Middletown transcript., 1891-04-16
MISTAKES.

The frequency with which the aver.
age mortal makes mistakes is SO great
that when the moralist has On his Dlue
glasses he can see but little else. mis-.
takes loom up at every turn. FROM
those early days when we committed
the wellnigh immortal blunder OF
getting out of bed wrong" to the
latest years of life, be they ever so
long, the pessimist sees mistake after
mistake, increasing in number, and
self-increasing like the children,s
suowballs made from the soft, adhe.
sive spring-time snow. Mistakes OF
Judgment, mistakes of ignorance, mis-
takes of careiessness, mistakes off af#fee
ton, and mistakes of sel6shness, each
and all, are continually knocking at
humanity's elbow, and even the Wisest
admit first one and then another,
until the gamut of misfortune is re-
peated over and over again. From
the moment when humanity begins to
think and to reason, its blunders
begin. Even farther back than that
is a poor mortal handicapped. A
man inherits his tendency to make
mistakes as surely as he inherits his
personality. From one ancestor ne
inherits the visual angle, from another
the mental angle; another contri-
butes the spiritual, and yet another
the physical angle; and thus hamper
ed, each human being endeavors to
focus his outlook upon life before
him, TO adjust his intentions, to gauge
his advantage, and to prospect his re-
suits. Small wonder, then, that many
discouraged soul finds life itself but
mistake.
But the Creator has implanted the
tiny seed of help, the source of hope,
the means to untangle the fateful
skein in each heart. The saving
capacity of learning from mistakes is
given to even the humblest. In it
are hidden powers of growth which
unfold in direct proportion to the
constancy with which we use this
capacity. What hopeful fact it is
to know that daily, hourly, we can
balance our intentions and our acts
against our mistakes, and find out
the lightweight! What Joy it is to
know that our scale possesses the
magic power of becoming stronger
with each act of weighing, and that
our own perception Of balance grows
daily finer, and that the weights, the
abilities, and the powers of our nature
grow daily better fitted to our skilled
usel
A famous journalist and philosopher
once replied to critic who had ferret,
ed out ap undeniable blunder," Yes,
l know it's mistake, and made it
but l always make meao mistakes| Il
is depressing to make the same mis-
take repeatedly; but when we try tt
learn from past blunders, repeated
mistakes become fewer, and we soor
begin to feel that optimistic courage
which is the outcome of conscious bu
new mistakes. A German aphoris
expresses this idea of development
from our blunders little differently
but with the same courageous, hopeiu
spirit: Every one errs, but he is tn,
fool who loses himself in his mistakes
We may never live one day free from
blunders, but if we lose not our per-
ception Of what we have said, or dt
not become bewildered in the maze o
our motives, or astray in the result o
our deeds, we haye no need to be cas-
down. When we can find ourselve
amid the debris which our mistake
have pulled down and over US, W
know we are growing, and typifyinI
each time that spiritual resurrection
which is the hope of humanity TO
men can build on stepping stones
their dead selves to higher things"
Agnes Bailey Ormsbee, in Harper
Razar