SHADOW AND SUNSHINE
A terrible shadow in Coleridge’s life was the apparent cause of most of his dejection. In early life he suffered from neuralgia, and to ease the pain began to use opiates. The result on such a temperament was almost inevitable. He became a slave to the drug habit; his naturally weak will lost all its directing and sustaining force, until, after fifteen years of pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in charge of a physician, one Mr. Gillman, of Highgate. Carlyle, who visited him at this time, calls him “a king of men,” but records that “he gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings, a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment.”—William J. Long, “English Literature.”
(2926)
Shadow of a Great Life—See [Living in the Shadow].
SHADOWS
We are made sure that the sun shines not necessarily by seeing it, but often by noting the shadows it casts.
So the presence of God in our lives may often be indicated by the shadows of sorrow and trial.
(2927)
SHAKING-UP
Many a man will confess that a sound thrashing at the hands of some other lad in the days of his youth was the beginning of his moral development; that, after the ache was over, it set him to thinking. Nature abhors monotony almost as much as a vacuum, and seems to have provided that at various times a general shaking up is necessary to maintain the proper standard.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”