A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

YOU CAN START MOW

You may have reached life’s noonday, and yet he an unknown mail.

You may even have passed life’s noonday and he known as a failure—and yet, you may have - locked up within you ability, intellect, power, sufficient to make "you a leader of men.

You may not think so; hut neither did the others who passed their fiftieth, sixteitli—yes, and even seventieth—milestone until something happened which suddenly released their ability and revealed them to themselves—and to the world.

Grant graduated twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine in a military school —a hod performance. At thirty-three he was a well-set failure—forced to resign from the army by his own great weakness. .During the next seven years he worked in a store—failed ; entered the Customs service—failed; took up real estate—failed; started a tannery—failed.

.it forty his host friends knew him is a failure.

Yet, next to Lincoln, he played the chief part in saving liis country during the Chi I War.

A great national emergency had revealed him to himself.

Admiral lUake, the great naval commander, had passed li is fiftieth milestone before he ever set foot on a warship. Then something revealed him to himself, and his slumbering powers awoke.

.James Watt had lived half a century before lie was able to demonstrate the commercial value of his improved steam engine. Darwin—who suffered acutely—was approaching fifty wliffii lie published his “ Origin of Species.” Stephenson was nearing his fiftieth year when the Rocket won him enduring fame. You may have passed the noonday of your life, and feel that you are a failure. Rut remember those who reached success ”in the evening ol their days ” —and don’t forget to remember that they couldn’t have done so had they not kept on and on, in the iface of many failures.

—M. PIIESTON STANLEY