Law of Success (21st Century Edition)

PROFITING BY FAILURE 895

Who of us has not seen "off" days, when everything seemed to
go wrong? These are the days when we see only the flat side of the
great wheel of life.
Let us remember that the wheel is always turning. If it brings us
sorrow today, it will bring us joy tomorrow. Life is a cycle of varying
events-fortunes and misfortunes.
We cannot stop this wheel of fate from turning, but we can
modify the misfortune it brings by remembering that good fortune
will follow, just as surely as night follows day, if we maintain faith
in ourselves and earnestly and honestly do our best.
In his greatest hours of trial the immortal Lincoln was often heard
to say, "And this, too, will soon pass:'
If you are hurting from the effects of some temporary defeat that
you find hard to forget, let me recommend the poem "Opportunity"
by Walter Malone:

They do me wrong who say 1 come no more

When once 1 knock and fail to find you in;

For every day 1 stand outside your door,

And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away;

Weep not for golden ages on the wane;

Each night 1 burn the records oj the day;

At sunrise every soul is born again.

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have 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,

1 lend my arm to all who say ((1 can!"

No shamifaced outcast ever sank so deep

But yet might rise and be again a man!