“Beyond each hill-top others rise,
Like ladder-rungs, toward loftier skies:
Each halt is but a breathing space
For stirrup-cup and fresher pace;
Till who dare day, ere night descent,
There can be, ever, such thing as End!”
An old painter of Sienna, after standing for a long time in silent meditation before his canvas, with hands crossed meekly on his breast and head bent reverently low, turned away, saying, “May God forgive me that I did not do it better!”
Many people, as they come to the close of their life, and look back at what they have done with their opportunities and privileges, and at what they are leaving as their finished work, to be their memorial, can only pray with like sadness, “May God forgive me that I did not do it better!”
If there were some art of getting the benefit of our own after-thoughts about life as we go along, perhaps most of us would live more wisely and more beautifully. It is ofttimes said, “If I had my life to live over again, I would live it differently. I would avoid the mistakes that I now see I have made. I would not commit the follies and sins which have so marred my work. I would devote my life with earnestness and intensity to the achievement and attainment of the best things.” No one can get his life back to live it a second time, but the young have it in their power to live so that they shall have no occasion to utter such an unavailing wish when they reach the end of their career.
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