Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Too Busy for Enmity. [ARTICLE]

Too Busy for Enmity.

When I hear men or women attributing a lack of success in any direction to the machinations of their enemies, I involuntarily smile at the egotistical assertion. People are in general too much engrossed, each by his own affairs, to make any very active war against each other. Jealous, envious, rancorous they often are, but to wage positive hostilities, they are for the most part too indifferent. This proneness to attribute our mischances to enemies is merely one of the refuges of our self-love. Admitting possible exceptions, it may be said emphatically that we are none of us anybody's enemy but our own. We are all, however, our-own enemies. The tongue that truly detracts from our credit and glory is our own tongue; the hand that most mercilessly despoils us of our property is our own hand. All the xcsal murders in this world—that is, apart from the mere commonplace killings of men and women —are self-murders. Conceit tells us a different tale, and we are too ready to lay on the flattering unction. But all great successes, all the grander triumphs, will be in proportion to our seeing the truth as it really stands; namely, that the hardest obstacles, the most real dangers, lie in the perverse impulses of own nature.