“My Life has been a Failure.”
So said a capitalist in this country worth his several millions, on being asked why he did not have a biography of his life written. What an answer, and what a sad truth, to be made and considered by one who has spent a whole life in amassing wealth! and now, with trembling limbs, stepping into the grave, the startling truth, quite too late it is to be feared, flashes across his mind, that his life has been a failure—its great object, and the only one worthy of attention, having been entirely overlooked and neglected! What more than such a thought need occupy a sane mind, to fill and keep it full of unutterable anguish! Life a failure? Probation squandered—ending!—the soul lost! Reader, whoever you may be, poor or rich, did you ever ask yourself whether your life also has not been a failure?—whether you are living merely for this world! laying up the treasures which cannot avail yourself in your time of greatest need? Will you go to the judgment with the awful truth sounding in your ears, that your life has been a failure? If you would not, mend that life—mend it to-day; to-morrow is not yours. Put off no longer a work so important, involving your all, and one which should have been done the first day of your accountability.—Chris. Treas.