Items of Interest.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 448, 17 November 1904, Page 7

Items of Interest.

HOWEVER practical we deem it,, that life loses itself which fails to keep in touch with the invisible. Active preparation in the duties of this world seems to be the surest safeguard for the health of body and mind.—Lydia Maria Child, Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from tho broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot are bad, and may be counted so at once, and left alone.—Dickens. Knowledge of books in recluse men is like that sort of lanthorn which hides him who carries it, and serves only to pass through secret and gloomy paths of his own; but, in the possession of a man of business, it is a torch in the hand of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to their prosperity and welfare ( To cultivate anything, be it a 'plant, an animal, a mind, is to make it grow. Growth, expansion is the end, Nothing admits culture but that which has a principle of life capable of being expanded. He, therefore, who does what he can to unfold all his powers and capacities,-es-pecially his nobler ones, so as to become a well-proportioned, vigorous, excellent happy being, practises self-culture. —W. E. Channing. Wo know not what [we shall be, but aie sure The spark once kindled by the eternal breath, Goes not ojiite out, but somewhero doth endure In that strange life [we blindly christen death. Somewhere he is, though where we cannot tell ; But whereso'er'Godhideshim, it is well, —Sir Lewis Morris. Gaining or losing all the time is our condition, morally and spiritually. We cannot stand utterly still. If we are not improving we are losing ground. Outside forces compel that, in addition to the forces that arc working within. We arc pressing forward and being helped in that direction, or we are being pressed backward and are yielding to that pressure. Let us not deceive ourselves with the idea that even though we are making no progress we are at least holding our own. We can no more stand still than time can. It is a goodly thing to die with the blessed consciousness of never having taken advantage of another's infirmity, or poverty, or ignorance; to die abl%to say that one has not extended the empire of evil on the earth by one's hair breadth ; on the other hand, ono has enlarged the sacrel borders of that which is good ; that one has expended mind, years, fortune and strength on behalf of the kingdom of truth and justice. Surely this is a true consolation, a real stay amid the closing shadows of coming death. —Henry Perreyve. There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other day a ragged, barefoot boy run down the street after a marble with so jolly an air thst he sent everyone he passed into a good humour; one of these persons, who had been delivered from more than usually black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave him some money with this remark, ' You see what sometimes comes of looking pleased.' If he had looked pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and mystified. For my part I justify this encouragement of smiling rather than tearful children ; I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but upon the stage, but I am prepared to deal largely in the opposite commodity. A happy man or \foman is a better thing to find than a fivepound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We .need not care whether, they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate tho groat Thoorem of tho liveablehess of life.—R. L, Stevenson.