Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1874-06-12

add your neighbor's load to your own.
Forthwith your sick friends household is
| informed that you are defaulter and
that the well-constituted substitute must
take your place; that you cannot receive
the children; that you cannot do this or
do that as you had offered--when you
come TO consider il your strength was not
sufficient, and your husband would not
allow 1t. From that hour you have lost
your standing among them, and are
ranked with those who make grand pro.
tessions, then throw over the wretched
dupes who trust to them, and at the
eleventh hour back out of the agreement.
Nothing can be more untrue way of
putting It, You neither offered for brag
nor drew back for selhshness. The first
was honest sympathy and the second in
capacity; and the sole fault you commit.
ted was letting your kindly impulse run
away with your judgment and your de.
sire TO be of use obscure your power of
calculation.
These are kindly impulses dealing
with insufficient working power, conse.
quently always sharing the fate of Icarus
and coming to the ground because of
defective attachments" And of the two,
the people who offer and cannot fulfill,
and the people who trust in that offer
and are disappointed, we confess we pity
the former the more-always presuppos-
ing absolute sincerity and the simplicity
OF desire. They must suffer divers tor
ments of which the humiliating confes-
sion that they have grossly miscalculated
their resources, on the one hand, and the
pain of having still to see the sorrow, the
misery, the privation they have started
forward to alleviate on the other are
about equal in grievous intensity. Both
together they may be certainly taken to
outweigh the annoyance of having
to go on again after we had
thought to have made pleasant
little halt in the wearisome journey of
disaster-of having to carry ones heavy
burden unrelieved, after we had hoped to
have shifted it for a spell to friendly
shoulders voluntarily offered for the por-
terage. Doubtless this ANNOYANCE, this
disappointment, is bad to bear; and for
that reason the impulsive should be more
careful than they are to restrain their
flights of charitable fancy, and be less
prodigal of their offers of rich and loving
help grounded on desire and not on
power. 1t is i'll asking hungry man to
a naked board, but all the goodwill in the
world will not cover it with food when
there is no food in the cupboard. 1t would
have been substantially kinder, then, to
have left the poor, famished creature to
the elastic mercy of chance than to bring
him as you have into barren certainty,
though backed by the most luxuriant set
ting of benevolent intentions. Benevo-
lent intentions are like the fine words
offered in lieu of butter when parsnips
abound; and the Barmecide who gave a
feast quenched no thirst and satisfied no
hunger for all his verbal array of spark.
ling wines and luscious food.
If impulses of loving generosity are ap-
to come to grief, the impulses of unfriendt
ly wrath are still more sure to find evil
issues. 1t is strange how often an un-
kind impulse proves itself untrue. The
suspicious fear, the passionate denuncia-
tion, the vague adherence, ifacted on, are
almost certain to be found wrong before
the thing is done with, and many an i'm
pulsive hater, hitting hard and thinking
he or she is hitting righteously, has had
cause to regret to the last day of life the
incautious acceptance of belief as truth,
and the unfriendly sincerity" which
gave utterance to the same. Without be.
ing sentimental or sickly, there is no ques-
ton that the more generous the judgment
the more likely it is to be true, and the
fewer the hard words we have uttered the
less we shall have wherewith to reproach
ourselves when we come to measure the
amount of unmerited mischief we have
done our fellow-men. Undoubtedly, the
less we yield to unfriendly impulses, the
more safely we shall walk and the more
surely we shall be right.-THe Queen.