Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1915 — IN THE HAND OF FATE [ARTICLE]

IN THE HAND OF FATE

WASTE OF GOOD TIME TO PREMEDITATE FRIENDSHIP. **. * Best Plan lq.to Be • Friend and Thus One Will Attract Those Whose Helpfulness Will Be Natural and Beneficial. One of the things impossible to know in advance Is who Is going to be of advantage to you. Hence the most wanton waste of time and effort in the world is to cultivate people with a thought to personal advancement. The world Is much like a Ferris wheel—the bucket that Is up today Is down tomorrow, while the one that was near the ground at sunrise soars to the top at the day's decline. Nothing just now recalled is stationary—except the Sphinx, and that enigmatic lady has doubtless held her place by keeping her mouth shut and trying to propitiate no one. Friends are gifts of heaven bestowed for our Joy and mental refreshment. Men and women are so constituted that the more keenly they enjoy anything the more fervently they long, for some companionable person to share it with them. The most appetising meal eaten alone induees indigestion. The man walking beneath autumnal trees, inspired by their splendor of crimson and gold, sighs for companionship. A book becomes twice vivid and glowing when read aloud to a sympathetic listener. But people sought as associates in hours of leisure and pleasure must be really companionable or their absence is more to be desired than their company, and to wear one’s life out trying to be friends when Impulse is not in it is waste of good time. Do not endeavor to make friends’. Be one, and you will suddenly find yourself surrounded by many bound to you with invisible cords of kind feeling. If people seek only those to whom they are instinctively attracted, their mutual helpfulness will be natural as the response of the wireless receiver to the sympathetic seeking of its wireless affinity. It is not when people are trying the most, but when they are off guard that they are making the real impressions. The chance word may linger In the mind when the premeditated one has fallen unheeded. Possible benefits should be Indeed forgot when friendships are In process of making. The only benefit one has a right to expect of friends Is loyalty and good will. As for advantages, they crop up from such unlikely comers, such un-looked-for sources, and are often bestowed by such undreamed-of people that to endeavor to foresee the channels through which they will filter Into our lives is sheer impossibility. That we are benefited and blessed through outside human agencies Is true indeed; but that such benefits are attracted our way is chiefly because of what ye unconsciously are. instead of what we consciously endeavor to seem. And will our friends prove advantageous to us or not? We can only echo the Spanish question: “Qulen sabe?” We can only seek people because we love them and leave the rest to fate.—Baltimore Sun.