PR 5482 .T72 Copy 1 THOITOHTS STEVElSrSON" WORDS OF HOPE FROM A HOPEFUL MAN, COMPILED BY HAL W. TROVILLION PRIVATELY PRINTED NEW YEARS A. D. MDCCCCVIH 9'S^^?i-/ ^'^'-f-, p/ THOUCS-HTS STE3VH3KrS02Sr WORDS OF HOPE FROM A HOPEFUL MAN, COMPILED BY HAL W TROVILLION. PRIVATELY PRINTED NEW YEARS A. D. MDCCCCVllI MBRRIH, - . . . ILLINOIS ^ FORE WORD A. new year has come again and with it clings still that pleasant custom of wishing well our friends and bidding them Godspeed for another twelve- month. But however hopeful and light-hearted we may set out upon the Journey, there are sure to come times when we shall be glad to hear words of cheer and encouragement that will strengthen us to keep up the fight. To serve such a mission as this to my friends, is my only purpose In prepar- ing this little brochure. In this great, big, busy world so occupied with other things, and some days so chilly and selfish, we all but lose the very car- dinal points of a happy and contented life. As Wordsworth has told us "The world is too much with us, late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers." In these few selected thoughts of the ever hopeful Stevenson, I trust there will be found sufficient consolation during the cloudy days to carry the most despondent far into the land of clear skies and sunshine /^ ^^O^TZ^T/Oy/ /|| HE future is nothing; ^^ but the past is my- self, my own history, the seed of my pre sent thoughts, the mould of my present disposition. It is not in vain that I re- turn to the nothings of my childhood; for every one of them has left some stamp upon me or put some fetter on my boasted free will. In the past is my present fate; and in the past, also, is my real life. "A Retrospect" /il HE day returns and ^^ brings U3 the petty round of irritating con- cerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our busi- ness all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and un-dis- honored, and grant ua in the end the gift of sleep. "Fra)f«rs" jTrJUR guard is relieved; VJ^ the service of the day is over, and the hour come to rest. We resign into Thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation. "Prayen" J|IN his own life, then, a ^ nian is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; be knows not for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good: somehow^ or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. "A Christmas Sermon" A HAPPY man or wo- man is a better thing to find than a tive-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good- will; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition! They do a better thing than that, they practically demon- strate the great theorem of the liveableness of life. "An Apology jor Idlers"" TTT O be honest, to be kind, V^ to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim conditions, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. "A Christmas Sermon'' pip ACH man shou 1 d ^^f learn what is within him, that he may strive to mend * * * * , it can never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his dis- putable state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the first im- portance to his conduct: and even if a fact shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world made eas^" \>y educational suppres- sion, that he must win his w^ay to shame or glory. ''The Morality of the Profession of Letters' ^ ^d^OOK back hozj. Jor a moment, on %W_\ your own brief experience of life; ^^ and although yuu lived it feelingly in your oivn person, and had eve>y step of conduct burned in by pains and joys upon your memory, tell me what definite lesson does experience hand on from youth to manhood, or from both to age f The settled tenor whtchfirst strikes the eye is btit the shadow of a delusion. This is gone; that never truly was; and you yourself are al- tered beyond recognition . Times and men and circumstances chinge about your changing character, with a speed of which no earthly hurrican affords an image. IVhat was the best yesterday, is it still the best in this changed theatre of a tomorrow? Will your own past truly guide yoti in your own violent and unexpected future? And if this be questionable, with what humble, with what hopeless eyes should we not 7vatch other men driving beside us on their unknoivn careers, seeing with unlike eyes, impelled by diffeient gales, doing and suffering in another sphere ofthingsf — "Lq^ Morals.'' LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS ■ 014 546 795 •