Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-02-10
Good in Everybody.

There is so much good in everybody
if one only knew it. So much bad in
everybody too, for the matter of that
but We'll not take that view of the
question. You may have met some
one who had nothing good about him
/ never did. l think almost the mosi
degraded being ever met was black
woman. She drank, she swore, she
''played policy" whatever that may be
I know it involved the squandering OF
all her earnings, and brought her in
nothing. She pawned articles given
her to wash, and had no more idea OF
keeping any Of the ten commandments
than an ebony idol may be supposed tc
have. But she had child called Liss
and ON that child, while she was sober
she lavished such care and affection
as would put many a fashionable moth.
er to shame. Her plea for much ill
doing was, "Liss needed so and so.'
She offered it in courts of Justice
when arrested for petty larceny, and
brought nsagistrates up standing, by
inquiring, 'Put it to you now, eff your
Liss wanted pair O. shoeses, wouldn't
you get 'em someways?" ?"
She even had some idea of i'm
parting religious instruction to Liss,
and taught her what probably she sup
posed mysterious incarnation to
propitiate the powers of good, to which
she alluded as, "Liss's Now er layme."
AS far as "Liss" went she was unutter-
ably unselfish, and would have starved
or frozen to spare her, though she was
quite unaware that self-sacrifice had
any virtue in it, and alluded to any one
who manifested such a disposition as,
"Big Fool"
Once a laboring man, filthy, unat-
tractive and old, met with an accident
in the street, and was bleeding to
death; and there passed the gaping
crowd. Itwas evening. A woman to
whom we would not speak-whom we
would not touch with our garments,
you and l, dear lady-and she, in all
her finery, knelt down beside him; and
took from her pocket handkerchief
rich with lace, tore it in two, that it
might make better bandage, and
bound the limb so that the mans life
was saved; and went away without a
word, and was not seen again by any
there.
The lace on the handkerchief was
worth fifty dollars. Was there no good
in that woman, think? There are hOr-
rible men in jails and prisons, who
could save themselves by betraying
their comrades, and will not. Those
who have been with great malefactors
doomed to execution, will always tell
you of soft spot somewhere in their
hearts beloved being somewhere
"a mother, a wife, or little innocent
child. And if it is so with the de-
praved, how much more true with the
people whom we meet every day.
There is great good in every one of
them. We have no right to Judge
each other as we do, to say as we are
apt to say, that man is mean, or treach-
erous, or contemplate, and put him
aside as worthless. Doubtless in some
point he is better than we are; in some
quality nearer heaven. Shakespeare
said truly that 'the evil that men do
lives after them; the good is oft in
tered with their bones" And you
and l must often feel conscious that
while we are apt to discover our neigh
bors faults, we are not so anxious
about his virtues. Happy would be
the man who, taking for his axiom,
There is good in every mortal" would
set himself to look for that good in
all with whom he comes in contact.