Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-09-14

oranges. You are entertaining guest
SO unlike kindness that kindness will
not come and dwell under the same
roof The most exhausting and I'M
healthy and ruinous feeling on earth is
a reyengeful spirit or retaliating spirit,
as | know by experience, for I have
tried it for five or ten minutes at time.
When some mean thing has been done
me or said about me, | have felt: Il
will pay him in his own coin. l will
show him up The ingratel The traitorl
The liar The villain!"
But five or ten minutes of the feeling
has been so unnerving and exhausting
have abandoned it, and l cannot I'M
derstand how people can go about tor
turing themselves five or ten or twenty
years, trying to get even with some
body. The only way you will ever tri-
umph over your enemies is by forgiving
them and wishing them all good and
no evil. AS malevolence is the most
uneasy and profitless and dangerous
feeling, kindness is the most healthful
and delightful. And this is not alb
straction. As | have tried little of
the retaliation, so have tried little
of the forgiving.
| do not want to leave this world
until | have taken vengeance upon
every man that ever did me a wrong
| by doing him kindness. In most of
such cases [ have already succeeded,
! but there are few malignants whom
am yet pursuing and I shall not be
content until l have in some wise
helped them or benefited them or
blessed them. Let US pray for this
spirit of kindness. 1t will settle a
thousand questions. It will change
the phase of everything. 1t will mel
low through and through our entire
nature 1t will transform lifetime
1t is not a feeling gotten up for occa-
sions, but perennial.
That is the reason l like petunias
better than morning glories. They look
very much alike, and if I should put in
your hand a petunia and a morning
| glory you could hardly tell which is
| the petunia and which the morning
glory; but the morning glory blooms
only few hours and then shuts up
for the day, while the petunia is in as
widespread 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 little while, but it irradiates
| the whole nature all through and
clear on till the sunset of our earthly
existence.
Kindness! l am resolved to get it.
Are you resolved to get it? 1t does not
come by haphazard, but through cul-
ture under the divine help Thistles
grow without culture. Rocky noun
tain sage grass grows without culture.
Mullen stalks grow without culture.
But that great red rose in the conser-
vatory, its leaves packed on leaves,
deep dyed as though it had been
obliged to fight for its beauty and it
were still reeking with the carnage of
the battle, that rose needed to be cul-
tured and through long years its floral
ancestors were cultured. 0 God, i'm
plant kindness in all our souls, and
then give US grace to watch it, to en-
rich it, to develop it
The king of Prussia had presented to
him by the empress of Russia the root
of a rare flower, and it was put in the
royal gardens on an island and the
head gardener Herr Fintelmann, was
told to watch it, and one day it put
forth its glory Three days of every
week the people were admitted to these
gardens, and a young man, probably
not realizing what a wrong thing he
was doing, plucked this flower and put
it in his buttonhole, and the gardener
arrested him as he was crossing at the
ferry, and asked the king to throw open
no more his gardens to the public.
The king replied: ''Shall 1 deny to the
thousands of good people of my coun-
try the privilege OF seeing this garden
because one visitor has done wrong?
No, let them come and see the beauti-
full grounds"
And when the gardener wished to
give the king the name of the offender
who had taken the royal flower, he |
said, mo, my memory is very tena-
cious and I do not want to have in my
mind the name of the offender, lest it
should hinder me granting him a favor
some other time" Now, want you
to know that kindness is a royal flower,
and blessed be God, the King of mercy
and grace, that by a divine gift and not |
by purloining we may pluck this royal |
flower and not wear it on the outside |
of our nature but wear isin our soul |
and wear it forever, its radiance and |
aroma not more wonderful for time |
than wonderful for eternity
POWER OF THE TONGUE.
T - l.,
of word When you meet any one do |
you say pleasant thing or an unpleas-
ant? Do you tell him of agreeable things
you have heard about him or the disa- |
greeable? When he leaves you does |
he feel better or does he feel worse? |
Oh, the power of the tongue for the |
production of happiness or miseryl |
One would think from the way the |
tongue is Gagged in we might take the |
hint that it has a dangerous power
First it is chained to the back part of |
the mouth by strong muscle Then it
is surrounded by the teeth of the lower
jaw, so many ivory bars; and then by
the teeth of the upper jaw, more ivory
bars. Then outside of all are the two
lips, with the power of compression and
arrest. And yet, notwithstanding these
four imprisonments or limitations, how
many take no hint in regard to the dan
gerous power of the tongue, and the re-
suits are laceration, specification and
damnatiOn
There are those if they know a good
thing about you and bad thing, will
mention the bad thing and act as
though they had never heard the good
thing. Now, there are two sides to
almost every ones character, and we
have the choice of overhauling the
virtue or the vice. We can greet Paul
and the ships crew as they come up
the beach of Malta with the words:
What sorry looking set you arel
How little of navigation you must
know to run on these rocks! Didn't
you know better than to put out on
the Mediterranean this wintry month?
1t was not much of ship anyhow, or
it would not have gone to pieces SO
soon as that. Well, what do you want?