The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1889-10-16
Written for the MANNING TINES.
Ambition.

AS early as the days OF the CtcSafS
the word ambition was coined. How
different its application then and now
Forty-four years before Christ candi'
dates going round to solicit votes, were
called ambitious. "Ambition, the act o1
going round" Soon it came to mean
preferment; desire for preierment
And later we find it translated, ''The
desire for personal advancement, with
an utter disregard of the means used
to secure this end"
In all ambitious schemes there is a
large element of deception. In the
pursuit OF ambition there is an unreal
pleasure, a feverish happiness, which,
when the summit has been reached,
exhausts itself in trying to prove a
reality.
The history of ambition is written
in characters of blood. First, we
trample on conscience, then on friends,
rapidly do we fell them to the ground,
and, on these stepping-stones, mount
higher and higher. Clasping tightly
the hand of the god, ambition;- we
loose our hold on honor, honesty, NOR
ality, and gazing only on the gilded
form above, we are waited on and on
through the endless years Of our exist
ence.
In man there is q discomfort, a
quenchless thirst, a continual craving
for something beyond the attained,
and in his mad haste to stand well in
the eyes of the world, he is prone to
assume any disguise, counterfeit any
virtue, by which he may accomplish
his selfish ends. He looks well after
the outward acts, but is needless of
the tide of evil, of hatred, jealousy,
and revenge into which his inner life
is plunged. Yet this is ambition.
Some one has said, "The road an
bition travels is too narrow for friend
ship, too crooked for love, too rugged
for honesty, too dark for science, and
too hilly for happiness. :"
To the ambitious man, your only
value lies in the use he can make of
you The tools of ambition feed with
equal relish on vulgarity and coarse
ness; all the finer sensibilities are
blunted. Ambition takes liberality
by the hand, prompts advice, admin
listers reproof, and even perches, visi-
bly,, on the prayers and sermons of
the pulpit In the pursuit of ambi>
ton we spend our lives, determined to
be vastly happy at some future time.
We allow all passing pleasures to slip
from our grasp. Alas! when the ac-
quisitions, from which we hope to de-
rive so much, are ours, we find them
forming the surroundings of real and
heartfelt wretchedness.
Ambition is a laudable quality
when not allowed to master prudence
and discretion. It leads us to excel
in that which is good and noble, with
out any regard for the fame we may
win, OF the praise we may command.
In this sense ambition is the very
and incentive of virtue. Our
own Washington was ambitious, but
for his country's good, and
that to be attained only by means the
most honorable.
Ambition is an excellent servant !.
when properly disciplined, but when
allowed to become master is danger
GUS in the extreme. Washington pre-
served the mastery Has it ever been
thus with our great men? Let US
look away from our fair country to
that lonely island bathed in Pacific
waters. See natures masterpiece,
Napoleon Bonaparte, as day after day
he watches the waves break on the
shore, see him when he comes to die!
For him no nation lowers its flag; his
loss no empire mourns. Only the sea
gull shrieks and ''the curlew restless
cries. as his soul is waited into enter
nifty. Can this be the death bed OF
Napoleon, who three years
before held Europe in the hollow Of
his hand! Why this change? All!
seek ye the answer in the abode Of the
god, ambition. Napoleon was only
another victim. @
Or, even before Napoleon was, am
bition showed its skeleton form in the
person of Alexander the Great, and
few years after Alexander we have a
darker picture still-Et tn Brute,
painted by ambitions hand. Here is
a senate chamber, on the floor lies a
man, a Caesar, his hearts blood is SET
ting in clotted poo around; from
behind the curtain a set face peers,
the dagger is withdrawn, and the dy.i
ing reproacb, E5 tu Brute, is all that
is heard. To-day ambition holds in
his iendish grasp many Brutus, and
all along our pathway lie the dead
friends he has slain. But were there
no extenuating circumstances con-
nectedeSith this crime? "Brutus says
Cesar was ambitious. " RArIDAS.
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