on to follow you. Instead of stopping at the
knowledge that much wretchedness, hatred, disunion and vice exist in
society, you will have introduced a little good among these evils. And
by however slow degrees such kindness as yours is emulated, the good
will sensibly increase and the evil diminish. Even were you to remain
alone in this undertaking, you would have the assurance that in
fulfilling the duty, plain as a child's, which offered itself, you were
doing the only reasonable thing. If you have felt it so, you have found
out one of the secrets of right living.

In its dreams, man's ambition embraces vast limits, but it is rarely
given us to achieve great things, and even then, a quick and sure
success always rests on a groundwork of patient preparation. Fidelity in
small things is at the base of every great achievement. We too often
forget this, and yet no truth needs more to be kept in mind,
particularly in the troubled eras of history and in the crises of
individual life. In shipwreck a splintered beam, an oar, any scrap of
wreckage, saves us. On the tumbling waves of life, when everything seems
shattered to fragments, let us not forget that a single one of these
poor bits may become our plank of safety. To despise the remnants is
demoralization.

You are a ruined man, or you are stricken by a great bereavement, or
again, you see the fruit of toilsome years perish before your eyes. You
cannot rebuild your fortune, raise the dead, recover your lost toil, and
in the face of the inevitable, your arms drop. Then you neglect to care
for your person, to keep your house, to guide your children. All this is
pardonable, and how easy to understand! But it is exceedingly dangerous.
To fold one's hands and let things take their course, is to transform
one evil into worse. You who think that you have nothing left to lose,
will by that very thought lose what you have. Gather up the fragments
that remain to you, and keep them with scrupulous care. In good time
this little that is yours will be your consolation. The effort made will
come to your relief, as the effort missed will turn against you. If
nothing but a branch is left for you to cling to, cling to that branch;
and if you stand alone in defense of a losing cause, do not throw down
your arms to join the rout. After the deluge a few survivors repeopled
the earth. The future sometimes rests in a single life as truly as life
sometimes hangs by a thread. For strength, go to