“This world is full of ‘yender grass,’” says Deacon Watts to me;
“When I’m a-mowin’ in the field, the grass close by,” says he,
“Is short and thin and full of weeds; but over yender, why,
It looks to me as if the grass is thick and smooth and high.
But sakes alive! that ain’t the case, for, when I mow to where
The grass I saw from far away looked all so smooth and fair,
I find it’s jest as short and thin as all the rest, or wuss;
And that’s the way the things of earth keep on a-foolin’ us!
Be not simply good, be good for something.—Thoreau.
Progress depends upon what we are, rather than upon what we may encounter. One man is stopped by a sapling lying across the road; another, passing that way, picks up the hindrance and converts it into a help in crossing the brook just ahead.—Trumbull.