Buckeye Valley News And Buckeye Review

Characters of those who have been held in high esteem for years, even for generations, is only excelled in these times by the determination to make heroes of those whose reputations have been unsavory. There is, of course, in all things a happy medium. No one is all good. No one is all bad. But it is the predominance of virtue or vice which sets its stamp on persons' characters, and causes them to be estimated good or bad accordingly.

Writers of biography are seldom readers. One of the greatest difficulties is in really getting at the truth about persons whether they be dead or alive. Biographers, living in the same period as those of whom they write, are unable to make delineations free from personal ideas or estimations, especially if the person about whom they are writing is known to them. Sometimes this accent is deliberately derogatory. sometimes it is fulsome in praise.

Individual View Point.

It is for readers to make their own discoveries. They have this privilege and they should take it. Get acquainted with the facts as much as possible through perusing more than one biography. Get more than one other person's point of view. There are great men. There are little ones. To learn a few derogatory things about the former does not make them unworthy natures. The balance remains still for virtue. To find out good qualities in poor characters is delightful, but so long as flagrant misdeeds can merely be mollified and not erased, the person has to stand the brunt of his own deeds. Unless the good outweighs the bad, he fails to ascend to the higher plane.

Well Tempered Judgment.

In reading biographies and in studying human nature it is well always to bear in mind that extenuating circumstances are present. Rarely are they absent totally. There are certain situations which exist, and complications which arise to influence action. Knowing these we become less harsh in adverse judgments, or more laudatory in favorable estimations according to how the character acts. We learn to detect the difference between the desire to undermine a fine character or to establish a poor one as good, whether in the spoken word or the written.

Bell Syndicate.-WNU Service.

"Quotations"

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.- Will Rogers.

Next to worry, probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.-Bertrand Russell,

In political life, you must understand, every pilot dies before he comes to port.-Andre Maurois.

It ought not to be assumed that a person doing nothing is wasting his time.-Raymond B. Fosdick.

It is clear that "to serve God" is equivalent to serving "every living thing".-Albert Einstein.

Hope is the dream of possession; faith is possession of the dream.- Jules Simon.

Moral Courage

Moral courage is more worth having than physical, not only because it is a higher virtue, but because the demand for it is more constant.-Charles Buxton.