characteristic feature of their childlike piety for new converts
to take literally the words of our Lord,--"Love your enemies."
It is not true that the devil has his tail in everything. A stalwart
confidence in God, and faith in the happy outcome of life, will do more
to lubricate the creaking machinery of our daily affairs than anything
else.
"LE DIABLE EST MORT."
"_Courage, ami, le diable est mort!_" "Courage, friend, the devil is
dead!" was Denys's constant countersign, which he would give to
everybody. "They don't understand it," he would say, "but it wakes them
up. I carry the good news from city to city, to uplift men's hearts."
Once he came across a child who had broken a pitcher. "_Courage, amie,
le diable est mort!_" said he, which was such cheering news that she
ceased crying, and ran home to tell it to her grandma.
Give me the man who, like Emerson, sees longevity in his cause, and who
believes there is a remedy for every wrong, a satisfaction for every
longing soul; the man who believes the best of everybody, and who sees
beauty and grace where others see ugliness and deformity. Give me the
man who believes in the ultimate triumph of truth over error, of harmony
over discord, of love over hate, of purity over vice, of light over
darkness, of life over death. Such men are the true nation-builders.
Jay Cooke, many times a millionaire at the age of fifty-one, at
fifty-two practically penniless, went to work again and built another
fortune. The last of his three thousand creditors was paid, and the
promise of the great financier was fulfilled. To a visitor who once
asked him how he regained his fortune, Mr. Cooke replied, "That is
simple enough: by never changing the temperament I derived from my
father and mother. From my earliest experience in life I have always
been of a hopeful temperament, never living in a cloud; I have always
had a reasonable philosophy to think that men and times are better than
harsh criticism would suppose. I believed that this American world of
ours is full of wealth, and that it was only necessary to go to work and
find it. That is the secret of my success in life. Always look on the
sunny side."
"Everything has gone," said a New York business man in despair, when he
reached home. But when he came to himself he found that his wife and his
children and the promises of God were left to him. Suffering, it was
said by Aristotle, becomes beautiful when a
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