Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1912 — Thoughts for New Year [ARTICLE]

Thoughts for New Year

"Resolve and resolve and still go on the same?” Nay! Nay! not so; but rather resolve and with a steadfast purpose without equivocation or men* tal reservation, harness the firm resolution, the will of your intent to the wagon of your purpose loaded with the dutiful obligations of your everyday life. Obligations to home, to business relations, to the proper demand of your church and social environment, to civic and patriotic responsibilities. Duties never clash; something is paramount, something worth while. Do that! Be true to thyself, to that conception of that self which raises within you a real sense of self-respect; that self which you admire, to which you aspire; that manhood to which you would attain and toward which energies of mind and will bend, never loosing the call of the vision. Before all men honorable —a high sense of honor is a well spring of conscious joy and a reservoir of power to the possessor. The looking-glass of yourself often may discourage you, but it is the consciousness of what you ought to be, and the desire to attain, laying aside every weight or hindrance and running with patience the race you have set before you. Never stop the cry of your soul, your real self, to the call of the unreached goal. The poets with their wide and deep discernment ofttimes sing truly of the soul cry and its evolution into an abundant life. Lowell: Of all the myriad words of mind That through the soul come thronging Which one was e’er so dear, so kind So beautiful as longing? The thing we long for that we are For one transcendent moment Before the present poor and bare Can make Its sneering comment. Tennyson: O for a man to rise In me That the man that I am May cease to be. Holmes: Build thee more stately mansions O my soul \ As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple nobler than the last Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast Till thou at length art free. Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea. With every business item and relation be honest, and fundamentally, by

word of m?uth, truthful. "Ah what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” A lie seldom travels alone. It weaves a web, in the meshes thereof Booner or later we are humiliated. The truth alone is courageous, and courage is a manly virtue. A lying tongue is the curse of a habit grafted on a cowardly nature. An individual is not honest with himself or honorable in his dealings with his fellow because he is not willing to face the unvarnished fact or bear the brunt and burden which Justly is his; a responsibility only made irksome by his cowardly lie whereby he would shift the burden and stand behind the veneer of an assumption or false position. Fear not, the man within you will work out if you will it so; undißcouraged, undismayed, pressing on, you become conscious that, having done your part, it is due to arrive. Be not discouraged, fellow wayfarer. Yield to that man within you, whose insatiable longing is the Inspiration that shall bring the nobler self to being; the self that now chafes at limitations; that opens the windows through which you see the visions of your undying hope, though distant yet existent, and yours to obtain if you will but bold your straight-way course.