p. 11 | GATHERING PINS by Eleanor Root

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 42.

GATHERING PINS.

By Eleanor Root

[Eleanor Root, in S. S. Times.]

“My wife,” said an old farmer proudly, “had a paper o’ pins given her on her weddin’-day forty years ago, an’ she’s never had to buy a pin since. It seem’s if pins is on her mind most o’ the time. She’s saved an’ added to ’em till I believe she’s got more now’n what she had then.”

Very likely. A woman with a mania for saving pins and adding to them would be apt to increase her store materially in the course of forty years. But in the meantime—what? Can a mind that dwells upon pins be the mind to care for the great things of life—“the things that matter”?

If one would crowd out what tends to broaden and enrich life, if he would dull the endeavors, dwarf the vision, paralyze the springs of action, he need but fill his mind with a mania for pins, or some kindred petty object.

But if he cares to grow, if he would take from life but its best, if he realizes that he has a destiny which he alone can fulfil, he will eschew the time and strength needed for the accumulation of “pins,” and place them upon something better worth his time and attention.