Connecticut western news., 1902-01-16


 hand and head and foot courtesy. Gull thor's house. You often notice that brothers and sisters are often gruff and s1appy and say things and do things that they wocld not have the outside world know about. Rough things are sometimes said in house holds which ought never to be said at all - teasing and recrimination and faultfinding and harsh criticisms, which will have their echo thirty and forty and fifty years afterward. In the sleet driven by that east wind no sweet flowers of kindness and geniality will grow. Let children hear their parents picking at each other, and those chil- dren will be found picking at each other, and far down the road of life will be seen the same disposition to pick at others. Better than this habit parents indulge In, would be one good, healthy application of the rod. Better a shower that lasts a few minutes than the cold drizzle of many days. We never get over our first home, how ever many homes we may have after ward.
 Cultivate Christian Grace.
 Let us all cultivate this grace of Christian courtesy by indulging in the habit of praise instead of the habit of blame. There are evils in the world that we must denounce, and there are men and women who ought to be chas- tised, but never let us allow the op- portunity of applauding good deeds pass unimproved. The old theory was that you must never praise people lest we make them vain. No danger of that. Before any of us get through with life we will have enough mean and ignoble and depreciating and ly- ing things said about us to keep us humble. God approvingly recognizes a system of rewards as well as of pun ishments
 When you hear a good sermon, stop after the benediction and tell the pas tor, though you never saw him before that day. Your sermon did me good" When mechanic does a good piece of work, tell him 1t is we'll done. When a physician brings you out of peril ous illness, stop him in the street and say, Doctor, you saved my life" When you hear of a business man in some heavy stress of financial weather helping Trailer craft into the harbor, go into his counting room and say, "l hear you have been helping your fel- low business man to outride the tenn pest of a panic, and came in to thank you for the good advice you gave and to let you know that all good citizens appreciate what you have been doing" Go down the street tomorrow and thank somebody. There are hundreds of people who never get thanked at all. Plenty of severe criticism, plenty of faultfinding. plenty of misinterpreta- ton, plenty of depreciation, but as to ratitude-that is a market in which the supply does not equal the demand.
 In the cultivation of this habit of Christian courtesy let us abstain from joining in the work of defamation. Every little while society takes after a man, and it must have a victim. If you had roll of all the public men of this generation or of any generation who have been denounced and despoil- ed of their good name, it would take you a long while to call the roll. It is q bad streak in human nature that there are so many who prefer to be- ieve evil instead of good concerning any one under discussion. If a good motive and bad motive have been possible in the case in hand, one man will believe the conduct was inspired by a good motive, and ten men will be- lieve 1t was inspired by a bad motive. The more faults man has of his own the more willing is he to ascribe faults to others.
 Speak Wen of one Another.
 What a curse of cynics and pessi- mists afi1icts our time, affllcts all time! There are those who praise no one un- til he is dead. Now that he is clear under ground and heavy stone Is on top of him there is no possibility of his ever coming up again as a rival. Some of the epftaphs on tombstones are so fulsome that on resurrection day a man rising may, if he reads the cpl taph, for the moment think he got in- to the wrong grave. Speak we'll one of another, and if you find yourself in circles disposed to islander and abuse be for the time as dumb as the sphinx which, though only a few yards away from the overshadowing pyramid of Egypt, has not with its lips of stone spoken one word in thousands of years.
 There are two sides to every mans character "a good side and an evil aide. The good see only the good and tke evil only the evil, and the proba- b!lity Is that medium opinion is the right opinion. Most of the people whom I know are doing about as we'll as they can under the circumstances. When l see people who are worse than I am, l conclude that if I had the same bad influences around me all my life that they have had would probably have been worse than they now are. The work of reform Is the most important work, but many of the reformers, dwelling on one evil, see nothing but evil, and they get so used to anathema they forget the usefulness once in awhile of a benediction. They get so accustomed to excoriating public men that they do not realize that never since John Hancock in boldest chirog, raphy signed the Declaration of Inde- pendence, never since Columbus pick cd up the floating land flowers that showed him he was coming near some new country, have there been so many noble and splendid and Christian men in high places in this country as now You could go into the presidents cabi net or the United States senate or the house of representatives in this city and find plenty of men capable of hold ing m old fashioned Methodist prayer meeting. plenty of senators and repre-. sentatives and cabinet officers to start the tune and kneel with the penitents at the altar. In all these places there ere men who could, without looking at the book. recite the sublime words, as did Gladstone during vacation at Ha-