努力就有收获

1. The First Snow

The first snow came. How beautiful it was, falling so silently all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs on the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course be a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless tress, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacies of their branches. What silence, too, came with the snow, and what seclusion! Every sound was muffled, every noise changed to something soft and musical. No more tramping hoofs, no more rattling wheels! Only the chiming of sleigh-bell, beating as swift and merrily as the hearts of children. (118 words)

2. The Humming-bird

Of all animals being this is the most elegant in form and the most brilliant in colors. The stones and metals polished by our arts are not comparable to this jewel of Nature. She has placed it least in size of the order of birds. "maxime Miranda in minimis." Her masterpiece is this little humming-bird, and upon it she has heaped all the gifts which the other birds may only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby, and the topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of earth, and in its aerial life scarcely touches the turf an instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness as well as their brightness. It lives upon their nectar, and dwells only in the climates where they perennially bloom. (149 words)

3. Pines

The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, bring into them all possible elements of order and precision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them or a bank of cowlips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem; it shall point to the center of the earth as long as the tree lives. It may be well also for lowland branches to reach hither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension. But the pine is trained to need nothing and endure everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or short, it will be straight. (160 words)

4. Reading Good Books

Devote some of your leisure, I repeat, to cultivating a love of reading good books. Fortunate indeed are those who contrive to make themselves genuine book-lovers. For book lovers have some noteworthy advantages over other people. They need never know lonely hours so long as they have books around them, and the better the books the more delightful the company. From good books, moreover, they draw much besides entertainment. They gain mental food such as few companions can supply. Even while resting from their labors they are, through the books they read, equipping themselves to perform those labors more efficiently. This albeit they may not be deliberately reading to improve their mind. All unconsciously the ideas they derive from the printed paged are stored up, to be worked over by the imagination for future profit.

(135 words)

From Self-Development

By Henry Addington Bruce