Contents

D – ‘DOORS’
Life is full of doors. A door is a very simple thing. It may be only a
plain, unadorned piece of board. Its significance is not in the material,
of which it is made, or in its costliness or its artistic beauty—but in
the fact that it is a door which opens to something.
There is the door of education. All of life is a school. Young people
graduate by and by, from the college and university—but their
education is not finished. This should go on in the occupations and
struggles that follow. It is there, that we learn the real lessons of life.
There are many people who permit their pain and misfortune to make
constant appeal to human sympathy, instead of bearing these
burdens quietly and heroically, as a soldier wears the marks of his
profession. Suffering properly endured, develops strength, and adds
to usefulness. The school of hardship and pain is where we learn
many of the finest things.
The man who wins its real successes, is not he who has the most
perfect health—but he who bears disease and misfortune with silent
courage and gains from them a more daring spirit; who meets failure
as if it were veiled victory; who challenges death by ignoring its
fearful aspect, tearing off its mask, and meeting it with a smile.
16