Life and Literature Part 95

_First Side._--"Consider the end before you begin, and before you advance, provide a retreat.

Give not unnecessary pain to any man, but study the happiness of all.

Ground not your dignity upon your power to hurt others."

_Second Side._--"Take counsel before you commence any measure, and never trust its execution to the inexperienced.

Sacrifice your property for your life, and your life for your religion.

Spend your time in establis.h.i.+ng a good name, and if you desire fortune, learn contentment."

_Third Side._--"Grieve not for that which is broken, stolen, burnt or lost.

Never give order in another man's house; accustom yourself to eat your bread at your own table."

_Fourth Side._--"Take not a wife from a bad family, and seat not thyself with those who have no shame.

Keep thyself at a distance from those who are incorrigible in bad habits, and hold no intercourse with that man who is insensible to kindness.

Convert not the goods of others.

Be sensible of your own value, estimate justly the worth of others: and war not with those who are far above thee in fortune."

_Fifth Side._--"Be envious of no man, and avoid being out of temper, or thy life will pa.s.s in misery.

Respect and protect the females of thy family."

1314

The meals which are eaten in company are always better digested than those which are taken in solitude.

--_Dr. Combe._

1315

The poor man must walk to get meat for his stomach, the rich man to get a stomach for his meat.

1316

Johnson said melancholy people were apt to fly to intemperance for relief, but that it sunk them much deeper in misery. He observed, that laboring men who work hard and live sparingly, are seldom or never troubled with low spirits.

--_Boswell's Johnson._

1317

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

--_Rochefoucauld._

1318

By attention ideas are _registered_ on the memory.

1319

An old deacon was accustomed to offer this prayer: "Help us to forget what we ought not to remember, and to remember what we ought not to forget."

--_Weekly Paper._

1320

What nicer, what sweeter, than-- The remembrance of a past in boyhood's village days without regret!

1321

So many we find to be well fed but ill taught.

1322

_The Greatest Men Arose from the People._--The greatest scholars, poets, orators, philosophers, warriors, statesmen, inventors, and improvers of the arts, arose from the people. If we had waited till courtiers had invented the arts of printing, clockmaking, navigation, and a thousand others, we should probably have continued in darkness till this hour.

1323

I would as soon attempt to entice a star To perch upon my finger; or the wind To follow me like a dog--as try to make Some people do what they ought.

1324

ABBOTSFORD.

When Was.h.i.+ngton Irving visited Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott introduced him to many of his friends and favorites, not only among the neighboring farmers, but the laboring peasantry. "I wish to show you," said Scott, "some of our really excellent plain Scotch people. The character of a nation is not to be learnt from its fine folks, its fine gentlemen and ladies; such you meet everywhere, and they are everywhere the same."

--_Smiles._

1325

MEN--UNLUCKY.