“Have you missed in your aim? Well, the mark is still shining;
Did you faint in the race? Well, take breath for the next;
Did the clouds drive you back? But see yonder their lining;
Were you tempted and fell? Let it serve for a text.”
The decision of the judges in any contest tells where the honor goes. Then another testing begins – a testing of character. The contestants themselves are on trial now. By the way they bear victory and defeat respectively they reveal what sort of men they are.
A young university student writes to a friend of an intercollegiate contest in oratory in which he ranked fourth instead of first, as he had hoped to rank. He had been chosen to represent his university and he feels the chagrin of defeat, not so much for himself, as because his fellow students had entrusted to him the honor of their institution, and he had failed to win the coveted laurel for them. Yet he writes in a manful way of the matter. There is not in his letter a syllable of complaint that any unfairness was shown, not a hint that the decision of the judges was unjust, not a word in depreciation of the merits of the successful competitor. Though disappointed himself, he shows that he can be glad in another’s success even at the cost of his own, and writes in a strain that does him high honor.
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