---
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: 12
number: 7
published: 1909-05
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "No Use to Grumble," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 7 (May 1909): 545.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1207unse
  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: improvementera1207unse
start_page: 545
end_page: 545
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-05)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1207unse
  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.
---

# No Use to Grumble

<!-- page:545 -->

SELF-CONTROL.                                      545

us, we should master it.          If it be     the personal influence of others
that, like a noxious vapor, kills our best impulses, we should re-
                                   —
move from that influence, if we can possibly move without for-
saking duties. If it be wrong to move, then we should take

strong doses of moral quinine to counteract the malaria of influ-
ence.  It is not what those around us do for us that counts, it is             —
what they are to us. We carry our house plants from one window
to another to give them the proper heat, light, air and moisture.
Should we not be at least as careful of ourselves?
      To make our influence felt we must live our faith, we must
practice  what we believe.       A magnet does not attract iron, as
iron.    It must first convert the iron into another magnet before

it   can attract it.    It is useless for a parent to try to teach            gentle-
ness to her children when she herself               is   cross and    irritable.    The
child who is told to be truthful and             who hears a parent lie cleverly
to escape     some     little   social unpleasantness is not going to              cling
very zealously to truth.             The parent's words say "don't                 lie,"

the influence of the parent's life, says "do lie."
        No man can ever isolate himself to evade this constant power
of    influence, as no single corpuscle           can rebel and escape from the
general course of the blood.            No      individual    is   so insignificant as
to be without influence.         The changes in our varying moods are all
recorded in the delicate barometers of the lives of others. We
should ever let our influence filter through human love and sympa-
thy.    We should not be merely an influence— we should be an inspir-
ation. By our very presence we should be a tower of strength
to the hungering human souls around us.
                                  [to be continued]

                          NO USE TO GRUMBLE.

                     "It hain't no use to grumble and complain;
                       It's just as cheap   and easy to rejoice;
                     When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
                       W'y rain's my choice."— Selected.