The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-02-20
PRAISE AND BLAME
Not Good for Man to Have Too Much
 of Either One or the Other.


 From the Philadelphia Public Ledger Some people travel faster and farther
 for praise than for blame, just as some horses respond more readily to a pat or
 oaress than to whip or spur. But 1t is
 not good for any man to have too much,
 either of commendation or of censure
 The occasional unhappy result of over
 praise is illustrated in the career of an actor or a singer who becomes intoxicated with footlight adulatfon.
 A tenor files into fine rage at the mere mention of the possibility of a rival. As long as he is lauded to the skies he declares his critic is a person of sensibil- lty and discernment, but if anything un- favorable is said he ayers in tempestuous anger that the writer is a blockhead, an ignoramus.
 A young painter, embarking ambitiously upon what must always be an arduous career, is often ruined by the injudicious though well-neant applause of the un- discerning Instead of taking his coat off and getting down to hard work with out listening to what kind friends may have to say about his pictures, he lives In an atmosphere of afternoon tea and adoring femininity. He should be serv- ing the rigorous drilmastership of his art.
 Parents know perfectly we'll that too much praise Is not god for children. They shrink from letting Angelica be told by visitor how beautiful are her eyes and her golden hair, how charming are her manners before strangers.
 But If too much praise has a baleful in- fluence upon character, the effect of mer- ciless and indiscriminate blame Is even worse.
 In the most difficult as well as the most desirable of human relations that of the married state, the results of incessant censure is the certainty of tragic unhap- piness. It Is not the outspoken word so much as 1t is the implied dissatisfaction that makes for marital misery. To most women cross look is worse than a cross word. and many husband is more dis tressed by an attitude of constraint or aversion than by verbal expression of resentment or disdain.
 If there is one place where praise Is surest of doing good 1t is in the home when 1t Is uttered by either partner to the other. It is indeed hard for young woman who is serving her apprenticeship in the difficult science of housekeeping to nave dinned into her ears a constant in- vidfous comparison between not only her bread and the bread that mother used to make. but all that she does and all eiiat nus Dcen uone Dy much older and wiser woman
 Sometimes a child thought to be incor- rigible has been redeemed by one who had the patience to ascertain his few feeble and furtive impulses toward good deeds and praise him for these rather than heaping up punishment and censure for misconduct, when there had been too much of these already.
 Some mothers have failed to retain the respect of their children because they were like the mother in Punch who says to the nursemaid: 'Go and see what baby Is doing and tell 1t not to-" Not many fluent orators are good oisciplinarians ns Won Moltke was one of the most sue cessful military martinets who ever lived. and it was said of him that he could be silent in seven languages" rebulxe from taciturn man like Kitchener comes with crushing severity; the chatter of the loquacious is needed no more than a few extra hailstones in sleetstorm Similar ly, a single word of praise from one whose conmendation is not too lavishIy distributed is more valued than the hy- periodic profusion of superlatives of any who praise everything and everybody without discrimination.