One distinguishing mark of the men who have won their victories with
the remnants of their defeat is that they refuse to describe their
unideal conditions in negative terms. If they cannot live in southern
California where they would choose to live, but must abide in New
England instead, they do not describe New England in terms of its
deficiencies--no orange groves, no acres of calla lilies, no palm
trees. There are compensations even in New England, if one will
carefully take account of stock and see what positively is there! Or
if a man would choose to live in Boston and must live in Labrador, the
case of Grenfell suggests that a positive attitude toward his
necessity will discover worth, and material for splendid triumphs even
on that inhospitable coast. The mark of the handicapped men who have
made the race's history glorious has always been their patriotism for
the country where they had to live. They do not stop long to pity
themselves, or to envy another's opportunity, or to blame circumstances
for their defeat, or to dream of what might have been, or to bewail
their disappointed hopes. If the soil of their condition will not grow
one crop, they discover what it will grow. They have insight, as did
Moses, to see holy ground where an ordinary man would have seen only
sand and sagebrush and sheep.
=Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the
priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness,
and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb. And the angel of Jehovah
appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and
he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was
not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this
great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when Jehovah saw that he
turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the
bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said,
Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the
place whereon thou standest is holy ground.--Exodus 3:1-5.=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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