It is in childhood that pleasures count most, when the slightest investment of kindness brings largest returns. Let us give the children sunlight, love, companionship, sympathy with their little troubles and worries that seem to them so great, genuine interest in their growing hopes, their vague, unproportioned dreams and yearnings. Let us put ourselves into their places, view the world through their eyes so that we may gently correct the errors of their perspective by our greater wisdom. Such trifles will make them genuinely happy, happier by far than things a thousand times greater that come too late.
Procrastination is the father of a countless family of things that come too late. Procrastination means making an appointment with opportunity to "call again to-morrow." It kills self-control, saps mental energy, makes man a creature of circumstances instead of their creator. There is one brand of procrastination that is a virtue. It is never doing to-day a wrong that can be put off till to-morrow, never performing an act to-day that may make to-morrow ashamed.
There are little estrangements in life, little misunderstandings that are passed by in silence between friends, each too closely armored with pride, and enamoured with self to break. There is a time when a few straightforward words would set it all right, the clouds would break and the sunshine of love burst forth again. But each nurses a weak, petty sense of dignity, the rift grows wider, they drift apart, and each goes his lonely way, hungering for the other. They may waken to realization too late to piece the broken strands of affection into a new life.
The wisdom that comes too late in a thousand phases of life usually has an irritating, depressing effect on the individual. He should charge a large part of it to the account of experience. If no wisdom came too late there would be no experience. It means, after all, only that we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday, that we see all things in truer relation, that our pathway of life has been illuminated.
The world is prone to judge by results. It is glad to be a stockholder in our success and prosperity, but it too often avoids the assessments of sympathy and understanding. The man who pulls against the stream may have but a stanch two or three to help him. When the tide turns and his craft swiftens its course and he is carried along without effort, he finds boats hurrying to him from all directions as if he had suddenly woke up and found himself in a regatta. The help then comes too late; he does not need it. He himself must then guard against the temptation of cynicism and coldness and selfishness. Then he should realize and determine that what he terms "the way of the world" shall not be his "way." That he will not be too late with his stimulus to others who have struggled bravely as he has done, but who being less strong may drop the oars in despair for the lack of the stimulus of even a friendly word of heartening in a crisis.
The old song of dreary philosophy says: "The mill will never grind again with the water that is past." Why should the mill expect to use the same water over and over? That water may now be merrily turning mill-wheels further down the valley, continuing without ceasing, its good work. It is folly to think so much of the water that is past. Think more of the great stream that is ever flowing on. Use that as best you can, and when it has passed you will be glad that it came, and be satisfied with its service.
Time is a mighty stream that comes each day with unending flow. To think of this water of past time with such regret that it shuts our eyes to the mighty river of the present is sheer folly. Let us make the best we can of to-day in the best preparation for to-morrow; then even the things that come too late will be new revelations of wisdom to use in the present now before us, and in the future we are forming.