---
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: 4
number: 12
published: 1901-10
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "In Lighter Mood," *Improvement Era* 4, no. 12 (October 1901): 952.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0412unse
  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: improvementera0412unse
start_page: 952
end_page: 952
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-10)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0412unse
  publication_year: 1901
  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 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# In Lighter Mood

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— — — —

NOTES.

That which we acquire with most difficulty we retain the longest.
Colton.

True dignity is never gained by place, and never lost when honors
are withdrawn. Messinger.

"Life's greatest art, learned through its hardest knocks,
Is to make stepping-stones of stumbling blocks."

To admire what is admirable, to adore what is adorable, to follow
what is noble, to remember any such examples that have crossed our
earthly pilgrimage, that have brightened its darkness and cheered its

dullness — this keeps alive before us the ideal of human nature and the
essence of the divine nature. The good thoughts, the good deeds, the
good memories of those who have been the salt and the light of the
earth do not perish with their departure —they live on still ; and those
who have wrought them live in them. A. P. Stanley.

Shun the very beginnings of evil. Refuse to keep company with
those who tell the questionable story and who speak slightingly of that
which is pure and innocent. Avoid such men as you would the pestilence.
No matter if they seem good in other respects. As a chemist can tell
from one drop of blood that there is poison in the veins, as a chip will
tell you the current of a stream, so in these beginnings there are the

seeds of disease which will surely end in failure and moral death. Be-
ware of harboring impure thoughts for they are like the spark in the
hold of a ship; it will work its way right and left until there is a bed of
fire under your feet, and destruction is at hand. S. B. Capen.

Two thirsty travelers chanced one day to meet
Where a spring bubbled from the burning sand;
One drank out of the hollow of his hand,
And found the water very cool and sweet.
The other waited for a smith to beat
And fashion for his use a golden cup;
And while he waited, fainting in the heat,
The sunshine came and drank the fountain up!
Alice Cary. )