The Brookhaven leader., 1891-09-24

ness of word. When you meet anyone,
do you say pleasant thing or an I'M
pleasant? Do you tell him of agreea.
BILE things you have heard about him,
or the disagreeable? 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 mis-
cry! One would think from the way
the tongue is Gagged in we might take
the hint that it has 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, 50
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 ar.
rest. And yet Notwithstanding these
four imprisonments for limitations,
how many take no hint in regard to tho
dangerous power of the tongue, and the
results are laccration, scarifcation and
damnation. There are those if they
know good thing about you and a bad
thing, will mention the bad thing and
act as though they had never heard
the e>'od thing. Now there are two
sides to almost every ones character,
and we haze 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 are!
How little of navigation you must
know to run on those rocks! Didn'.
you know better than to put out on the
Mediterranean this wintry month? Ii
was not much of a ship, anyhow, or il
would not have gone to pieces so soon
as that. Well what do you want? We
have hard enough work to make a liv-
ing for ourselves, without having
thrust Oh us two hundred and seventy
six ragamuffins." Not so, said the
Maltese. / think they said: Come
in! Sit down by the fire and
warm yourselves! Glad that you all got
off with your lives. Make yourselves
at home. You are welcome to all wa
have until some ship comes in sight and
you resume your voyage. Here, let me
put bandage on your forehead, for
that is an ugly cash you got from the
floating timbers, and here is man
with broken arm. We will have a doc
tor come to attend to this fracture
And though for three months the kind
ness went on, we have but little more
than this brief record: The barbarous
people sho wed us no little Kindness
The east wind and the west wind
were one day talking with each other,
and the east wind said to the west
wind: Don't you wish you had my
power? Why, when | start they hail
me by storm signals all along the coast
l can twist off ships mast as easily
as cows hoof cracks an alder. With
one sweep of my wing have strewn
the coast from Newfoundland to Key
West with parted ship timber. | can
lift and have lifted the Atlantic ocean.
| am the terror of all invalidism, and
to fight me back forests must be cut
down for fires, and the mines of
continents are called on to feed the
furnaces. Under ny breath the nations
crouch into sepulcl:ers. Don't you wish
you had my power?" The west wind
made no answer, but started on its mis-
bowers of the sky, and all the rivers
and lakes and seas smiled at it's coming.
The gardens bloomed and the or
chards ripcned, and the wheat fields
turned their silver into gold, and the
health clapped it's hands, and joy
shouted from the hill-tops, and the ma
tons lifted their foreheads into the
light, and the earth hal a doxolOgy for
the sky, and the sky an anthem for the
earth, and the warmth md the sparkle
and the gladness and the foliage and
the flowers and the fruits and the
beauty and the life were the only an
swer the west wind made to the in
science of the east winds interroga-
ton.
Kindness to all! Surely it ought not
to be difficult grace to culture when
we see towering above the centuries
such an example that one glimpse of it
ought to melt and transform al ma
tions. Kindness brought our Lord from
Heaven. Kindness to miscreants, kind
ness to prosecutors, kindness to the
crippled and the blind and the
cataleptic and the leprous and
the dropsical and the Economical char
acteriZed Him all the way; and on the
cross, kindness to the bandits suffering
on the one side of Him and kindness to
the eXecutioners while yet they pushed
the spear, and hammered the spikes
and howled the blasphemies. All the
stories of the John Towards, and the
Florence Nightingales, and the Grace
Darlings, and the Ida Lewises pale
before this transcendant example
of Him whose birth and life
and death IRE the greatest story
that the world ever heard, and
the theme of the mightiest hosanna
that Heaven ever lifted. Yea, the very
kindness that allowed both hands to be
nailed to the horizontal timber of the
cross with that cruel thump, thump.
now stretches down from the skies
those same hands filled with balm
for all our wounds, forgiveness for
all our crimes, rescue for all our
serfdoms And while we take this
matchless kindness from God, may
it be found that we have uttered
our last bitter word, written our last
cutting paragraph, done our last retalia-
tory action, left our last revengeful
heart-throb. And it would not be a bad
epitaph for any of us if by the grace of
God from this time forth we lived such
benefcent lives that the tombstone's
chisel could appropriately cut upon
the plain slab that marks our
grave suggestion from the text:
IL,