The Brookhaven leader., 1891-09-24
twenty years trying 70 get even with

the most uneasy and profitless and dam
gerous feeling, kindness is the most
healthful and delightful. And this is not
an abstraction. AS have tried little
of the retaliatory feeling, so l have
tried a little of the forgiving. l do not
want to leave the world until | have
taken vengeance upon every man that
ever did me a wrong, by doing him a
kindness. In most of such cases | have
already succeeded, but there are a few
malignants whom l am yet pursuing,
and shall not be content until | have
in some wise helped them or benefited
them or blessed them. Let us all pray
for this spirit of kindness. 1t will set
tie thousand questions. 1t will
change the phase of everything, 1t
will mellow through and through our
entire nature. 1t will transform a
lifetime. 1t is not feeling gotten up
for occasions, but perennial. That is
the reason / like petunias better
than morning glories. They look
very much alike, and if should put in
your hand a petunia and morning
glory you could hardly tell which is the
petunia and which the morning glory:
but the morning glory blooms only a
few hours and then shuts up for the
day, while the petunia is in as wide
spread n glow at twelve o'clock at
noon and six o'clock in the evening as
at sunrise. And this grace of kindness
is not spasmodic, is not intermittent, is
not for a little while, but it irradiate S
the whole nature, all through and clear
on till the sunset of our earthly exist
ence. Kindness! / am resolved to
get it. Are you resolved to get it?
1t does not come by hap-haZard, but
through culture under the Divine help.
Thistles grow without culture. Rocky
mountain sage grass grows witho ut
culture. Mullen stalks grow without
culture. But the great red rose in the
conservatory, its leaves packed on
leaves, deep-dyed as though it had been
obliged to fight for its beauty and it
were still reelling with the carnage of
the battle, that rose needed to be
cultured, and through long years its
floral ancestors were cultured. Oh, God.
implant kindness in all our souls, and
| then give us grace to watch it, to
enrich it, to develop it!
| Oh! say the cordial thing. Say the
useful thing! Say the hospitable thing.
Say the helpful thing! Say the Christ
| like thing! Say the kind thing! / adj
NIT that this is easier for some tempera-
ments than for others. Some are born
pessimists, and some are born optimists,
and that demonstrates itself all through
1
You meet pesSimist and YOU say:
"What weather to-day?" He answers:
ITS going to Storm and umbrella
| under arm and a waterproof over
coat show that he is honest in that
utterance. On the same block, a
minute after, you meet an optimist, and
you say: "What weather tO-day?"
Good weather; this is only fog and
will soon scatter" The absence of
umbrella and absence of waterproof
overcoat show it's an honest utterance.
On your way at noon to luncheon you
meet an optimistic merchant and you
say: What do you think of the COM
mercial prospects?' and he says.
GLORIOUS. Great crops must bring
great business. We are going to
have such an autumn and winter of
prosperity as we have never seem" On
your way back to your store you meet
a pessimistic merchant. what do you
think of the commercial prospects,"
you ask. And he answers: "Well, l
don't know. SO much grain will sur
felt the country. Farmers have more
bushels, but less prices, and the grain
gamblers will get their fist in. There
is the Mckinley bill; and the hay crop
is short in some places, and in the
southern part of Wisconsin they had a
hail storm, and our business is as dull
as it ever was" You will find the same
difference in judgment of character.
A man of good reputation is assailed
and charged with some evil deed. At
the first story the pessimist will believe
in guilt. The papers said SO, and that's
| enough. Down with him. The opti-
mist will say: Il don't believe a
word of it. ] don't think that a man
that has been as useful and seemingly
| honest for twenty years could have got
off the track like that. There are two
sides to this story, and | will wait to
hear the other side before | condemn
him My nearer, if you are by nature
a pessimist, make special effort by
the grace of God to extirpate the dolor-
GUS and the hypocritical from yoNr dis
position. Believe nothing against any
body until the wrong is established by
at least two witnesses of integrity. And
if guilt be proven find out the extenu-
ating circumstances, if there are any.
And then commit to memory so that
you can quote for yourself and quote for
others that exquisite thirteenth chapter
of First Corinthians about charity that
suffers long and is kind, and hopeth all
things, and endureth ali things. BY
pen, by voice, in public and in private,
say all the good about people you can
think of, and if there be nothing good,
then tighten the chain of muscle on the
back end of your tongue, and keep the
ivory bars of teeth on the lower jaw
and the ivory bars of teeth on the up
per jaw locked, and the gate of your
lips tightly closed, and your tongue
shut up. What place Brooklyn would
be to live in, and all the other cities
and neighborhoods to live in, if charity
dominated What if the young and
old gossipers were dead. The
Lord hasten their funerals! What
if tittle-tattle and whispering were
out of fashion! What if in cipher
ing out the value of other peoples char
acter, in our moral arithmetic, we stuck
- addition instead of subtraction! kind