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We Reap What We Sow
- Author: Unknown
- Editor: B-7413
- Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
- Page Number:
- Date: 1 19 1916
- Tags:
- advice
WE REAP WHAT WE SOW It was a wise man who said that if we gave to the world and our friends the best we have, that the best will come to us in return; which is another way of saying "that we can take from the world only what we put into it." These facts were strikingly brought to mind recently by the case of a lonely man who killed himself in a well-known New York hotel, because as he stated in a letter that was left on a table in his room, he "had no friends or relatives who took an interest in him or his affairs, and he had nothing in particular to occupy his time." This man was not poor, except in friends. He had a fat bank account and possessed all the usual equipment that a man of refinement and taste could desire. Further statements of his case would indicate that he had chosen to hold himself somewhat aloof from those who might have been his friends and as a consequence he gradually became morose and finally ended his life because of its dreary void and emptiness; because he pictured in thought, the long, gray, un-illumined view of the years to come. He had willed his course in life to a selfish end until it had become impoverished, not in that which money can buy, but in an impoverished heart. Well would it have been for this unfortunate man could he have cleared away the thought of self, and borne in mind the saying of that delightful philosopher poet, Emerson, who said that "To have a friend must first be a friend." How. different -might have been his passing away, had he but given out a spirit of friendship! It is true that real friendships do not fall into-one's lap like fruit from a tree. They must be engendered by a spirit of truth and devoted loyalty; the forgetting of trifling shortcomings of others and by showing unfailing kindness-of heart. Had this man thought less of himself and tried to serve others, even in a slight degree, he would not, have been troubled in finding friends to help drive away all thoughts of gloom, and his life would undoubtedly have been well filled with a flood of kindly thoughts from those around him. Truly "it is a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is afar. better thing to be loved by many friends."
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- DOI 10.58117/2x7t-s726