Part 28

"We shall never be sorry afterwards for thinking twice before we speak, for counting the cost before entering upon any new course, for sleeping over stings and injuries before saying or doing anything in answer, or for carefully considering any business scheme presented to us before putting money or name into it. It will save us from much regret, loss, and sorrow, always to remember to do nothing rashly."

"Do nothing in a hurry. Nature never does. 'Most haste, worst speed,' says the old proverb. If you are in doubt, sleep over it. But, above all, never quarrel in a hurry. Think it over well. Take time. However vexed you may be overnight, things will often look very different in the morning. If you have written a clever and conclusive, but scathing letter, keep it back till the next day, and it will very often never go at all."

Lord AVEBURY.

Revenge

APRIL 18

"He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green."

BACON.

"Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy."

Across the Plains, R. L. STEVENSON.

"Still in thy right hand carry gentle Peace To silence envious tongues."

SHAKESPEARE.

Touchiness

APRIL 19

"Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point."

HENRY DRUMMOND.

"Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offences. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind--as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake."

Vailima Prayers, R. L. STEVENSON.

Unbalanced Memory

APRIL 20

"It is so easy to forget a kindness, and to remember a kick. Yet controlling our recollections is almost as important as controlling our temper. We are apt to forget completely a hundred little kindnesses and courtesies which one has shown us, and to remember a single careless slight or thoughtless word. Often we hear it said of some wrong or foolish deed, 'I have never thought so well of that man since then; it was there he showed his real character,'--as if a man's real character appeared more in one separate deed to which, perhaps, he was sorely tempted, than in the striving and overcoming of many days and years."

"Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better than we are. And God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don't see each other's whole nature."

GEORGE ELIOT.

"Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others."

GEORGE ELIOT.

Unbalanced Memory

APRIL 21

"Strange endurance of human vanity! a million of much more important conversations have escaped one since then, most likely--but the memory of this little mortification (for such it is, after all) remains quite fresh in the mind, and unforgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than half a score of years old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit; but I doubt if we ever forgive slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circumstances in which our self-love has been made to suffer."

W. M. THACKERAY.