Mohave County miner., 1902-06-07
Character and Fate.

lures or those events, accidents, ca
lamities, which are beyond human con.
troll. There have been human careers
so completely distorted and thwarted
that it has seemed as if the gods were
jealous of men, aud anxious to rob the
greatest rewards of their sweetness
and the noblest achievements of their
fruit
So often are the prizes snached from
the strong hand that had gras ped them
that tho Greek poets could not with.
draw their gaze from that irony hich
at times appears to make human life
the mere sport of the higher powers.
The area of what once appeared to be
mere blind interferences with human
activity and happiness steadily con-
tracts; the area of beneficient and
helpful relationship steadily widens.
Men are now safe where they were
once in peril; they are now masters
where they were once servants.
Through what seems the play of mere
physical force there now shines the
light of that great movement upward
which we call development; that sub.
lime conception which, as one of the
most spiritual thinkers of our genera
tion has said, has come to light just in
time to save some of the finest and
most sensitive spirits from despair.
80 NJ . rh
their lives without once looking their
deeds in the face or seeing themselves
with clear eyes. They comfort them.
selves with lies until they loose the
power of sight; they disown the fruits
of their own sowing.
When a man perceives that he is liv-
witnessed alike in the obedience and
disobediences of men; and what he
reaps he has sown, and that he can and
will reap nothing else; that his career
is shaped and framed by his own will;
that the great experiences which come
to him for good or i'll, for misery or
are invited by him; that mans spirit
attracts the things which are congenial
TO it aud rejects those which are alien
when man perceives these things
he is in the way of honest living aud
of spiritual growth.
Until he does see these facts and ac-
cept them, he deludes himself, and his
judgment of life is worthless.
Few things are more significant than
the slow and often unconscious build.
ing of a home for his spirit which
every man carries to pletion. When
the birds build their nests, they have
access to the same materials, but what
different selections they make, and
how far apart their methods are.
Every one who comes into life has
access to substantially the same ma
terial; but each selects that which be-
longs to him. By instinct or by in
telligence he builds his home with uh-
erring adaptation to the needs and
quality Of his nature.
To the pure all things are pure; to
the impure all things are imp pure. The
unselfish construct a beautiful order
of service and helpfulness about them;
the selfish make their own places.
Honor and confidence and rectitude
are in the air when the man of sensitive
integrity appears; suspicion, mistrust
and doubt prevade the place where the
man without character abides.
Clean and comforting thoughts fly
to the pure in heart; debasing fancies
gather like foul birds around the man
whose imagination is home of cor.
ruption. Ii we look deeply, wonder
full fitness reveals itself between those
we know we'll and their several for
tunes. Calamity may bear heavily up
on them, but the moral world they con-
struct for themselve out of the sub
stance of their own natures is indie.
structible. As beautiful woman
furnishes her home until it becomes
an GENERALIZATION of her own ideas
and qualities, and then fills it with the
charm and sweetness of her own per-
sonality until it becomes a material
expression of her own nature, so do
we all silently, and for the most part
unconsciously, from spiritual environ
ments and fashion the world in which
we live.
AS life goes on, fate grows less and