Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/179

 then falls upon ourselves, and this kind of "wounded spirit who can bear."

One error is liable continually to follow us, and destroy the good effect of our best resolutions. This is a spirit of procrastination, a neglect of favourable opportunities for usefulness, until those opportunities are past beyond recal. Then follows the fruitlessness of regret, and the bitterness of self reproach.

If it is sometimes difficult to know how to direct our course, yet the path of rectitude is always open before us, and we need not hesitate to pursue it. The ambiguities of others sometimes perplex our designs, let us be careful that no ambiguity of ours may ever be a stumbling block in the way of others.

What is there in the human mind so tremblingly vulnerable, that even the suddenness of blunt sincerity, or the hasty speech of thoughtlessness should wound it like the thorn of unkindness? Those tender and undefinable feelings must often