LEAF AND TENDRIL 



selfishness ; the feehng of , self-rrapect pushed a 

 little too far becomes pride and vainglory; faith 

 degenerates into credulity, worship into idolatry, 

 deference into fawning; firmness into hardness of 

 heart, self-reliance into arrogance. The danger 

 that threatens repose is stagnation, that threatens 

 industry is greed, that threatens thrift is avarice, 

 that threatens power is tyranny. Everywhere are 

 tilings linked together, every virtue has its vice, 

 every good has its ill, every sweet has its bitter, 

 and the bitter is often the best medicine. 



What .shall we say, then ? Shall we be tolerant of 

 evil ? Shall we embrace vice as well as virtue ? No; 

 but we shall cease to try to persuade ourselves "that 

 the celestial laws need to be worked over and rec- 

 tified," that there is some ingrained defect in God's 

 universe, and that the divine plan miscarried; 

 that man in this world has got the bad end of a bad 

 bargain. We get sooner or later what we pay for, 

 and we do not get what we do not pay for, and 

 there is no credit system. 



"All's right with the world." I know it does 

 not soothe the bruises of the victim of a railroad 

 smash-up to be told that the laws of force could 

 not act diflferently, nor the disappointment of the 

 farmer when his crops are burned up by the drought 

 to be assured that the weather system is still running 

 all right elsewhere, nor the sick and the suffering to 

 be told that pain too is a guardian angel ; and yet it 

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