OCTOBER TENTH

Henry Cavendish born 1731.

Benjamin West born 1738.

Hugh Miller born 1802.

Giuseppe Verdi born 1813.

Fridtjof Nansen born 1861.

    We cannot make bargains for blisses,
      Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
    And sometimes the thing our life misses
      Helps more than the thing which it gets. 
    For good lieth not in pursuing,
      Nor gaining of great nor small,
    But just in the doing and doing
      As we would be done by is all.

    —­Alice Gary.

True, it is most painful not to meet the kindness and affection you feel you have deserved, and have a right to expect from others; but it is a mistake to complain, for it is no use; you cannot extort friendship with a cocked pistol.

    —­Sydney Smith.

    Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

    —­Matthew 22. 39.

Lord God, help me to understand that true affection is not that which as it gives feels it merits return.  May I avoid being selfish and stubborn; and with my affections give peace and joy.  Amen.

OCTOBER ELEVENTH

Sir Thomas Wyatt died 1542.

Dr. Samuel Clarke born 1675.

James Barry born 1741.

    Ask God to give thee skill
      In comfort’s art,
    That thou may’st consecrated be
      And set apart,
    Unto a life of sympathy;
    For heavy is the weight of ill
      In every heart;
    And comforters are needed much
      Of Christlike touch.

    —­Alexander Hamilton.

    The man who melts
    With social sympathy though not allied,
    Is than a thousand kinsmen of more worth.

    —­Euripides.

    Who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to
    comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort
    wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

    —­2 Corinthians 1. 4.

Heavenly Father, thou hast made sympathy divine.  May I never make it commonplace.  Grant that as thou dost bless and comfort me I may be willing to comfort others, and do whatsoever thou wouldst have me do.  Amen.

OCTOBER TWELFTH

Columbus discovered America 1492.

Lyman Beecher born 1775.

George W. Cable born 1844.

Helena Modjeska born 1844.

    One poor day! 
    Remember whose and how short it is! 
    It is God’s day, it is Columbus’s. 
    One day with life and heart is more than time enough to found a world.

    —­James Russell Lowell.

An illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable.  But an old French sentence says, “God works in moments.”  We ask for long life, but ’tis deep life or grand moments that signify.  Let the measure of Time be spiritual, not mechanical.  Life is unnecessarily long.  Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance—­what ample borrowers of eternity they are!

    —­Ralph Waldo Emerson.