---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Alder, Lydia D.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 22
number: 8
published: 1919-06
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Alder, Lydia D., "Have Courage," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 8 (June 1919): 691.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2208unse
  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: improvementera2208unse
start_page: 691
end_page: 691
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1919-06)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2208unse
  publication_year: 1919
  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 1919, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Have Courage

<!-- page:691 -->

—

                     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