"That's what we are trying to settle now," shouted the little husband.
My young friends, I will admit love is a kind of spontaneous,
impulsive, natural affinity, something after the order of molecular
attraction or chemical affinity, but while by the natural law of love,
a young woman may see in the object of her affection her ideal of
perfection in humanity, she owes volitional conformity to a higher law
than natural affinity. She owes to herself, to posterity and to her
country a careful study of the character of the young man to whom she
should link her life and love.
I believe two dark clouds hanging upon the horizon of this republic to
be the recklessness with which life is linked with life at the
marriage altar, and the recklessness with which we elect men to
offices of public trust. While we have many public men, schooled in
the science of government, whom the spoils of office cannot corrupt,
we have an army of demagogues who rely upon saloon politics for
promotion, and on all moral questions reason with their stomachs
instead of their brains. This is especially true in the government of
our large cities.
Sam Jones, lecturing in a city noted for its corrupt government said:
"Take the political gang you have running this city, put them in a
cage, then let the devil pass along and look in and he would say,
'That beats anything I have in my show.'"
We don't seem to realize that every public man is a teacher, every
home is a school, and the education received outside the schoolroom is
often more effective than the education inside. All the forces and
elements of the organism of society are teachers and all life is
learning. The birth of an infant into this world is its matriculation
into a university, where it graduates in successive degrees. And do
you know in this great school of human life, where I come with you to
study the traits of our kind, that we never reach a grade that we are
not influenced by what touches us? Here I am past fifty years of age
(and then "some"), yet I am constantly being influenced by what
touches me.
Start a new song with a popular air and it will spread throughout the
whole country. Boys will whistle it and girls will sing it. A number
of years ago, when at the station ready to leave home for New England,
a lad near me began to whistle and then to sing a new song. It was a
catchy tune and took hold of me. On the train I found myself trying to
hum that tune, then I tried to whistle it, and failing in both
attempts I finally gave it up. Two days after I left the train up in a
New Hampshire town and took a street car for the hotel. A blizzard was
on, but there stood the motorman, muffled to his ears, whistling the
same tune I had heard down in Kentucky, "There'll be a hot time in the
old town tonight."
When the telephone made its appearance a good Christian man had one
installed in his store and during the morning hours of the first day
he called up all his friends who had phones, and "Hello! Hello!" took
hold of him. He went home to lunch and being a little late he hurried
into his chair at the table. With the telephone still on his mind, he
bowed his head to return thanks and said: "Hello." He was a good
Christian man, but the telephone had taken hold of him.
The very tone of the voice has a tendency to influence and control
character. I wonder so many parents train their voices as they do.
They have a kind of snap to the tone which they evidently think makes
the children and the servants "get a move" on them. Perhaps it does,
but at the same time it falls upon a family like frost upon a field of
flowers. You pay three dollars to have your piano tuned, yet you train
your voice to sound harsh and hard.
How the tone of the voice controls was illustrated in my own home
several years ago. I went home in the early spring and found some one
had been among my bees and had left the lids of the hives lifted at
the time the bees were making brood. Going to the house I said to my
wife:
"Where is Charlie?" He was the colored man in charge of the barn and
garden.
Mrs. Bain replied: "I suppose he is about the barn; he doesn't stay in
the house." I knew that, but somehow we Adams will go to our Eves with
anything that goes wrong.
"What's the trouble?" my wife asked.
I told her about the exposure of the bees, (about the effect of which
I knew very little) and said:
"I want Charlie to keep out of that apiary. He'll kill every bee I
have."
Mrs. Bain in a very gentle manner said: "I did that myself. That's the
way father used to do. I was afraid your bees might starve during the
long cold spell, so I made some syrup and placed it in the upper
compartments. I lifted the lids so that the light would attract the
bees up to the syrup. I'm very sorry I did it, but I thought it would
please you."
I said: "Well, I believe you did the right thing, my dear, and I am
very much obliged to you."
If my wife had said in a harsh tone: "I did that, sir. What are you
going to do about it?" then I would have said something.
A little bit of anger let loose in a field of human nature is as
destructible to noble impulses and generous feelings as a cyclone is
to a town. I was in an Iowa cyclone some years ago and I noticed when
it was approaching the people didn't run out of their homes and throw
stones at it. They ran for the storm cellars. When you see a bit of
anger coming toward you from brother, sister, husband, wife or friend,
don't throw a dictionary of aggravating words at it; get out of the
way and it will quiet down like the troubled waters of Galilee when
"Peace be still" fell upon them.
When we realize how sensitive character is to the touch of influences,
and how uncertain the character of the influence that may touch us,
how very careful we should be as parents as to what shall touch us,
how we shall touch others, who may be fed by our fulness, starved by
our emptiness, uplifted by our righteousness or tainted by our sins.
Sometimes a boy is sent to school with the idea that the influence of
the teacher will mold the character of the boy, when the magnetic
touch by which the faculties of the boy are sprung doesn't come from
the teacher, but from some boy on the playground and perhaps not the
best boy. Some boys are as potent on the playground as a major-general
on a battle-field. Some persons are like loadstones, they draw, others
are like loads of stone, they have to be drawn.
I have known down South in the days of slavery, coal black queens of
the domestic circle. The cows would come to the cupping as if it were
a spiritual devotion. Maiden mistresses would tell them their love
stories, when they wouldn't tell their own mothers. I am a southern
man, born and reared mid slavery, and I pay this tribute to the black
"mammies" of the South before the war. Down there in that hale, hearty
colored motherhood was laid the foundation of future health and
strength for many a white baby, when otherwise its mother would have
had to see it die. Frail, delicate mothers, who because of slavery had
not done sufficient work to develop physical womanhood, were not able
to nurse their own infants and gave them to the care of vigorous,
healthy colored mothers, who took them to their bosoms and nursed them
into strength. But for that supplemental supply of vigor, but for that
sympathetic partnership in motherhood, much of the most potent manhood
of the South would never have been known.
You who lived in the North before the war, and you who are younger and
have read about the auction block, the slave driver and the
cottonfield cannot understand the attachment between one of these
colored mothers and the white boy or girl she nursed. I know whereof I
speak, for I revere the memory of my old black mammy.
There are verses, written by whom I do not know, the words of which I
cannot recall except a line here and there, hence I take the liberty
to supply the missing lines and revise the verses to express my
feelings for the slave mammy of my childhood.
"She was only a dear old darkey,
In a cabin far away,
Down in the sunny Southland,
Where sunbeams dance and play.
Yet oft in dreams I hear her crooning,
Crooning soft and low:
'Sleep on, baby boy,
The sleep will make you grow.'
"Oft when tired of fighting
In a world so full of wrong;
When wearied and worried
With the tumult and the throng,
I seek again the cabin,
Where dwelt a heart of gold
And in dreams she loves and pets me,
As she did in days of old.
"Oh, my dear old colored mammy,
In the cabin far away,
Since you rocked me in the cradle
Seems forever and a day.
Yet in dreams I hear you crooning
Above my cradle nest;
'Sleep on, baby boy,
Mammy watches while you rest.'"
A white baby, whose mother was ill for months, was given to one of
these colored mothers to nurse. After the war the white family moved
west. As their child grew up the father and mother often told her
about Aunt Hannah, how she loved her, petted her, cooked for her, and
drove away her own pickaninnies to let "mammy's baby" sleep.
The girl, when she had grown to womanhood, heard that Aunt Hannah was
still living and she longed to see her devoted old colored mammy. Her
parents had the same desire, and with other attachments for the old
southern home, they went back to Georgia on a visit and to the village
where the old woman lived. She was sent for and the old black mammy
and the beautiful young girl faced each other. The young lady was
disappointed. She expected to see a nice, comely old woman, but there
she stod, crippled with rheumatism, gray headed, wrinkled, and poorly
clad. The old woman was surprised, for there before her stood a
beautiful young woman, with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, auburn locks and
queenly form. The father and mother stood near, with tears rolling
down their cheeks as memory came surging up like successive waves from
out a past hallowed to them, for they could see in that old woman the
health and strength of their child.
The old woman broke the silence, saying: "Is dat my chile? Is dat de
chile I loved and laid wake wif so many nights and cooked so many
sweet things for? Why, bless yo' heart, honey; dese old hands ust to
take yo' and hug yo' to dis bosom, but yo's too nice now for dese old
hands to eber touch agin."
The young girl said: "No, I'm not, Aunt Hannah. You shall take me in
your arms as when I was a little child," and she gave a bound into the
old woman's arms.
That does not mean social equality, but it does mean gratitude neither
condition nor color can ever bound. If the reciprocities of that old
woman and that beautiful girl were such as to weave enrichments into
both hearts, why should not all peoples, and all individuals, see in
all others but a multiplication of the one each of us is, and that
each is enhanced or diminished in value according to the concentrated
worth of the whole? If man would stand in his lot of conformity to
man, as that old colored woman stood in her lot, it would lift this
world to that height from which we could see the one interest, one
reciprocal, interdependent, together-woven, God-allied and God-saved
humanity.
But in this we fail. Several men, one of them an Irishman, were
standing on a street corner when a negro passed. The Irishman said:
"Faith, and if I had been makin' humanity for a world, I would niver
have made a nager." I suppose in return the negro would not have made
the Irishman, nor would the white man have made the Indian or
Chinaman, but God made them all and in proportion as we have the
philanthropic comprehensiveness to accept them all, and benevolently
try to serve them in their places, do we honor the place assigned us
in the world's creation. It is not for us to know why God made this or
that; He made everything for a purpose.
A father took his boy to an animal show. The lad had never seen a
monkey and as they played their pranks about the cage he said:
"Father, did God make monkeys?"
When the father replied: "Yes," the boy said: "Well, don't you guess
God laughed when he made the first monkey?"
I don't know about that, but if God made the monkey for a joke it was
certainly a success. If God had made the monkey for no other purpose
than to create laughter it wouldn't have been a mistake. The lachrymal
glands were placed in us for sorrow to play upon; we are commanded to
"weep with those who weep." In antithesis to this the risable nerves
were placed in us for mirthful music, and I pity the one who has
broken the keys and cannot laugh.
I believe we owe the Irishman a vote of thanks for the ringing laughs
he has sent around the world. An Irishman said to a rich English
land-owner:
"Me Lord, I think the world is very unaqually divided; it should be
portioned out and each one given an aqual share with ivery other one?"
The Englishman replied: "Well, Pat, if we were to divide today, in ten
years I would have ten thousand pounds and you wouldn't have a
shilling."
"Then we would divide again," said the Irishman.
On an electric car going out of New York City, a man, who occupied a
seat next to the aisle, had a pet monkey in a cage on the seat with
him, next to the window. An Irishman boarded the car and seeing all
the seats taken he remained standing, holding on to a strap, when
suddenly he spied the monkey in the cage. He immediately addressed the
man who had the monkey:
"Sir, is that gintleman in the cage paying his fare? If not, I'd like
to have the sate."
The owner of the monkey lifted the cage to his lap and moved over,
giving the Irishman a seat.
"What's the nationality of that gintleman, anyway?" asked Pat.
By this time the other man was very much out of humor and said: "He's
half ape and half Irish."
"Faith, then he's related to both of us," replied the witty son of
Erin, and there were two monkeys on that car.
I'll admit this trait of humor comes in sometimes when it is quite
embarrassing, as it was to Sam Jones upon one occasion, when in the
midst of a sermon before a large audience, he said:
"All you who want to go to heaven, stand up; I'd like to take a look
at you."
The audience arose in great numbers. When seated again Mr. Jones said:
"Now all you who want to go to the devil, stand and let's have a look
at you."
All was silent for a moment and then a tall, lank, lean fellow from
the backwoods arose and said: "Well, parson, I don't care anything
special about seeing the old chap, but I never desert a friend in
trouble, specially a minister, so I guess I'll have to stand with
you."
Dr. Frank Gunsaulus told me of a time when he had to laugh under
embarrassing circumstances. He was called upon to preach the funeral
of a man who had died from the effects of drink. His friends had made
a box for the corpse and had placed in the top a ten by twelve window
glass to go over the face, but when the time came to put the top on
the box, being double-sighted from drink, they reversed the top and
had the glass at the foot of the coffin instead of the head.
The preacher took his place, as he supposed, at the head of the
deceased, when looking down his eyes fell upon a pair of feet. With
great effort he kept his face straight and conducted the service. At
the close he invited the friends to view the remains. One stimulated
friend walked up to the coffin, shook his head and turning to another
said: "Don't look at him, Jim. He's changing very fast and you won't
know him."
The great preacher is to be excused if he did laught at that funeral.
It's good to laugh, and yet, while I pay tribute to the trait of
humor, I would have the undergirding trait of all traits of character,
the trait of principle. Though you may use policy now and then, never
use a policy you must get off the heaven-bound express train of
principle to use.
I don't like that word policy. There is another and better name for
the trait I would present just here, and that is _tact_. It means the
doing of a right thing at the right time and in the right place. Some
young men win first honors in college and fail in the business of life
for want of tact. Here is where the Yankee excels. The Southerner is
genial, generous and has many traits of character to be admired, but
he must doff his hat to Yankee character for the development of tact.
Sam Jones, who rarely ever failed to get the best of whoever tried
repartee with him, met more than his match when he ran up against
Yankee tact. He was raising money to pay off the debt on a church.
A liberal member said: "Mr. Jones, I have given about all I can afford
to give, but if you will get one dollar from that old man on the end
of the back bench of the 'amen corner,' I'll give you ten dollars
more."
"Has he any money, and is he a member of the church?"
"Yes," was the answer to both questions.
The great evangelist said: "Well, that's easy," and started for the
dollar.
Approaching the old man he said: "Brother, I'm collecting money for
the Lord. You owe him a dollar. I'm told you are an honest man and
always pay your debts, so hand over that dollar."
"How old are you, sir?" asked the old man.
When Sam gave his age at about forty, the old brother said: "I'm
nearly double your age, sir, and will very likely see the Lord before
you do, so I'll just give him the dollar myself."
I lectured in New England a few years ago when before me sat a Yankee
with his two sons. He sat between them and when I made a point which
he approved, he would nudge the boys. He seemed to be driving my
advice in with his elbows. At the close of the lecture I took his hand
and said: "I see you have your boys with you."
He replied: "Yes, I always take the two boys with me when I attend a
lecture. I presume when a speaker has prepared himself he is going to
get about the best things out of his subject, and will put them in a
way to take hold and benefit young men. If I were going to get the
same information out of books I might have to spend a dollar or two,
when I only paid fifteen cents each for them to hear your lecture."
This trait of tact, however, is moving south, and even the colored
race is getting hold of it. An old negro who was born on the
plantation where he lived when set free, remained after the war in his
cabin and worked for the son of his old master. In his old age his
memory began to fail and he would neglect to do things he was told to
do. The young man was patient with the old negro for quite a while but
finally said to him:
"Uncle Dan, you must do better or you and I will have to separate."
The old servant said: "Mars Jim, I does the best I can. I is mighty
sorry I forgits things and I'se gwine to try to do better."
But he grew worse and one evening when he failed to do a very
important chore, the young man said: "I told you what would happen if
you did not do better and the time has come when you and I separate."
Uncle Dan replied: "I'se mighty sorry, Marse Jim. I was here when you
was born, and when you growed big enuf I ust to take you on de mule
out to de field wif me, and I members how you ust to take de lines and
dribe de ole mule. Den when de war broke out and ole Master jined de
army, I stayed here and took care ob ole Missus and you chilluns. I
shore is mighty sorry we's got to part, but if you says so den its got
to be, but look here, Mars Jim, if we's got to part, whar's you
counting on moving to?"
By this time tact had done its work, aggravation had melted into
forgiveness and the young man said: "I'm not going to move anywhere,
Uncle Dan, nor shall you. We'll both stay here on the old plantation
together." That was certainly tact on the old man's part.
A young negro, who craved a ride on a railroad train but had no money,
crept under the baggage car and fixed himself on the truck. The train
started and when at full speed the engine struck a mule and tore the
animal to pieces. Part of the mangled remains was carried into the
running gear of the baggage car. The engineer stopped the train and
commenced pulling out pieces of mule here and there until he reached
the baggage car, when, looking under for more of the mule, he saw the
white eyes of the negro.
"Come out, you imp, what are you doing under there?" said the
engineer.
Back came the tactful reply: "Boss, I wus de fellow what wus ridin'
dat mule."
The engineer said: "Well, I guess you've paid your fare; climb into
the cab and help me run this train."
I commend to you the cultivation of tact, but don't let it lead you
into the meanest trait of character--selfishness. To say,
"Of all my father's family I love myself the best,
If Providence takes care of me, who cares what takes the rest?"
In the days when there was a community hearse in a country
neighborhood, and carpenters made the coffins, a young man, who was
ashamed of the old worn-out hearse, went about soliciting money to
purchase a new one. Presenting the purpose to an old man of means, he
received from this selfish citizen the reply:
"I won't give you a dollar. I helped to buy the old hearse twenty
years ago, and neither me nor my family have ever had any benefit from
it."
Against this trait of selfishness I place the most beautiful of all
traits--sympathy. I would rather have the record of Clara Barton in
the great reckoning day than that of any statesman whose portrait
hangs in a hall of fame.
During our Civil War she went from battlefield to battlefield, and was
just as kind to the boy in gray as she was to the boy in blue.
After the Civil War Queen Victoria desired to communicate with Clara
Barton regarding the same mission of mercy for the German army, where
the Queen's daughter was then engaged. But Clara Barton was already on
the ocean, and soon after was in the war zone with the German army.
She was with the first who climbed the defenses of Strassburg, where
she ministered to the wounded and dying. At the close of her work
there she took ten thousand garments with her to France. There she
waited till the Commune fell and again she was with the first to reach
the suffering. In our own war with Spain she went to Cuba, and though
then past sixty years of age, she stood among the cots of our wounded
and sick soldiers, soothing their sufferings and cheering their
hearts.
Still later on in storm-swept Galveston, Texas, she fell at her post
of duty and was borne back by loving hands to her home, where she
recovered and again resumed her work of love and mercy, to carry it on
to the end of her long and useful life.
No wonder the King and court of Germany bestowed upon her medals of
remembrance; no wonder the Grand Duchess of Baden placed upon her the
"Red Cross of Geneva;" and in the great day of reward, He who bore the
cross for us all will place upon Clara Barton the crown of eternal
life.
When my wife was president of the House of Mercy, in Lexington,
Kentucky, a home for the rescue of fallen girls, she went in her
carriage to a dentist with one of the unfortunate inmates.
Soon after a business man of the city said to me: "I hardly see how
you can give your consent to have your wife do such work. I saw her
recently in her carriage with a girl I would not have my wife seen
with for any amount of money."
My reply was: "I would rather my wife should go through the golden
gates, bearing in her arms the spirit of a poor girl, snatched from
the hell of a harlot's home, than to be the leader of the fashionable
four hundred of New York City."
There is a beautiful story told of one of the most influential and
wealthy men of England. He inherited fame as well as fortune, had an
Oxford education and early in life he was elected a member of
Parliament. One evening he sat in his fine library, watching the wood
fire build its temples of flame around the great andirons, and as he
heard the beating of the wild winter storm against the window pane,
his heart went out to the homeless hungry poor of the city. Ordering
his carriage he went to the city mission and asked for a helper, and
then drove to London Bridge, under the shelter of which the penniless
poor gather in time of storms. He took them two by two to shelter,
gave them food, and cots on which to sleep, and then returned to his
princely home. We are told that for years after, when Parliament would
adjourn at midnight, this young man would go through the slums on his
way home, that he might relieve some poor child of misfortune.
On Sunday afternoons, while aristocracy lined the boulevards, this son
of fortune would take his physician in his carriage and go through the
slums, seeking the sick and suffering. One afternoon, while he stood
outside a tenement door, awaiting the return of the doctor from a
visit to a poor sick soul inside the tenement, he became deeply moved
by the ragged children playing in the gutters and reaching into
garbage barrels for crusts of bread. He said: "Ah! here's the riddle
of civilization. I wish I could help to solve it; perhaps I can."
He began the establishment of "ragged schools" and into these ware
gathered thousands of poor children. Then followed night schools for
boys who had to work by day. To these schools he added homes for
working women, and for these women he persuaded Parliament to give
shorter hours of service. He tore down old rookeries, built neat
dwellings instead, beneath the windows planted little flower gardens,
and rented them to the poor at the same price they had paid for the
rookeries.
When he began to fade, as the leaf fades in its autumn beauty, and the
day of his departure was at hand, he said: "I am sorry to leave the
world with so much misery in it, but I have lived to prove that every
kind word spoken, and every good deed done, sooner or later returns to
bless the giver."
As the end drew near he said to his daughter: "Read me the
twenty-third Psalm, for 'though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I fear no evil.'"
A few days later Westminster Abbey was crowded with England's nobility
to do him honor. When the funeral procession reached Trafalgar Square,
thousands of working women stood, with uncovered heads and tearful
eyes, to pay their tribute. Children came from the "ragged schools"
bearing banners with the motto: "I was naked and ye clothed me." From
the hospitals came the motto: "I was sick and ye visited me," while
the working girls came with a silk flag on which they had embroidered
with their own fingers: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of
these, ye did it unto me."
Thus loaded down with the fruits of the Spirit, Lord Shaftsbury died,
and yet lives in memory as the noblest embodiment of Christian
charity.
That's sweet music when nature hangs her wind-harps in the trees for
autumn breezes to play thereon; that must have been sweet music when
Jenny Lind so charmed the world with her voice, and when Ole Bull
rosined the bow and touched the strings of his violin; that was sweet
music when I sat in the twilight on the stoop of my childhood's home
and heard the welkin ring with the songs of the old plantation; but
the sweetest music in this old world is that which thrills the soul
when spoken in "words of love and deeds of kindness." Cultivate the
trait of sympathy. The good things you are going to say of your friend
when he's dead, say them to him while he's alive. Take care of the
living; God will care for the dead.
To the trait of sympathy I would add two grand traits--decision and
courage.
"Tender handed touch a nettle.
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
Silk it in your hand remains."
The decision to throw over the tea in Boston harbor, to write "Charles
Carroll of Carrolton," and the courage to say, "Give me liberty or
give me death," gave us this government by and for the people.
"If you come to a river deep and wide,
And you've no canoe to skim it;
If your duty's on the other side,
Jump in, my boy, and swim it."
Have the courage to stand for what you believe to be right. You may
have to go ahead of public sentiment at times, but you will be
rewarded in having your conviction and conscience with you.
A number of years ago in Boston, I gave a temperance address on Sunday
afternoon in Music Hall. At the close of the lecture a friend said to
me: "You said some good things but though from the old bourbon State
of Kentucky, you are ahead of public sentiment in Boston."
I replied: "Public sentiment does not always indicate what is right
even in Boston. On your beautiful Commonwealth Avenue yesterday
afternoon I met an elegantly dressed lady, I suppose a wealthy one
from her jewels and dress. She had a poodle dog in her arms, with a
blue ribbon on its neck. Yet, the same woman wouldn't be caught
carrying her six-weeks' old baby down the street for any
consideration."
Such is public sentiment in fashionable society in our cities, and yet
the highest type of the world's creation is a pure, sweet mother with
a babe in her arms, and another holding her apron strings. I think it
would be a blessing to home life if an avenging angel should go
through this country, smiting every English pug and poodle dog bought
to take the place of babies. In their places I would put bright-eyed,
rosy cheeked children to greet fathers when they return home from
their day's labor.
Battle for the right, remembering that far better is a fiery furnace
with an angel for company, than worshiping a brazen image on the
plains of Dura.
Some young man may now be saying in his mind, "For me to always stand
for the right would be to meet difficulties at every step of the way."
Don't get alarmed over difficulties. Half of them are imaginary.
I made my first trip to California thirty-five years ago. One morning
I stood on the eastern edge of the plains with a sleeping car berth at
my service and a through ticket to San Francisco in my pocket, while
the iron horse stood there all harnessed and ready for the journey.
Wasn't I in good condition for the trip? Yes, but I saw trouble before
me. One can always see trouble who looks for it. I had never been
across the plains and before the time for the train to start I walked
to the front of the engine and looking along the track as it reached
out across the prairie I saw trouble. What was it? Why, six miles
ahead the track wasn't wide enough. Yes, I saw it. Then on six miles
more the rails came together, with my destination nineteen hundred
miles away. Soon the train moved and as we neared the difficulty, the
track opened to welcome us. Not a pin was torn up nor a rail
displaced. Again I looked ahead and a mountain was on the track, but
before I had time to get off the mountain got off. Next came a
precipice and the engine making directly for it, but we dodged that
and I concluded our train had right of way, so I stuck to the Pullman
car and went through all right.
Ever since God made the world principle has had right of way. Get you
a through ticket, get on the train, battle for the right and you'll
come out victorious in the end.
Napoleon said: "God is on the side of the strongest battalions." He
entered Moscow with one hundred and twenty thousand men. Snow began to
fall several weeks earlier than usual, the highways were blocked,
frost fiends ruled the air, the great French army was broken into
pieces and Napoleon had to fly for his life. God taught Napoleon as
well as the commander of the great Spanish Armada, that victory is in
the hands of Him who rules weather and waves.
The next trait I would mention is contentment. Many persons make
themselves miserable by contrasting the little they have with the much
that others have, when if they would compare their blessings with the
miseries of others it would add to their contentment. Let me give you
an old but a good motto: "Never anything so bad, but it might have
been worse!"
It is told of a happy hearted old man that no matter what would happen
he would say: "It might have been worse." A friend, who wanted to see
if the old man would say the same under all circumstances, went into a
grocery store where he was seated by a big fire and said:
"Uncle Jim, last night I dreamt I died and was sent to perdition."