Compensations are in the train of the man who dares. Compensation is a higher, nobler word than wealth, riches, money, or jewels. Money is a good thing to possess, and wealth is not to be despised, but the love of money is the root of all evil. Have you never noticed that the harder a man strives to get money the farther he gets away from it? This is in pursuance of a law of nature, that in striving too hard to acquire anything, we omit some essential that if remembered would bring it to us. There are certain things that if we dare do them, other things will unexpectedly come to us in the way of compensation.
Money, wealth, riches, etc., are a recompense, a remuneration, of course, but of themselves they are mere wages for labor performed. But when we speak of “compensation,” we allude to something of greater value than mere dollars and cents which procure bread and meat, clothes, a roof for our heads, and certain pleasures. But a hog has all of these in his own way and to his own satisfaction; but the man who dares does not belong to that branch of the animal kingdom. He is a man and claims a man’s compensation, or so acts that the desired compensation will be forthcoming. Think of the words of Othello and ponder a little over their meaning:
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse, steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
The Story of a Rising Race Told in Pictures