Of course souls will ache and ail, and we have to
bear the burden of our ancestors' weaknesses as well as the burden
of our own; but just as, in the physical region, diet and exercise
and regularity can effect more cures than the strongest medicines,
so, in the life of the spirit, self-restraint and deliberate
limitation and tranquil patience will often lead into a vigorous
and effective channel the stream that, left to itself, welters and
wanders among shapeless pools and melancholy marshes.
III
FRIENDSHIP
To make oneself beloved, says an old French proverb, this is, after
all, the best way to be useful. That is one of the deep sayings
which children think flat, and which young men, and even young
women, despise; and which a middle-aged man hears with a certain
troubled surprise, and wonders if there is not something in it
after all; and which old people discover to be true, and think with
a sad regret of opportunities missed, and of years devoted, how
unprofitably, to other kinds of usefulness! The truth is that most
of us who have any ambitions at all, do not start in life with a
hope of being useful, but rather with an intention of being
ornamental.
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