“Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain!
Strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge
The throe!”
It is related of a New England farmer that he put all his combativeness into a rough farm in Massachusetts and made it one of the best. Once a friend said to him, “I should think that with your love of farming you would like to have a more productive soil to deal with – in some Western State, for instance.”
“I should hate farming in the West,” he said vigorously. “I should hate to put my spade into the ground where it did not hit against a rock.”
There are many men who would find no pleasure in life it were only and always easy. Their chief delight is experienced in meeting obstacles and overcoming them. A hindrance in their path arouses the best that is in them in the effort to master it.
It is true in a measure of all good life that it needs antagonism or struggle to develop it. He is really not the most fortunate boy who has everything done for him, who has no hardship to endure, no difficulty to encounter, no obstacle to surmount. He is envied by those who lack what he possesses of worldly fortune. Many another boy sighs and says, “If I only had his chance I would make my life worth while. But there is no use in my trying to make anything noble of myself with my limitations and hindrances.” Yet this boy of fortune is by no means to be envied. Only soft, enervated life can come from such pampering.
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