"Man Has but One Chance."
By Joseph Cook
"GENTLEMEN, this universe, up to the edge of the tomb, is not a joke. There are in this life serious differences between the right hand and the left. Nevertheless, in our present career, a man has but one chance. Even if you come weighted into the world, as Sinbad was with the Old Man of the Sea, you have but one chance. Time does not fly in a circle, but forth, and right on. The wandering, squandering, desiccated moral leper is gifted with no second set of early years. There is no fountain in Florida that gives perpetual youth; and the universe might be searched, probably in vain, for such a spring. Waste your youth; in it you have but one chance. Waste your middle life; in it you shall have but one chance. Waste your old age; in it you shall have but one chance. It is an irreversible natural law that character attains final permanence, and in the nature of things final permanence can come but once. This world is fearfully and wonderfully made, and so are we, and we shall escape neither ourselves nor these stupendous laws. It is not to me a pleasant thing to exhibit these truths from the side of terror; but, on the other side, these are the truths of bliss; for, by this very law through which all character tends to become unchanging, a soul that attains a final permanence of good character runs but one risk and is delivered once for all from its torture and unrest. It has passed the bourn, from behind which no man is caught out of the fold. He who is the force behind all natural law is the keeper of his sheep, and no one is able to pluck them out of his hand. Himself, without variableness or shadow of turning, he maintains the irreversibility of all natural forces, one of which is the insufferably majestic law by which character tends to assume final permanence, good as well as bad."-Joseph Cook.