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.