Dr. Holmes once said that the best way to live long is to become afflicted with some serious disease. What he meant was that such an affliction sometimes teaches people the care of their bodies, when enduring health would leave them utterly careless of the essential laws of well-being. It does sometimes happen that, even in this regard, a handicap is found to be a helpful thing. There are cases on record which tell the story of renewed effort to cultivate health and strength, when life was rapidly slipping away, and of the crowning of that effort with success, health, and long life. The old story of the hare and the tortoise is re-enacted daily in modern life. The battle does not always go to the strong, nor is victory in the race the inevitable portion of the swift. The winner is more apt to be the patient toiler who has chosen a purpose, and who struggles in the direction of his goal in spite of handicaps. His progress may not always be swift, but it is at least continuous. The Riverside (1918) “It is not what we would like to do in this life,” says Clarence E. Flynn in ‛The Riverside,’ “but what we really get done that counts.” “Heaven in its mercy may take the will for the deed, but human destiny in its justice never does.” “What the world of men needs is not kindly thoughts which never come to expression nor the good will which never reaches the form of action. What it needs is the helpful word and the real deed of kindness. It is for the concrete service that the hearts of men rise up in thankfulness.” “And, in the working out of our own careers, progress is not made by the dream which never become more than a dream nor the purpose which was never carried to fulfillment. ‛We rise by the things that are under our feet,’ and push forward by the virtue of the things really accomplished. Fate, like men, does not ask how we have felt, but what we have done.” “Upon the record of our own characters and personalities we may get credits for feelings and our purposes, even though they were all smothered silence and inaction, but these things do not enter into the record formed by the impressions we make upon our age. It is a record of deed, and it stands when the eyes of this world have ceased to see any other.” “A thought or a feeling of aspiration, however great or strong, is not meant to be an end within itself. It is a means to the end of its actual realization in action and accomplishment.” “A heavenly vision is given only to shed light on a way to perform a heavenly deed. A great thought is given only to make possible a great work. A noble feeling is God’s way of pointing to a noble mission. Columbus did not have a conviction that a new world lay beyond the sea for naught. The conviction led the way to the fact and its important result. It has been so in countless similar instances.”