Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/52

 law, or principle; and, if it be fully heeded and attended to at the right time, the world will be the better for it.

Failure and success are a part of life. We all succeed, and we all fail. The brave and resolute are topmost. The stout-hearted go up; the faint-hearted go down. Atlas, with the world on his broad shoulders, is pluck, persistency, success. The head the world believes in is — ahead. The daring and determined go in this direction. Their route is not all sunshine and pleasure, but it has a good share. Whether we succeed or fail — do something or nothing — depends upon the individual. Faith, and pluck, and work will do for a man all that can be clone. If he fails with these, it is a failure worth all the successes the world ever saw.

Women are sometimes censured for being old maids. It is too often an unjust judgment, and merits compliment rather than censure. The world is under great indebtedness to this class for no little of its best intellect, heart, and good sense. They live to honor the community and themselves; and perpetuate themselves in their own good examples, which is better than through the channel of questionable blood; and yet chronic maidenhood is to be regretted, because no woman can reach perfection save through the maternal realm of her glorious nature!

The color of a thing often depends upon the sort of eyes that look upon it. A man troubled with the spleen or dyspepsia sees no gold in the summer sun, no pleasing tints in the unfolding rose, and nothing attractive in a pair of virgin lips. Per contra, one with good digestion and an active flow of blood sees beauty in almost everything.

All human beings, all human organizations alike, generate an element called love (in this connection I am writing on the physical plane), and if they be coarse it follows that the great chemical result will be coarse too; and, therefore, their likes and dislikes, tastes, appetites, fancies, affections, loves, pursuits, hopes, pleasures, ambitions, all will correspond. You cannot make silk purses of pig's ears, nor a rough, coarse, brutal man or woman love with the power, refinement, delicacy, intensity, and soul-fervor, that a finer-moulded one is capable of. And yet, howsoever coarse a love may be, it is capable of refinement and purification to a very great degree; mainly by thinking, wishing, willing one's self on a nobler, higher plane; dwelling less on self,