Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1886 — The School of Patience. [ARTICLE]

The School of Patience.

My dear boy, if a man can only cultivate patience and strengh, it seems to me he will be a good neighbor, a pleasant man to do business with, a safe man -to trust and the kind of a man the world . loves, even though he lack wisdom,.andhas no genius? and can’t tell a good story or sing a note. does the fretful, restless, hurrying old world owe to the patient man, who finds his strength “in quietness and confidence,” who can be patient with our faults, our fancies, our wickedness; who can be quiet when the softest word would have a sting; who can wait for storms to blow over and for wrongs to right themselves. ; who can patiently and silently .endure a slight until he has forgotten it, and who can even be patient with himself. That’s the fellow, my boy, who tries my patience and strength more than any man else with whom I have to deal. I could get along with the rest of the world well enough if he were only out of it. I can meet all my other cares and enemies bravely and cheerfully enough. But when myself comes to me with his heartaches and blunders and stumblings, ■with his own follies and troubles and sins, somehow he takes all the tuck out of me. My strength is weakness and my patience is folly, when I come to' deal with him. He tires me. He is such a fool. He makes the same stupid blunders in the same stupid way so many times. Some-

times, when I think I must put up wjth him and his ways oil his life I want to, give up. And then the next tiffi? cOiaes to me witli Ips earen and the same.old troubles fib seenis'sb helpless and penitent that I feel sorry for him, and try to be patient with him, and promise to help him all I can onoe more. Ah, my dear lujy, as you grow older, that is the fellow who will try you and torment you, and .draw on yoqr sympathy, and tax your patience and strength. Be patient with him, poor old fellow, because I think he does love you, and yet as a rule you are harder on him than any one else. — Burdette, in Brooklyn Eagle.