“An hungry man an angry man.” Well! Here is good guidance for us. Punch’s immortal “Feed the brute!” endorses it with a note of modernity, and the far-off echo from the early days of the eighteenth century proves that human nature is not much altered in this respect. Is it not a good recommendation for punctuality with meals? But how many men will approve of the following: “Dry bread at home is better than roast meat abroad.” In these days of restaurant lunches and dinners all that kind of thing might be supposed to have altered; but, even now, many a man prefers a chop at home to mock turtle in the city. Home food does him more good, he thinks. Is there anything in it beyond imaginings?

“Life is half spent before we know what it is.”

“God has His plan for every man.”

“Life is half spent before we know what it is.” How often we wish we could have our time over again, and how differently we should spend it, with the light of experience to guide us! It was our tragic ignorance that misled us, we think. We had no chart to show us where the quicksands lay. We could so easily have avoided them, or so we believe. If we had only taken the other turning, we say. It was at that parting of the roads that we lost our way. There were no finger-posts for our understanding, and the experience of friends we rejected as unsuitable to our own case. And, oh! how “full of brabbles” have we found the path. We missed the smooth, broad highway, and met many an ugly fence and trudged many a weary foot in muddy lanes and across ploughed fields. If we had only known! The sweetness of the might- have-been smiles upon us from its infinite distance, far, far beyond our reach, with the light upon it that never was on land or sea. Si jeunesse savait! But, then, if it did, it would no longer be youth. And, after all, we were not meant to walk firmly and safely and wisely at the first trial, any more than the baby who totters and sways and balances himself, only to totter again, and suddenly collapse with the deep and solemn gravity of baby-hood, under the laughing, tender eyes of the watchful mother. Are there not wise and loving eyes watching our wanderings and noting our sad mistakes? And cannot good come out of evil? Thank God, it can, and many a life that looks like failure here on earth may be one of God’s successes.

Remember the good old Swiss proverb:—

“God has His plan
For every man.”