Items of Interest.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 440, 15 September 1904, Page 7

Items of Interest.

HE who proclaims abroad that life is a swindle unconsciously confesses that he has been beaten at his own game. Look not mournful into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine.—LongfellowAll gentlemen throughout the world are brothers, it is true, for to be a gentleman is to be brave, honest, courteous, and nothing more. The man who whistles seldom gets out of temper. It is the people who are compelled to listen to him that do the grumbling. When you go to collect a bill, the man at the counter is less apt to inquire about the health of your family than when you go in to pay one. Those with whom we can apparently become well-acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and understand.—Hawthorn. Never be forward, but be friendly and courteous; the first to salute, hear, and answer, and not pensive when it is time to converse.—George Washington. There is no strain on nature so severe as the silence which follows the word or the sentence that nas killed an attempt at confidence, and which throws the people concerned suddenly aad forcibly back upon themselves like the end of a snapped elastic.

Two extremes are to be avoided, as they beget faults. Self-complacency on the one hand, and self-depreciation on the other. Bealise your own individuality, mental, moral and social. Use your faculties until you come to a fairly just self-estimate; know what you can do and you will attain success.

To know that there are some souls, hearts, and minds, here and there, who trust and whom we trust, some who know us and whom we know, some on whom we can always rely, and who will always rely on us, makes a paradise of this great world. This makes our life really life.— James Freeman Clarke.

It is by this passion we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer, For sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects, as he is affected. —Burke,

Wisdom is corrupted by ambition even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. Ambition and self-love will commonly derange that proportion between the active and passive understanding which is essential'to wisdom, and will lead a man to value thoughts and opinions less, according to their worth and truth, than according as they are his own or another's.—Henry Taylor.

Absence from those we love Is self from self! A deadly banishment. What light is light, those whom wo love

not seen ? " What joy is joy, those whom we love not by? Unless it be to think that they are by, And feast upon the shadow of perfection. —Shakespeare.

It. has been justly remarked, that the more there is of mind in our solitary employments, the more dignity there will be in the character. The allurements of dissipation have less power over such a character, and mental cultivation will be found to add an exquisite zest to domestic and social intercourse. Cultivate then whatsever tends to refine and adorn the mind, it will make virtue engaging, and piety lovely; but remember that talents weighed against virtues are as the small dust of the balance. Let neither the pleasures of taste, nor the pursuit of knowledge, be for one moment placed in competition with the fulfilment of • active duties; those duties which are perpetually arising from the sacred ties of family and kindred.

There are times in life when we appear to be almost at a standstill. Again, we are carried on by a rush of circumstances, and landed in an entirely new place ; the unused side is uppermost, and many things are new and strange. This is well, for left to ourselves we would probably use only the one side of life which habit has made so easy, leaving the other to rust and waste. There is always some fault to be reckoned with; some temptation to be overcome ; a grace to be perfected, or a virtue moro diligently cultivated, and these can only be accomplished by ever changing circumstances, and strenuously working our way through them; they are the means by which character is fashioned, and each now experience, however, unwonted or unwelcome, may be a stepping-stone. He who takes hold to conquer, is no longor a pigmy, but- a giant, standing above the very circumstance which at one time looked like crushing him.—M. K.