist in trying everything for himself. Perhaps it is because one hates to be smothered, even by truth, that if ull the world should say the shield is silver, one would wish all the more to creep round to that back corner over there and look out of the eyes of that one poor ghost who dares to say that it is gold: unwilling to accept anything as truth leveu from older and wiser heads than lis own. Modesty is fust becoming an antique ) 'Vf 'dMl
