|WHEN we saw him, he looked as though, if he had his life to live over
again, he would select a different time to ponder over his previous
history. Sometimes a mule's firmness causes his teetotal and everlasting
overthrow.
Firmness is a good thing in its place, but we should early learn that to
be firm, we need not stand up against a cyclone till our eternal economy
is blown into the tops of the neighboring trees. Moral courage is a good
thing, but it is useless unless you have a liver to go along with it.
Sometimes a man is required to lay down his life for his principles, but
the cases where he is expected to lay down his digester on the altar of
his belief, are comparatively seldom.
We may often learn a valuable lesson from the stubborn mule, and guard
against the too protruberant use of our own ideas in opposition to other
powers against which it is useless to contend. It may be wrong for giant
powder to blow the top of a man's head off without cause, but repealed
contests have proved that even when giant powder is in the wrong, it is
eventually victorious.
Let us, therefore, while reasonably fixed in our purpose, avoid the
display of a degree of firmness which will scatter us around over two
school districts, and confuse the coroner in his inquest.