--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - O’Brien, H. J. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 14 number: 5 published: 1911-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'H. J. O’Brien, "Undertones," *Improvement Era* 14, no. 5 (March 1911): 421.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1405unse 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: improvementera1405unse start_page: 421 end_page: 421 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1911-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1405unse publication_year: 1911 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 1911, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Undertones THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 423 lars. The owner of the small house is the richer of the two men. It is the equity that proves it. The philosophy of the equity illum- inates many of life's greatest problems. It may soften the pain and sweeten our living by showing how equity intensifies our optimism. Recognition of the equity helps us to retain our crown of individuality. Under the seeming injustice of life, Nature is constantly seeking —equalizing, balance, justice. Nature keeps books with the individual. Her justice consists neither in the debit nor in the credit side of her ledger, but in the difference, — the net, the balance, the equity. What seems to us injustice is often really only our concentration on one side of the account — to the exclu- sion of the other. We exaggerate our sorrows so that they eclipse our joys. We are unjust to what we have in hungering for what we have not; we make our unsatisfied desires, not our possessions, the test of happiness. Sometimes, with a sigh on our lips and a sob creeping into our throat, we face our life in numb rebellion. We are so vividly conscious of what we have to bear that we may forget our reason for happiness. Our sorrows seen through the magnifying glass of ' discouragement, loom large before us. Our joys through the reducing glass of unsatisfied desire minify into almost nothingness. We permit what we lack to poison the waters of what we have. We forget the equity. We forget the big, clear, broad sweep of net happiness still remaining to us. The mortgage of care, sor- row and responsibility blinds us to our real possessions. There are times when some affliction, some illness holds us in its close, deadly pressure. The pain seems beyond the bearing. It seems so unjust, so cruelly hard to suffer. It mars our life; disturbs the simple sweetness of the best in our nature; keeps us ever slaves under the awful spell of its presence or under the grim tyranny of fear at its recurrence. It makes us sometimes bitter and unjust in our poor, misleading speech. But in our temporary times of relief the tide of courage, love, gentleness, tenderness, runs just as strorg as ever, just as earnest, in the high sea of our heart's desire. If we can remember the equity we can make slightly easier this bed of pain. We may find joys in thoughts that lull the pang.