All things else are of the earth, but love is of the sky.—William Stanley Braithwaite. The heart needs to be educated even more than the mind, for it is the heart that dominates and colors and gives character and meaning to the whole of life. Even the kindest of words have little meaning unless there is a kind heart to make them stand for something that will live.
To fill the hour, that is happiness.—Emerson. "You will find as you look back upon your life," says Drummond, "that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory Ah, well that in a wintry hour the heart can sing a summer song.—Edward Francis Burns. pleasures of life, there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your eternal Avast there! Keep a bright lookout forward and good luck to you.—Dickens. life ... Everything else in our lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or can ever know about—they never fail."
It is the ability to do the many little acts of kindness, and to make the most of all the opportunities for gladding the lives of others, that constitute the finest accomplishment any girl can acquire.
It often happens that the thought of the great kindnesses we should like to do, and which we mean to do, "sometime" in the days to come, keeps us from seeing the many little favors we could, if we would, grant to those just about us at the present time. Yet we all know that it is not the things we are going to do that really count. It is the thing that we do do that is worth while.
No doubt we should all be much more thoughtful of our many present opportunities and make better use of them were we frequently to ask ourselves,
WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO-DAY?
Genius is the transcendent capacity for taking trouble first of all.—Carlyle. We shall do so much in the years to come,
But what have we done to-day?
We shall give our gold in a princely sum,
But what did we give to-day?
We shall lift the heart and dry the tear,
For dreams, to those of steadfast hope and will, are things wherewith they build their world of fact.—Alicia K. Van Buren. We shall plant a hope in the place of fear,
We shall speak the words of love and cheer;
But what did we speak to-day?
We shall be so kind in the after while,
But what have we been to-day?
Love is the leaven of existence.—Melvin L. Severy. We shall bring each lonely life a smile,
But what have we brought to-day?
We shall give to truth a grander birth,
And to steadfast faith a deeper worth,
We shall feed the hungering souls of earth;
But whom have we fed to-day?
No man can rest who has nothing to do.—Sam Walter Foss. We shall reap such joys in the by and by,
But what have we sown to-day?
We shall build us mansions in the sky,
But what have we built to-day?
’T is sweet in idle dreams to bask,
But here and now do we do our task?
Yes, this is the thing our souls must ask,
"What have we done to-day?"