Have Courage

—

OUR BEST LAID PLANS 693

in our youthful memories, until our turn came round. With what disgust did Uncle Phil Margetts or Thomas Ellerbeck, or Joe Simmons, or their wives, yield up their acquisitions! How our father chuckled as he saw his hopefuls vanquish his guests! With what impatience was the game suspended, while mother or aunt borrowed the lamp from the table long enough to hurry into the kitchen to see "what was burning;" and then when the refreshments were passed around with what eagerness did the juveniles sit and listen to their elders discuss the books or poems from which the famous quotations of the evening were derived or the play — (many of the participants in our circle were members of the noted theatre stock company) from which the sentiments had been selected! These discussions, with the accompanying analyses of auotations, impressed the latter upon the memory of the youthful listeners in an indelible fashion, as nothing else could have done. I well remember my father's particular favorites among the old adages. Some of them were: "Man proposes but God disposes," Thomas a' Kempis; "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip," Hazlett; "There is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will," Shakespeare; and "The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee," Robert Burns. Four great minds at different times, had had much the same thought, our father used to say, but all expressed it differently. He particularly loved Robert Burns, and he took pains to explain to his youngsters the meaning of that phrase, "The — best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee" that it was simply another name for disappointment, and that in our lives it is the unexpected that always happens. As time went by the old adage came gradually to be changed to "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee," and that is the way it is gener- ally mis-quoted by the world today. Some time afterward, our own little circle had the force of the saying impressed upon us. My brother, Orson F. Whitney, well known to all of you, had an overwhelming ambition in his early youth, to become an actor. All his studies were bent to that end, and under Dr. John R. Park, at the old Univeristy of Deseret, he attained high pro- ficiency as a reciter and school boy orator. No Friday after- noon's special exercise in the old Council House, then located on the Deseret News corner of today, was complete without a re- citation from him, or a dramatic sketch in which he was the principal player. At last, when he was about twenty years of

age, came the climax. He made up his mind to leave for the east, and armed himself with letters of introduction from theatrical folk here, to managers and actors in New York. The Wasatch Literary Society, of which he was one of the founders, gave him a benefit in the Social Hall. It was a rare event. All the farewell