New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-12-26
Turning Over n New Leaf:

There is wonderous difference in people, as
regards the propensity for turning over new
leaf. It is odd that, for the most part, they
who have power Of will and self-restraint
enough to keep good resolutions are least in
the habit Of making them, and appear most
content to live on a lower plane, without as
piration; while, on the other hand, they who
are most sensible of personal shortcomings,
and most appreciative of better modes of liv-
ing, oftenest break good resolutions and sell
domest reach the standard they covet. Thus
sturdiness or stability of character is fire.
quently earthly by instinct, and incapable Of
that volatility which, on its part, can never
walk steadily onward, but is always on Sc
ries of excursionary skipa and hops upward
to higher life, whence it as regularly floun-
ders and flops down, bruised but not tanned,
to the clay. Goethe says that persons quito
unstable and incapable Of all improvement
frequently accuse themselves in the bitter
est manner, confessing and deploring their
faults with extreme righteousness, though
they possess not the smallest power within
them to retire from that course along which
tho irresistible tendency Of their nature is
dragging them forward" Nobody need be
down-hearted at this dictum. Some men
seem to be governed by fate, because they
have no will worth speaking of, or at least
give no proof of any; while others apparent
" have will free of fate, so strongly does it
act on circumstances and if it be answered
that this strong and free will is itself form
of fate. at least it is one the possessors can
neither fear nor complain of.
Many lads have such practical views OF
life, Joined with such self-consciousness and
self-esteem, as to mature at once. They I'M
agine themselves grown men before their
boards are out; in their elders they see only
their peers, and hence feel the burdens OF
life already in youth. These are they who be-
lenders, railroad-builders, soldiers, lawyers,
journalists, at the dawn Of active life. Then
opposites waste each New Year in wonder.
ing what will happen when they grow to be
men; when the opportunity comes; when
life really opens wide. Humble and timid
they fancy all other men to be wiser OF
stronger than they. AT thirty, they hear
with wonder that yonder stalwart, thoughtful
man, whom, in old childish habit, they adj
dress with q deferential sir" is only thirty
years old, too. At forty, they still cling tt
their conciliatory, deprecatory. ways-fee
like boys lodging about bewildered among
men, though manhood has encompassed then
twenty years. 1t Genes upon them like {
shock to find their hair whitening, and PEG
| pie describing them as I" the old gentlemen,
while their feet are too palpably sliding OF
the downhill stretch. Till then, they hat
never thought themselves mature for ca
reer, nor suspected that they had reaches
the now-or-never of life till it was years ava,
In the past. Such men take an aroma of tn
cradle with them to the grave, only quitting
their first childhood when they enter the sec
ond ever are they dreaming of the possibl
future, and proposing to turn over the new
S2eaf.-Drifsrood, by Philip Quzibet, in yanuar