Disappointed Hopes

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1885

Disappointed Hopes.

DEAR GIRLS: I am a middle-aged woman now, and commonplace. The fact has been lately forced upon me, and, trust me, there can be no moments in a woman's life more humiliating, no disappointments more bitter.

My old school-mate, Laura P., has a voice that is admired and enjoyed by all who hear it; my girlhood's friend, Mary S., writes for Harper and receives one hundred dollars for a single story; and little Lily M., so many years my junior, is such a charming, delightful conversationalist that her company is eagerly sought by the most intelligent and cultivated in our midst. While I—I am just plain, unaccomplished Mrs. H. The realization came suddenly, forced upon me by a remark from a stranger. I had played "Valse Sentimentale" for her, and when I finished she exclaimed, "Oh, how beautifully you must have played once." It rushed over me as the tide over the drowning, "she is putting me in the past tense," and as if the surges were singing a dirge over me the thought continued. The best of me does belong to the past. Youth, its possibilities, its untried strength, all belong to the past. I am but the grave of what might have been."

Yet I had been as full of hopes and dreams and plans as the brightest among you; and they had not fled. I still intended to make something of myself, to be somebody above the slow and dull. Now, I found it was too late—I was already middle-aged and commonplace. I had frittered away the best years of my life.

If I could only keep you girls from the same rude awakening! If you would but each cultivate your talent—and even though it scarce be called a talent, if you would but devote the best that is in you to one thing, and by indomitable will and energy make yourself proficient in it, and a success at something. Trust me, there must be a recompense for all the labor, in the satisfaction and gratification obtained, and as surely comes the disappointment to those who but dream away the precious, unreturning hours, days, years.

The end of man is an action, and not a thought, though it were the noblest.—Christian at Work.