Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1908-01-09

will criticise your faults 10 your face.
They will come up and lay their hands
lovingly on your shoulders and say.
"Charlie, I would not do that" or
they say, "Charlie, you have nm evil
habit on you now, and 1t Is eating all
the honesty and nobility and purity
out Of your heart, and you must stop
or you will ruin yourself" You nav
laugh of those warnings and forget
them or you may get angry at your
true friends, but the friends who are
lifting the looking glass before you and
showing your imperfectons are your
true friends. VIII you heed these
warnings? VIII you correct those
weaknesses Of your character? Are all
the glorious opportunities of your life
TO be ruined by that one flaw in YOUR
nature which your friends have point
cd out, but which you neglect to rec
tify?
But there Is another rejecting mirror
held up before our eyes. That is the
mirror with which our enemies delight
to show our delnquencies to ourselves
which most of us look with flashing
eve and flushed cheek. But 1t Is a re-
fleeing mirror which ought to be as
helpful for our moral and spiritual de-
velopment as the one which our friends
Volift. This mirror has a way OF mag
Itfying and intensifying our weakness
es. Like the caricature. 1t has way
of making prominent the flaws of our
nature, and yet at the same time max
ing 1t very plain for whom the portrait
was intended.
Hoaarth's Pen.
These enemies DO with the rejecting
mirrors what William Hogarth did
with his brush and pen. Have you
ever been in the museums where they
had one room filed with concave and
convex, mirrors? You stand before one
mirror, and you seem to be a little
short fat man about four feet high
and weighing at least 400 pounds. Then
you look into another mirror, and in
stead of being n little short fat man,
now you will be twelve feet tall and
about as wide as q match Yet, tall
and thin, short and fat, you can see
in those concave and convex mirrors
the same eyes, lips hands and hair. So
our enemies in life take us and pull us
out or shove us in and twist us all out
of shape In order TO magnify our faults;
but, though they expose our errors with
unfailng skill. we still retain enough
of our original selves to let the world
know who we are and what we have
done. And today for our own benefit
they are lifting up the rejecting mir
rors for us to have good look at our
errors and imperfections.
But there Is still another way In
which we can SEQ our reflections in the
mirrors of our imperfect lives. That
is when we stand surrounded by the
tragedies and the misfortunes result
ant from the II stakes of our past.
| These misfortune have their stories
to tell. just the s. me as successes have
their stories to tie Though some men
may achieve SUCCESS in spite Of glar-
ing faults in Their makeup. yet few
men ever come T. failure unless that
failure is the result of some folly or
sin which, IL it bad been discerned in
time, could have Deen rectifed. And
the man who is not willing to see his
faults by his fail res is man who Is
blind indeed and who will not be
taught by the sternest and yet best of
all teachers.
Child Playing With Fire.
| Here, for instance, is a little child.
He will persist in playing with fire.
One day out in the back yard near to
the farm he is gathering the leaves and
starts them in fame. The farm hand
gets there just in time to scatter the
| leaves and save all the hay which had
been stored away in the loft. Next
day the boy is playing With matches in
the nursery, and in fash a whole
box goes Off, but the older sister throws
them out Of the window in time to save
the lace curtains. The mother has
warned the littla boy aud told him the
danger, but no good results. All
right" SAYS the father that boy must
be taught what fire really is. He must
learn by an experience he will remem.
ber." So when the boy is about to
touch the hot stove his father does not
interfere. The boy burns his hand and
screams with pain. The mother is In
tears. The father Is in tears. But the
boy has learned his lesson. He now
knows that fire will burn, and there
fore he leaves the matches alone. Hard
was the lesson for the boy, hard, too
for the father, but the pain was worth
the cure. SO with God and his errine
children. We have certain faults and
weaknesses. Our friends have told us
about them. Our enemies have told
us about thNln. They have both held
up the mirrors for us to see our faults
but we would not God is sorry, but II
we will learn in no other way we must
learn in that. Some tragedy comes in
our life, and we say: What a misfOr
tune! How could our loving Father al
low that to fall upon us?" My friend
It is not misfortune 1t Is discipline
That fault in you had to be corrected
10 save you from worse evil. Be thank
full that II was sent 10 you, and take
care you learn the lesson 1t was. sent
to teach.
We are puzzled when this experience
happens to us, though we are able tc
trace back the evil causes Of our neigh
bors' tragedies. Indeed, it Is far easier
for a physician to diagnose the disease
of another man than to prescribe fol
the malignant fever that is burning hi