TO-DAY

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.

Longfellow.


To-day! To-day! It is ours, with all its magic possibilities of
being and doing. Yesterday, with its mistakes, misdeeds, lost
opportunities, and failures, is gone forever. With the morrow we
are not immediately concerned. It is but a promise yet to be
fulfilled. Hidden behind the veil of the future, it may dimly
beckon us, but it is yet a shadowy, unsubstantial vision, one that
we, perhaps, never may realize. But to-day, the Here, the Now,
that dawned upon us with the first hour of the morn, is a reality,
a precious possession upon the right use of which may depend all
our future of happiness and success, or of misery and failure; for

"This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin."

Lest he should forget that Time's wings are swift and noiseless,
and so rapidly bear our to-days to the Land of Yesterday, John
Ruskin, philosopher, philanthropist, and tireless worker though he
was, kept constantly before his eyes on his study table a large,
handsome block of chalcedony, on which was graven the single word
"To-day." Every moment of this noble life was enriched by the
right use of each passing moment.