Book Description

Excerpt from Address Delivered Before the Literary Societies of Erskine College: Abbeville District, S. C., On the Fifth Anniversary, September 18, 1844 How few are there 1n this world, who make it their study to control and master their own pass1ons and bad feelings! And yet how important is this study in the life of every one. How much of evil, how much of dan ger, and how much of misery and ruin should we avoid, if we were to do so. Franklin's self-scrutiny carried him so far as to make him keep a di ary of his faults and errors. He not only rose in the morning with a de termination to do well, and restrain all of his evil pass1ons and propensities, but at night he enquired of himself whether he had done so, and wrote down every omission. In the lives and characters of most great men, we shall find that their greatness is too often sullied by some weakness or glaring faults of char acter. Few men are perfect. But we may profit as much by the faults of great men, as by their virtues. Like dark spots on a bright picture, we see them the more readily, and more deeply regret them, on account of the brightness of the picture. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.