--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 5 published: 1899-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, \"Editor’s Table: Where Virtue Is,\" *Improvement Era* 2, no. 5 (March 1899): 384–385." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera25unse start_page: 384 end_page: 385 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse publication_year: 1899 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Editor’s Table: Where Virtue Is with more or less clearness, taught men their parts and prompted them when they forgot. Then what of the voice divine within each man's breast teaching him constantly his!.part and reproving him when he fails to enact it well? Is there no Prompter? The Colonel was so pleased with the sound of his poetic words that he must have 'forgotten their relation to facts, "Will the curtain rise on another scene?" Can reason only whisper a faint "perhaps?" and hope a fainter but a fonder "yes?" Are there no better prospects than this? May it be, to paraphrase slightly the words of a great poet, that the proud wealth flung back upon the heart must canker in its coffers? May it be that the links which falsehood hath broken will unite no more? Is it possible that the deep yearning love that hath not found its like in the cold world must waste in tears ?—that truth and fervor and devotedness, finding no worthy altar, must return and die of their own fullness? Can it be that beyond the grave there is no heaven in whose wide air the spirit may find room, and in the love of whose bright habitants the lavish heart may spend itself? If so, then what fools—yea, "what thrice mocked fools are we! " But we need not doubt with the agnostic. Humanity does not doubt that the curtain will rise on another scene. The voice of God has declared it to the humblest. The poor savage in darkest Africa knows it, and does his best to recognize the "Prompter," though his benighted state enables him to do no better than to honor him by worship through monstrous idols. The aborigines of America,though separated from Europe, knew it as well as the tribes of men on the eastern hemisphere. Celestial voices hymn it into the souls of all men. Reason says "yes," emphatically yes, and not "perhaps;" Revelation, though the agnostic may deny it, says "yes;" and the human Soul triumphantly above them all says, "I know it will." WHERE VIRTUE IS. One would naturally suppose that as a people or a nation increased in wealth the standard of morality would become more exalted, and society throughout more pure. That conclusion would be arrived at from the fact that as people increased in wealth their opportunities for culture are improved; they have more leisure to devote to self-improvement, to reading, to music, to conversation, to travel; to all those exercises which are supposed to beget a refinement in people, and ennoble the mind and heart. A wealthy people can afford better schools for their children, more beautiful homes, filled with everything that can please the eye and cultivate the taste. From wealthy nations, or perhaps to a better purpose we could say from the wealthy classes in any nation we may naturally expect the truest refinement, the purest morality; from those classes we may expect will come our profoundest philosophers, our most sagacious statesmen, our ablest writers, the most astute lawyers, the finest artists and sculptors, and those who will shine in every elevated department of human existence. Yet with all the advantage that wealth brings, the wealthy classes turn out comparatively few of the men who build empires, direct human thought, and adorn those professions where brain power and character are the motive forces which gain the positions and hold them. A greater amount of that which passes current in the world for refinement and politeness will doubtless be found among the wealthy classes. The young men in those circles, usually denominated the higher ones, may know how to talk nonsense to simpering women in a ball-room, and go through the mazes of a waltz with the utmost grace. They may be most pleasing in all their outer deportment and, as we say, may be regarded as having monopolized that which passes for refinement; but they do not furnish the men who become noted for the wealth of their mental attainments, strength of character, or those whose lives are the noblest and purest. There is a reason, of course, for this, and this it is: side by side with the increased opportunities that wealth brings for mental, moral and social improvements, are the multiplied pleasures, allurements and temptations which luxury brings with it, and "Their joints unknit, their sinews melt apace; As lithe they grow as any willow wand, And of their banished force remains no trace."