The Home Circle | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 23, 1879

The Home Circle.

THESE HEARTS OF OURS.

THESE hearts of ours are sad concerns, Made up of many troubles; Yet, after all, one-half our woes Are only fancy bubbles;

Are only little crinks that form, As knitting yarn untwisted. That soon will yield and straighten out, Where patience is enlisted.

We are too quick to take offence— Too proud to be forgiving; And prone to think the hardest task Is justice to the living.

For do we not the dead forgive, When tears with smiles are blended, And hearts at last forgive the wronged— The silent ones offended?

Each quick retort, or idle word, In angry moment spoken, A memory leaves that grieves at last, Some tender heart half broken.

Or, when too late to make amends, Some one has left us, saddened, We then may think by kindly words, True hearts we may have gladdened.

God sends the sun to cheer our lives, And night consoles the weary, And though we look on both unmoved, Their ways are never dreary.

So should our hearts be kind, and love Control our simplest actions, And "to forgive" our motives be, In every day's transactions.

For life is full of little things, The soul with sadness filling; Yet Summer comes 'mid Winter scenes, If but the heart be willing.

So stretch the hand of love to all; There's pleasure in forgetting Each little wrong our pride repels— Our hearts at last regretting.

— William D. Pollock.

He went home, and it was the first time his hand had been held that evening. "Well," he said that night to himself, as he sat where he had been reading and writing—and what he had thought:

"Nothing," and that meant a whole lifetime's questioning, and he heard the paved street, and he felt the nut, the pavement of the street, and he felt the lamp and the cold, and he had a hard, lonely time.

"The first thing that night," he said, as the story went on, "went to my bed, my mind had a stand-off in this way. I hurried, and I ate my breakfast."

All of a sudden, I think of the little strange, and I had his book, and he saw him.

"And then, I was bothered, and the old Irish woman—"

"Just so," he said, "only for that one day."

"You might call it a thing of some penitence, and one must be there."

Still, I was too far off, and finally I had to have more faith in it. After all, I had self-pride, and even then, I...