| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 20 |
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In every true life there is an inner circle of loved ones who are bound to us by ties woven out of our heart’s very fibres. The closest of these are the members of our own household. The child’s first friend is the child’s mother; then comes the father; then the other members of the family are taken into sacred clasp by the opening life. By and by the young heart reaches outside and chooses other friends from the great world of people and out of the multitude of passing associates, and binds them to itself with friendship’s strongest cords. Thus all true men and true women come up to mature years clustered about by a circle of friends who are dear to them as their own life. Our debt to our life’s pure and good friendships is incalculable; they make us what we are. The mother’s heart is the child’s first school room. The early home influences give their tints and hues to the whole afterlife; a gentle home where only kindly words are spoken and loving thoughts and dispositions are cherished fills with tender beauty the lives that go out from its shelter. All early friendships print their own stamp on the ripening character. Our souls are like the sensitive plates which the photographer puts into his camera, which catch every image whose reflection falls upon them and hold it ready to be brought out in the finished picture. Says George Macdonald:
“I think that nothing made is lost–
That not a moon has ever shone,
That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed,
But to my soul is gone;
“That all the lost years garnered lie
In this thy casket, my dim soul
And thou wilt, once, the key apply
And show the shining whole.”
True in general, this is especially true of the pure friendships of our lives. None of the impressions that they make on our lives are ever lost; they sink away into our souls, and then reappear at length in our character.
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