Gala-Days [131]
and gnarled and dwarfed, his actions will be. If his soul is corrupt and base and petty, so will his actions be. Faith is the basis of works. Essence underlies influence. If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, and his soul be not filled with good, I say that an untimely birth is better than he.
When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom the world calls unsuccessful, furnished with every virtue and adorned with every grace, made considerate through suffering, sympathetic by isolation, spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm and contemptuous, tender even of the sorrows and tolerant of the joys which they despise, enduring the sympathy and accepting the companionship of weakness because it is kindly offered, though it be a burden to be dropped just inside the door, and not a treasure to be taken into the heart's chamber, I am ready to say, Blessed are the unsuccessful.
Blessed ARE the unsuccessful, the men who have nobly striven and nobly failed. He alone is in an evil case who has set his heart on false or selfish or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, he is alike unsuccessful. But he who "loves high" is king in his own right, though he "live low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is sure. God may overrule his desires, and thwart his hopes, and baffle his purposes, but all things shall work together for his good. Though he fall, he shall rise again. Every defeat shall be a victory. Every calamity shall drop down blessing. Inward disappointment shall minister to enduring joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press the wine of life.
Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his promise. As I write that name, hallowed from our olden time, and now baptized anew for the generations that are to follow, comes back again warm, bright, midsummer morning, freighted with woe,--that dark, sad summer morning that wrenched him away from sweet life, and left silence for song, ashes for beauty,--only cold, impassive clay, where glowing, vigorous vitality had throbbed and surged.
Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that early grave, but, one by one, from his silent desk came those brilliant books, speaking to all who had ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith,--words of higher import than their sound,--key-words to a lofty life; for all the bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness that gleam in golden setting throughout his books must have been matched with bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul from which they sprang. Looking at what might have been accomplished with endowments so rare, culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our lament for the dead is not untinged with bitterness. A mind so well poised, so self-confident, so eager in its honorable desire for honorable fame, that, without the stimulus of publication, it could produce work after work, compact and finished, studded with gems of wit and wisdom, white and radiant with inward purity,--could polish away roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal perfection, and attaining a rare excellence,--surely, here was promise of great things for the future; but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little drummer-boy, not knowing what he did, sped a bullet straightway to as brave a heart as ever beat, and quenched a royal life.
I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand hearts will supply each its own name wreathed with cypress and laurel. Were these lives failures? Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its offset? The choice of life or death is in no man's hands. The choice is only and occasionally in the manner. All must die. To a few, and only a few, is granted the opportunity of dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the King of Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful brow, and set it on their own triumphant. They die, not from inevitable age or irresistible disease, but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime and zenith of life, in that glorious transition-hour when hope is culminating in fruition. They die of set purpose, with unflinching will,
When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom the world calls unsuccessful, furnished with every virtue and adorned with every grace, made considerate through suffering, sympathetic by isolation, spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm and contemptuous, tender even of the sorrows and tolerant of the joys which they despise, enduring the sympathy and accepting the companionship of weakness because it is kindly offered, though it be a burden to be dropped just inside the door, and not a treasure to be taken into the heart's chamber, I am ready to say, Blessed are the unsuccessful.
Blessed ARE the unsuccessful, the men who have nobly striven and nobly failed. He alone is in an evil case who has set his heart on false or selfish or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, he is alike unsuccessful. But he who "loves high" is king in his own right, though he "live low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is sure. God may overrule his desires, and thwart his hopes, and baffle his purposes, but all things shall work together for his good. Though he fall, he shall rise again. Every defeat shall be a victory. Every calamity shall drop down blessing. Inward disappointment shall minister to enduring joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press the wine of life.
Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his promise. As I write that name, hallowed from our olden time, and now baptized anew for the generations that are to follow, comes back again warm, bright, midsummer morning, freighted with woe,--that dark, sad summer morning that wrenched him away from sweet life, and left silence for song, ashes for beauty,--only cold, impassive clay, where glowing, vigorous vitality had throbbed and surged.
Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that early grave, but, one by one, from his silent desk came those brilliant books, speaking to all who had ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith,--words of higher import than their sound,--key-words to a lofty life; for all the bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness that gleam in golden setting throughout his books must have been matched with bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul from which they sprang. Looking at what might have been accomplished with endowments so rare, culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our lament for the dead is not untinged with bitterness. A mind so well poised, so self-confident, so eager in its honorable desire for honorable fame, that, without the stimulus of publication, it could produce work after work, compact and finished, studded with gems of wit and wisdom, white and radiant with inward purity,--could polish away roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal perfection, and attaining a rare excellence,--surely, here was promise of great things for the future; but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little drummer-boy, not knowing what he did, sped a bullet straightway to as brave a heart as ever beat, and quenched a royal life.
I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand hearts will supply each its own name wreathed with cypress and laurel. Were these lives failures? Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its offset? The choice of life or death is in no man's hands. The choice is only and occasionally in the manner. All must die. To a few, and only a few, is granted the opportunity of dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the King of Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful brow, and set it on their own triumphant. They die, not from inevitable age or irresistible disease, but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime and zenith of life, in that glorious transition-hour when hope is culminating in fruition. They die of set purpose, with unflinching will,