The Cordova daily times., 1920-11-22
Divine Lesson in
 the Ga7nering of
 the Golden Grain

The summer Is over and the har vest is past. The sad skies, the bleak fields, the bare trees. the raw winds sigh their dirges mOurnfully remind us that the season of fruitage has gone by and the time has come when we can only turn away, each to himself, and measure up our garnerings.
 Nature gives us seed time and a harvest time.
 But these would be meaningless to us did she not also send season when, at the warning touch of winter chill, we must measure our gains and consider our losses.
 But for the lessons of this season no man would labor; we would know naught of temperance or thrift; we would go through the bright spring only singing, and idle away the sum- mer in dreams.
 So 1t is part of the divine plan that each of us should now go apart and carefully separate the wheat from the chaff, the flowers from the weeds, and that which is good and sound and en- during from all that perishes and taints. It is now that each must hon. estly examine and weigh the product of his own works.
 It were useless now to try to de- ceive even ourselves.
 Now, if at mo other time, we see the vast difference in value between the picked fruit and the windfalls.
 The one heap we proudly store away, knowing it will keep sweet and whole 10 the winters depths, and the other we cast aside. that it may not contaminate as 1t rots.
 It is sad, sweet task-sweet for the counted gains, sad for the oppor- tunties lost and to come no more
 
 And as We garner the gains we also garner wisdom.
 AS we separate the wheat from the chaff and the sound fruit from the windfalls. So whether we will or not, we must in the inner consciousness separate the true from the false in principles of labor and living.
 No man, even of three-score-aye four-score and ten, has ever known knows no variation in all the cycles of time.
 
 But grains and fruits are not all that we are garnering. Chaff and weeds are not all we ought to sepa- rate and cast away. There are things more important still. In the store house of the heart and mind and soul, is it not well to seek, just as care fully, though sometimes in vain, to keep only the better the brighter, the more enduring things?
 When the bleak November of life comes we shall have need of them.
 Dreary will be the winter to him whose granaries are empty. But drearier and more desOlate still must be the winter of old age to the man or woman whose mind and heart and soul have brought from the harvest only the joys that are chaff and the virtues that are mere w:ndfalls, at tained and adhered to only through easy convenience.
 When that winter comes, as it must to many of us, we shall have only our selves to turn to, and we shall find only that which we have sown and harvested in the bright spring and golden Summer--the good grain, the sound fruit, the flowers, the high i'm pulses, the sacrifices. the loves. yes, and the cheat, the chaff, the weeds, the windfalls, the hates, the joalouseS. the low passions-all these and nothing more, to sustain us or to render us desOlate.
 We may, if we will, make each day a cycle of all the seasons. We SOW each morning and reap each noon and garner each evening the fruits If OUT living in this little day. Day hy day, if we strive on in right and hope and courage. must our knowledge and our strength and our store increase. Day by day, through many failingS and tallingS, do we come nearer 10 the true manhood and the true woman hOod.-Charles Grant Miller m the Christian Herald.