The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-09-26
Why Not !!

A tired mother, who had been occupied
all day with an active and very trouble
some boy, as she sat down in the evening
and thought of the numberless details into
which her strength had gone, said: I" AT
ter all, it is day toward the making of
man." There was world of truth in this
brief and pointed summing up of days
work. Nothing is so hard to overcome as
the illusion of time and distance; thou.
sands of lives are wasted because they
are never freed from it, and thousands of
other and faithful lives are saddened be-
cause they, too, are under its spell. The
woman under the pressure of daily and
nightly cares who feels no inspiration
from them, but continually dreams of
greater services and nobler occupations in
some other place and at some other time,
is surely missing the secret of the deepest
living, and is thirsting with the water of
life flowing freshly about her. The man
who chafes under his present burden, and
scorns his place and work as small and
mean compared with the thing he would
do, is every day widening the breach be-
tween his ideal and his possible achieve
ment. The masters of life--women of
rich, ample nature, ripening in all
strengths and graces with the years, men
full of simple, teachable spirit, gathering
sweetness and power as they advance
have learned to reverence the present mo.
ment and the present duty, and are con-
vinced to the very bottom of their souls
that the only road to great achievements
lies through the faithful doing of the
thing that lies next them. There is no
magic or enchantment in life, no luck or
fortune in its final possession it is simple
sequence of cause and effect, simple and
undertaking working out of the law that
whatsoever man soweth that shall he
aloo reap. He cannot plan great career,
and hew his opportunities into its solid
structure, except by striking with full
force the blow that the present moment
makes room for. Men and women who
are full of this spirit expand their lives
by sheer force of faithful living, and are
able, by and by, to look back aud see their
little duties rounding into grand complete
ness, their little opportunities widening
out into the highest possibilities. Every
great work grows out of endless and toll
some details. The historian is years in
the dim seclusion of libraries before he
gives the world new chapter in its life (;
the great orator works far into sleepless
nights before he stands on the platform
with his fingers on the keys of human
passion and sentiment the writer denies
himself even rational pleasures through
laborious years that he may enrich his
thought by contact with the worlds
thought and put the eloquence of simple
ity into his style. Graphing with small
difficulties is the only training which fits
one for dealing with great problems |;
faithful performance of small duties the
only preparation for grand services; pa
tience, fidelity, and steadfastness to-day
the only seed that will make tomorrow
golden with harvests of fame or useful
ness. The boy who is to-day doing his
"chores " we'll and cheerfully is in train
ing for the cares of empire; the mother
who is to-day giving strength, time, and
wealth of affection to her children in the
seclusion of her home is making the whole
world richer by her obscure ministry, is
very possibly shaping the characters that
are to shape the destiny of the age, and is
surely building in the only material which
defes decay, survives death, and declares
its architecture in the fadeless light of
eternity. After all has been said about
the work of the artist, the poet, and the
thinker, it is the mother who stands near.
est God in creative Christian
Union.