The Argosy — page 305: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Of Self-Sacrifice. 289 be minus the five hundred pounds it would put into my pocket if I do it for myself. A. wants the thousand ; the five hundred to me is nothing. But it does not enter into the principle of business, and I cannot do it. No, I cannot. If I did do it, and the world knew, it would mock me.” So A, does not get his thousand pounds, and B. pockets his five hundred. A. is ruined, perhaps: possibly drags down with him a wife and children; and he never recovers his footing. ‘Sorry for him,” says B., stifling qualms of conscience. ‘“ But I couldn't help it, clearly. Business is business,” And undoubtedly every man should do the very best he possibly can for himself in business ; but only in fairness to his duty towards his neighbour. 1 would repeat this and engrave it with a pen of iron if I could: as Job did those beautiful and awful words which tell us that though worms destroy our body—for which we toil so much and sacrifice so much—yet in our flesh shall we see God. You will some- times hear a conversation after this manner: “Why did you not do so and so? It would have been better for you.” ‘Yes; but would it have been better for the opposite side?” “No; but you had the power in your own hands. To you would have been the advantage.” The reader had need to steel his heart against sophistry so worldly, argument so ungenerous. It may cost a little self-sacrifice, but if the heart becomes warped, the mind narrowed and disennobled, the con- science seared, the body had better, ere that take place, be resting quietly in its last home. We all do fade as a leaf; so much for the body and the body only ; but the good that men do lives after them, and the evil is never undone. Pause and turn back ere launching out upon that wide road where return is so hard, which lays hold upon the soul with an iron grasp, to be loosened only by constant and painful struggles, ending, let us hope, in victory ; but a victory gained, it may be, only through death itself. Not to the persistently selfish will the grave be without its victory, death without its terrors and its sting. As self-sacrifice is more or less in the reach of all, so all must seek to acquire it. Look to the heart ; make it green and keep it so; remember that your opportunities and your life will not last for ever; you cannot live your life twice over; it will not return and enable you to redeem the days that have been mis-spent. Now or never must be said of the opportunities of to-day ; for after to-day its opportunities, taken or neglected, have passed into the womb of time and the records of eternity. And then, to go to the reverse side of the picture, self-sacrifice brings its own reward. It gives happiness far greater than any wealth or power can bestow. In the latter case, every man in the zenith of success may lay his head upon his pillow at night, and confess that it is not without much vanity and vexation of spirit at the best ; a weariness of the flesh ; a thing which must pass away asa shadow. '‘ Not that wv VOL, XXII. comichooks.com