It all depends on
the individual men, and the use they make of the opportunities for
good which offer themselves.
A life well spent, a character uprightly sustained, is no slight
legacy to leave to one's children, and to the world; for it is the
most eloquent lesson of virtue and the severest reproof of vice,
while it continues an enduring source of the best kind of riches.
Well for those who can say, as Pope did, in rejoinder to the
sarcasm of Lord Hervey, "I think it enough that my parents, such as
they were, never cost me a blush, and that their son, such as he
is, never cost them a tear."
It is not enough to tell others what they are to do, but to exhibit
the actual example of doing. What Mrs. Chisholm described to Mrs.
Stowe as the secret of her success, applies to all life. "I
found," she said, "that if we want anything DONE, we must go to
work and DO: it is of no use merely to talk--none whatever." It
is poor eloquence that only shows how a person can talk. Had Mrs.
Chisholm rested satisfied with lecturing, her project, she was
persuaded, would never have got beyond the region of talk; but when
people saw what she was doing and had actually accomplished, they
fell in with her views and came forward to help her. Hence the
most beneficent worker is not he who says the most eloquent things,
or even who thinks the most loftily, but he who does the most
eloquent acts.
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