undismayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your hope, upon the wreck of
what you have faithfully built, and with brave heart and unfaltering
voice you may say: "So let it be,--I will build again."

When the tongue of malice and slander, the persecution of inferiority,
tempts you for just a moment to retaliate, when for an instant you
forget yourself so far as to hunger for revenge,--be calm. When the
grey heron is pursued by its enemy, the eagle, it does not run to
escape; it remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits quietly,
facing the enemy unmoved. With the terrific force with which the eagle
makes its attack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled and run
through on the quiet, lance-like bill of the heron. The means that man
takes to kill another's character becomes suicide of his own.

No man in the world ever attempted to wrong another without being
injured in return,--someway, somehow, sometime. The only weapon of
offence that Nature seems to recognize is the boomerang. Nature keeps
her books admirably; she puts down every item, she closes all accounts
finally, but she does not always balance them at the end of the month.
To the man who is calm, revenge is so far beneath him that he cannot
reach it,--even by stooping. When injured, he does not retaliate; he
wraps around him the royal robes of Calmness, and he goes quietly on
his way.

When the hand of Death touches the one we hold dearest, paralyzes our
energy, and eclipses the sun of our life, the calmness that has been
accumulating in long years becomes in a moment our refuge, our reserve
strength.

The most subtle of all temptations is the _seeming_ success of the