John McGovern

“ Let not the Vandals and Goths of after-life swoop down upon this sunny region in our lives; yet if they do, may we not look upon our noble ruins, our Coliseum and our Parthenon, in a kind of classic love that shall endear and sanctify the rights of the young about us and lengthen out their "golden age." Youth should be young. Says Shakspeare: "Youth no less becomes
THE LIGHT AND CARELESS LIVERY THAT IT WEARS,
than settled age its sables and its weeds, importing health and graveness." Youth is like Adam's early walk in the Garden of Paradise. ”

“ Now he is furiously in love with that widow. He sallies from the hotel in haste to her residence.
Three blocks away from his goal, with the old home in sight, he awakens to his danger. A moment more and the whole shameful truth had been known!
"No, base as I am, I cannot do that," he shudders.
Besides, he is a true lover, and what one ever dared to take the great risk?
Here she lives! And between her and her lover, her husband, yawns the chasm of death! Was it not a black act that could so enrobe a woman? He recalls her garb as she appeared at the dedication yesterday--solemn, solemn! ”

“ SCHILLER;
"they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of men; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands." "Win her and wear her, if you can," says Shelley; "she is the most delightful of God's creatures—Heaven's best gift—man's joy and pride in prosperity—man's support and comforter in affliction." "Her passions are made of the finest parts of pure love," says Shakspeare. ”

“ Corkey's sneeze is unapproachable, unrivaled, hated, feared, admired, reverenced. The devout say "God bless you!" with deep unction. The adventurous declare that such a sneeze would buckle the cabin-floor of a steamer like a wave in the trough of the sea.
When Corkey sneezes, sailors are moved to treat to the drinks. They mark it as an event. A sailor will treat you because it is Christmas, or because Corkey has sneezed.
Greatness consists in doing one thing better or worse than any one else can do it. Thus it is rare a man is so really great as Corkey. ”

“ Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. ”

“ Sometimes, after a drenching on account of the David Lockwin Annex--a costly fabric--Mr. Harpwood marvels that men should be created so for the solace of widows! The other ladies show their discontent. Fortunes are on every hand, and Esther is like Niobe, all tears. Why does Harpwood turn all tears, weeping for Lockwin? This causes Harpwood to be himself astonished.
It is only genius that can adapt itself to an environment so lugubrious. It is only genius that can unhorse suspicion itself, leaving even the would-be detractor to admit that Mr. Harpwood is a kind man--as he certainly is. ”

“ Remember that age comes upon us like a snowstorm in the night, and that the mill will never grind with the water that has passed. Time is the stern corrector of fools; "Wisdom walks before it, Opportunity with it, and Temperance behind it. He that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends." ”

“ Love this house as he may, therefore, David Lockwin must avoid it until he can control himself. It is true his books are in there, his manuscripts, his chronicles, "Josephus," and a thousand things without which he cannot lay hold on the true dignity of life. It is true he is slipping down the declivity that invites the easy descent of the obscure and powerless citizen. If he have true hope--and what lover has it not--he must hurry away. ”

“ How ridiculous that one should suffer from want of a frill or a furbelow! "I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man poor," says the eloquent Edmund Burke; "I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men." "It is the great privilege of poverty" says Dr. Johnson, "to be happy unenvied, to be healthy without physic, and to be secure without guard." Is it not ridiculous for the poor man, by aping the habits of the rich, to spurn some of the greatest blessings attaching to our life? ”

“ Between Chicago and New York one may fall into a wide abyss of despair. The late Honorable David Lockwin has tarried in Chicago, has assisted at the public dedication of his own cenotaph, has visited the David Lockwin Annex, has looked his own widow in the face. His pride is torn out by the roots. A man once exalted is now humbled. And, added to the horrors of his situation, every fiber of his body, every aspiration of his spirit, proclaims his love of the woman who once wearied him. ”

“ The warm genial love of the home—the love which is as an open grate, cheerful, and which is without those thunderstorms needful to clear the heavily charged atmosphere of youthful love—pleases and repays me for "the dangers I have passed." "The greatest pleasure of life is love," says Sir William Temple. "Love is like the hunter," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness." ”

“ IF YOUR MOTHER IS YET YOUNG,
you have many years of her great friendship before you. Try and pattern after her boundless affection. Let it melt into your heart and make it warmer. If "age has snowed white hairs" upon her head, treasure her the more fondly during the few swift years she will be left to you. Soon she will go to her reward, and you will be without the only friend of man whose love seems to be inalienable—whose esteem he cannot barter away, either in greed or in vice. ”

“ Then suddenly the mind of the young man breaks from the shackles of vanity and self-sufficiency, and he views, for the first time, the visible forms of angered Nature. He recalls his white gloves, his former complete idea of a storm, his triumphant, au revoir retreat from the opera-box, and, as the discords of the Everlasting gradually resolve toward the diapason, the full chant, of His solemn eternity, the young man cries out, in a spirit of revelation, "What a worm am I!" ”

“ The Judge upon his bench deals out the dreaded justice to the scourged, and has no look of gentleness. But breathe this word into his ear, his thoughts fly to his fireside; his heart relents; he is no longer Justice, but weak and tender Mercy.
What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great rough man? Why, 'tis from Home—from Home, that spot to which his heart is tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles which hold it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring little for it at the time. ”

“ We perceive, upon a glance at this broad subject, that a book would be better fitted to its treatment than a chapter, and yet a chapter alone will aid in attuning the mind to the nobility of our destiny. A single thought entering the mind at the right time will turn the current of a life. Let us elevate and strengthen our present into the nobler foundation of a happier future on earth and a blissful eternity in heaven. We are endowed with shame. Let it keep us from meriting the stinging epigram: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man." ”

“ Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned felon. The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood is good. "True love were very unlovely," says Sir Philip Sidney, "if it were half so deadly as lovers term it!" "There are few people," says Rochefoucauld, "who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is over." "In love we are all fools alike," says Gay. "We that are true lovers" says Shakspeare, "run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." ”

“ THIS YOUTHFUL PEAK OF GRIEF,
the young man finds in after years, is but the more substantial bottom of two slopes which rise sublimely toward the zenith of his life. He banishes his false conceptions of the grandeur of the human mind. He banishes an attachment which had not a substantial girder under it, and within a few years his heart is all the broader, gentler and more charitable for his young sorrow. ”

“ One does not feel that he can do any good by criticising woman. We love fruit that is perfect. We do not describe, and we would have little thanks for a description of, those specimens of cherries, strawberries, or grapes which fail to realize our anticipations of a delightful product of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard. But I have perhaps, by showing the respect in which men of intellect and honor hold a good woman, given needed encouragement to patient hearts, and testified my own humble regard for womanhood.
His hair just grizzled,
As in a green old age.—Dryden. ”

“ DO NOT "BILL YOURSELF TOO STRONGLY"
before your divinity. She would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job's turkey, than a common young man, like your brother or your friend, with all the gold of King Plutus! Bring to her an honest heart, and you will, indeed, bring treasures before her, and she would have no right to complain, even were she so inclined. ”

“ I cannot understand why we are so oblivious to the sufferings of illness while we are well unless it be a provision of nature to keep us from that suffering through sympathy which we would surely undergo if we really had any vivid feeling for the sick. On this earth each one has to do his own suffering—the King in the palace of the royal family and the baby in the hut of the miner. All who are well go their way rejoicing, even having no momentary realization of the state of mind of the disabled associate. ”

“ Is not wisdom entailed upon it?
TAKE THE PRE-EMINENCE OF IT IN EVERYTHING—
in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree." "I venerate old age," says the great and good poet Longfellow; "and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding." "It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent," writes Goethe; "I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself." ”

“ Perhaps I can impress the true necessity of discipline no more forcibly than by comparing society to a grand organ upon which the Creator sounds his mighty fugue of years. We are the pipes—some the colossal columns which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of us must sound his note save in that proper place and at that proper time which Duty indicates. We mar a perfect harmony by ill-tempered silence, and perhaps ruin the labors of our associates by a continuous sounding of our own ridiculous reed. ”

“ THE FANGS OF POVERTY
have been drawn, for the poor man in sickness receives his support, and in health contributes his small share to his sick brother. In leaving this painful branch of so vital a portion of any book devoted to the improvement of humanity, let us abjure each other to fly from the sins of idleness and waste, that make this dark panorama in a world which could be bright, and which, rolling along in its foolish fashion, even now gives promise of exceeding joy in the future. Work and save and give work! ”

“ Too much avarice makes a contemptibly mean man; not enough makes a foolish spendthrift, who is always appealing to his friends for help. Too much bravery in man makes a bully; not enough a coward. Too much speech in man makes a bore; not enough a "stick." Too much hope in man makes a speculator and a gambler; not enough, a hermit and a man-hater. So of ambition. It is a flame to be guarded—a willing slave, an unpitying master. In its full sway it is the very essence of self-conceit and selfishness,—two traits, a little of which goes a good way. ”

“ THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS
their mothers have upon them. Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice. As old Dr. South says, "the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. ”

“ Marry them, if worthy suitors offer, lest they remain single and unprotected after your departure. Marry them, lest they say, in their bitter disappointment and loneliness, 'Our parents thought only of their own comfort and convenience. We now find that our welfare and settlement in life was disregarded!' But I am sure my hard-hearted comrade in years," continues this aged writer, "that you are more generous to your own dear girls than to dream of preventing the completion of their own little romance in order to keep them at home, pining as your waiting minds." ”

“ If so, your chance of happiness is not great.
"HE WHO SURPASSES OR SUBDUES MANKIND,"
says Byron, "must look down on the hate of those below." "Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them," says Shakspeare. We all have upon us golden wings of happiness. Let us not soar near the sun. "Fling away ambition," mourns old Cardinal Wolsely in Henry VIII; "by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?" "It often puts men upon doing the meanest offices," says Swift, "as climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping." ”

“ When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply the general troubles of life, which are common to all people. The bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next chamber than is the father in the same room with the child. The young man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels with his wife. The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the husband of the most careless wife. ”

“ When the incense of a man's good actions spreads through the palace of the soul, "the powers that wait on noble deeds" light up the edifice with radiance brought from other worlds. In the eye of a good man—in the window of the palace of his soul—we behold an occupant who fears no duty. We are fascinated, and gather about, anxious to peer in upon the fortunate possessor. Therein lies the happiness and the force of good example.
But let the Censer burn low, and flicker in final sickliness; the great bell called Conscience, hanging in the dome, strikes an alarm that rocks the building. ”

“ Where can you find as graceful speech?—"He shall come down as rain upon the mown grass; mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The day is now dawning in this Western world when taste and poetic feeling are to flourish. We have got the dollars. We must now get something for the dollars. Now will the Bible, as ever at such epochs in the past, shine out anew, the criterion, not only of the soul, but of the sentiments—the book that is first under the scholar's lamp and alone in his bedchamber. ”

“ This is the exalted panegyric of the greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race—this, then, was Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the power of love and the realms of right and wrong." "Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force," says Chapin; "the world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. ”

“ Read books which will make you desire to be a pure man, just for the noble name it will give you. If you can get as great a desire to be a good man as you have to be a purse-proud man, you will be on the right track; for you will see that honesty is easier in the perfumed fields than it is in the polluted air of a city business-house. Read over the biographies, and see how certainly all our great men got their greatness in the open air of the country. Take a big city, for instance. Has it not surprised you to see how few great men New York or Chicago have furnished to the nation? ”

“ We are as broad as the universe. Even our minds, clad in clay, betray the high character of our souls.
DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?
Do the birds that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial space, is not a conceit. ”