the race will have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and
have failed. If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they
would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long should
opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to deprive
anybody of it when he is eager to redeem past errors is to ignore the
principles of human welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true
one. John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote:

Master of human destinies am I!
Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait;
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
I answer not and I return no more.

That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes the
importance of promptly acting when the time for action arrives. But
there is another truth to be expressed on the subject and it is well
done by Walter Malone, who says:

They do me wrong who say I come no more,
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you awake and rise to fight and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away;
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day,
At sunrise every soul is born again.
Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped;
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."

What a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure possible
because there is always another chance. The failure of one incarnation
made good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults and
frailties--the shadow blots of the past--vanishing in the light of a
higher wisdom that has been won. No endless hell, no eternal torment;
not even the ghosts of