---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Frost, Grace Ingles
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 12
number: 6
published: 1909-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Frost, Grace Ingles, "Only," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 6 (April 1909): 449.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1206unse
  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: improvementera1206unse
start_page: 449
end_page: 449
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1206unse
  publication_year: 1909
  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 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Only

<!-- page:449 -->

SELF-CONTROL. 449
the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the
slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms
attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad
lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations
and centuries, If you are sure you are right, do not let the voice
of the world, or friends, or of family swerve you for a moment
from your purpose. Accept slow growth if it must be slow, and
know the results must come, as you would accept the long, lonely
hours of the night, — with absolute assurance that the heavyleaded moments must bring the morning.
Let us as individuals banish the word "Hurry" from our lives.
Let us care for nothing so much that we would pay honor and
self-respect as the price of hurrying it. Let us cultivate calmness, restfulness, poise, sweetness, — doing our best, bearing all
things as bravely as we can; living our life undisturbed by the
prosperity of the wicked or the malice of the envious. Let us
not be impatient, chaffing at delay, fretting over failure, wearying
over results, and weakening under opposition. Let us ever turn
our face toward the future with confidence and trust, with the
calmness of a life in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and
slowly and constantly progressing toward their realization.
Let us see the cowardly word Hurry in all its most degenerating phases, let us see that it ever kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and let us determine that day by day we will seek more
and more to substitute for it the calmness und repose of a true
life nobly lived.
[to be continued]
ONLY.
{For the Improvement Era.
Only a word to comfort, spoken in accents low,
But it returned in after years to lessen the giver's woe.
Only a word of kindness, spoken to one astray,
But a heart was made repentant, and turned from sin away.
Only a word, so little it seems when given with love,
Yet, though we deem it nothing, 'tis written in heaven above.
Waterloo, Utah. Grace Ingles Frost.