The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-12-04

ramped, the children are many. the father is often harsh. Make a collec- ton of the biographies of lowiy peo- pie, budgets of modest family life; loook at them attentively and long.
 After that go see the students. Those who have scandalized you in the streets are numerous, but those who labor hard are legion, only they stay at home and are not talked about. If you knew the toll and dig of the Latin quarter! You find the paperD full of the rumpus made by a certain set Of youths who call themselves students. The papers say enough of those who break windows, but why do they make no mention of those who spend their nights toiling over problems? Because It wouldn't interest the public. Yes, when now and then one of them, medical student perhaps, dies victim to professional duty the matter has two lines in the dailfes. A drunken brawl gets half a column. with every detail elaborated. Nothing is lacking but the portraits of the heroes, and not always that.
 q should never end were to try to point out to you all that you must go to see if you would see all. You would needs make the tour of society at large, rich and poor, wise and ig- norant And certainly you would not judge so severely then. Paris is world, and here as in the world in general the good hides away while the evil fiaunts itself. Observing only the surface, you sometimes ask how there can possibly be so much riffraff. When, on the contrary, you look into the depths you are astonished that in this troublous, obscure and sometimes frightful life there can be so much virtue"
 But why finger over these things? Am I not blowing trumpets for those who hold trumpet blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim Is this: To make men think about un- ostentatious goodness-aboye all, to make them love 1t and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction in things which glitter and hold his eyes Is lost first, because he will thus see evil before all else, then because he gets accustomed to the sight of only such good as seeks for notice, and there fore easily succumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only must one be resigned to obscurity; he must love it if he does not wish to slip insensibly into the ranks of flgu- rants, who preserve their parts only while under the eyes of the spectators and put off in the wings the restraints imposed on the stage.
 Here we are in the presence of one of the essential clements of the moral life And this which we say Is true not only for those who are called hum ble and whose lot it is to pass unre- marked; 1t is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors. If you would not be brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace and plumes, but empty inside, you must play the star role in the sim pie spirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothing worth except on hours of parade is worth less than nothing. Have we the perilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks2 Let us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent good within us; let us give to the structure whose facade is seen of our fellow men a wide foun- dation of simplicity, of humble fidel- ity, and then, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our broth CTS who are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them, do we not? call to witness every one who has found in life this encouraging experi- ence-that stones hidden in the soil hold LID the whole ediflce. All those who arrive at having a public and recog- nized value owe it to some humble spiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the good, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as modest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living; their exam ple inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them is forever inseparable from that conscience be- fore which we arraign ourselves. In our hours of trial we think of them, courageous and serene, and our bur dens tighten. Tn clouds they compess us about, these witnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feet from falling in the battle and day by day do they prove tQ ua that the treasure of humanity is its hidden goodness.