The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-28
WHAT'S WRONG?
Fly IRENE WESTON

of shutting the front door behind him.
 He left it invitingly open
 And that was the man who talked
 about the inefficiency of the police force9'
 declared Lockwood.
 That is where the mote magnif1er' Is hailed by some people a "boon and a blessing" Professor Blackie once told the story of a man who was an 1nveterate lian, and knew it. When Blackie expos tulated with him on his failing. and tried to break him of it, the offender pointed out to him that David had declared that
 "all men are liars.'' Who, therefore, he asked. had right to grumble if he was like the rest? What could one expect? The fault-fnder, concentrating himself on faults, of course, ignores all that is faultess. One does a thing remarkably well, and he is perfectly oblivious to it.. The one thing that goes wrong is what sticks in his gizzard, as Du Maurier said. They are like the distinguished aris- tocratic gentleman who died a short time back and who was celebrated for the mag nificence of his banquets You might ' have given his Italian cook some credit for them. Not at all.
 "Miior, is like this way" that aggrieved parsonage once explained "When the din- aire is beyond the reproach, he eat and thank Providence. But when it is othaire! An. then he sware and think of me. It is
 Antonio go wrong! Antonio!"
 Not fair, The fault-finder is great in scattering disrepute of organizations. When the police cannot discover some criminal he brands the whole force as
 imbecles, forgetting all the criminals they do catch. When justice makes a mistake and sentences an innocent man for an-
 others crime. he denounces judges and
 iurie- as idiotic. If letter goes wrong in the post he wonders how it is that the ! post Is so incompetent nowadays. He be- comes blind to the millions of letters that arrive all right.
 He ia also great at making some fault of an individual the fault of a whole class. A maid is lazy, and he wants to know why are servants so slothful nowadays A wife is extravagant. and he asks why
 do wives squander their husbands money ? The idea the faul-finder gives one, that everything and everybody in the world are wrong naturally leads one to the
 conclusion that it is useless to both par ticuarly to put them or oneself right.
 Faults want pointing out but only as falls from a proper and attainable stand
 ard of excellence. If a lady is extrava- gant. it is no use telling her that extrav- agance is a feminine failing, and she is "iust like q woman.' The proper way is to tell her that there are thousands of women who are models of carefulness- as, of course, there are. Why shouldn't t she be one of them? Max O'Rell declared that numbers of women were made bad
 cooks through their husbands only re-
 membering their failures. and the remark
 that tits positively wonderful how 1t is
 no woman can cook nowadays"
 Indiscrminate and exaggerated fault
 finding is one of the worst habits of the
 time One of the other worst habits is be-
 lieving the fault-fnder.
 "No feller wos ever helped out ov bed
 at in the mornn'." remarked Josh
 Billings, ''by bleevin' it is human natur
 to get up at H.
 Nobody was ever helped to betterness of
 life. or to the doing of his work more ex-
 cellently, by believing all others are fall
 ures. Keep your eyes on the right in life