All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist, Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, When eternity confirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-bye." _Abt Vogler_, ROBERT BROWNING. Struggling NOVEMBER 4 "If what shone afar so grand Turn to nothing in thy hand, On again, the virtue lies In the struggle, not the prize." R. M. MILNES. "One would like one's own failures to be one's friends' stepping stones.... I am trying to teach myself that if one _has_ been working, one has not necessarily been working to good purpose, and that one may waste strength and forces of all sorts, as well as time." _Mrs. Ewing's Letters._ "Rise ... as children learn, be thou Wiser for falling." TENNYSON. True Patience NOVEMBER 5 "There are those who think it is Christian patience to sit down by the wayside to endure the storm, crying in themselves, 'God is hard on me, but I will bear His smiting'; but their endurance is only idleness which is ignoble, and hiding from the battle which is cowardice. Or they cry, 'I am the victim of Fate, but I will be patient'--as if any one could be a victim if God be love, or as if there were such a thing as blind fate, when the order of the world is to lead men into righteousness; when to be victor and not victim is the main word of that order. No, the severity of the battle is to force us into self-forgetfulness; and this lazy resignation, this wailing patience, is mere self-remembrance. The true patience is activity of faith and hope and righteousness in the cause of men for the sake of God's love of them; is in glad proclamation of the gospel; is in wielding the sword of the Truth of God against all that injures mankind." _The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE. "Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. What though the mast be now blown overboard, The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, And half our sailors swallowed in the flood-- Yet lives our Pilot still." SHAKESPEARE. The Appetite for Condolence NOVEMBER 6 "It is right to exercise a great deal of self-restraint in speaking of our troubles, and not to let the appetite for condolence grow on us." _Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.