Norwich bulletin., 1917-08-18
Sunday Morning Talk
GOOD LOSERS

 If one wishes to read the record e. a gentleman, let him open the pages of the journal of Sir Walter Scott found after the novelist's death at Alp botsford. Amazing industry, generous hospitality to all sorts and conditions of people, and. withal q notable sweetness of spirit under stress of va rfous i'll fortune are revealed in these pages Take, for instance, the entry after the lang threatened failure of Scott's business partners had become a fact and it was certain that his lord ly highland home must be sacrificed to pay his debt of honor
 T feel neither dishonored by the bad-now really bad news I have re- ceived. I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me poor people whom have loved so we'll In prosperous times have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but diversity is to me at least. a tonic and a bracer; the fountain is awakened from it's inmost recesses. as if the spirit of affiiction had troubled it in his passage
 No defeat is possible for a man who will take diversity in that temper. The worst injury of misfortune-that done within the spirft-he cannot suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune cannot fly high enough to hit L. learned one of the greatest lessons of life to which Stevenson in his Christ mas Sermon calls us ito renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered."
 Loss of one kind or another is an inevitable experience for the sons of men. We are each day, candidates for privaion. No credit resides in the mere fact that we renounce things since this 6 universal tion. The only question is as to how we shall renounce-in morose discour- agement. or with high purposes still undaunted The good loser is after the Apostles ideal, pressed on every side, yet not strengthened; perplexed. yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; snitten down, yet not de- stroyed."
 Few Americans have suffered more or harder defeats than did Abraham Lincoln. With me the race for ambi tiOn has been failure-a flat failure, he said only four years before his countrymen sent him to the White House. Any ordinary soul would have succumbed long before that. Defeat with the rail splitter was only an in cident, never a finality; he was a good loser.
 The world writes it's odes and hangs its banners for those who gain prizes. That is inevitable in view of the plane or thought on WnlCn the WOTlQ Sener- | ally moves. Only the obvious and the l material be taken into account. , There is a success of too fine and spir 1 itual a kind to be gagged by such stand | ards. IL is the victory of him who | may be well battered but is never | down; who can ''renounce without be- ] ing ernbittered" who is a good. loser. | Such one may forfeit health, wealth, | friends home and all the other goods | of life, but keep a grip on courage and | faith and manhood. He who has | failed" after this brave fashion has l not truly failed at all. but is himself | a conqueror. colored man. Paul | Lawrence Dunbar, once sang a song of | which none better than he knew the | meaning.
 The man who is strong to fight his
 fight,
 And whose will no front can daunt. If the truth be truth and the right be
 right,
 Is the man that the ages want Tho he fail and die in grim defeat
 Yet he has not fled the strife. And the house of earth will seem more
 sweet -r
 For the perfume of his life.
 THE PARSON |