Year: 1871

BY REV. L. z. HALE.


There is a good deal of the life of boys
and girls which passes when they are with
other boys and girls, and involves some
difficulties, with q great many pleasures
all its own.


1t is generally taken for granted that if
the young people are by themselves all
will go well. And if you boy and girls
did but know it, msny very compliments
ry things are said about you in this very
matter. "Children do understand each
other SO we'll" Children get along so
well with each other" al feel quite re-
lieved when the children find compan-
ions" This sort of thing is said behind
the children's back, at the very moment
when the same children, quite strangers to
each other, are wishing that they were at
home themselves, or, a. least, that these
sudden new companions were


There is well-studied picture of this
mixed-up life OF boys and girls with other
boys and girls who are quite strangers to
them, in the end of Miss Edgeworth's
Sequel to Frank" book which cannot
get the young people to read as much as i
wish they would.


OF course, in the first place, you are to
do as you would be done by. But when
you have said this, a question is still in
volved. For minute you do not know
how you would be done by; or, if you
do know, You know simply that
you would like to be let off from the
company of these new-found friends


If did as would be done by" ssid
Clara, Il should turn round and walk to
the other end of the piazza, and / should
leave the whole party of these strange
girls alone. l was having q good time
without them, and dare say they would
have a better time without me. But papa
brought me to them, and said that their
father was in college with him, and thst
he wanted that we should know each
other. So / could not do in that case ex-
actly as l would be done by, without dis
| pleasing papa-and that would not be do
ing to him at all as / would be done by"


The English of all that is, my dear
Clara, that in thst particular exigency on
the piazza, at Newbury, YOU had a nice
book, and you would have been glad to
have been left alone nay, at the bottom
of your heart would be glad to be left
alone good deal of your life. But you
do not wish to be left alone all your life.
And if your father had taken you to Old
Point Comfort fer a month, instead OF
Newbury, and you were as much a strang-
er there as this shy Lucy Percivsl is to
our Northern ways at Newbury, you would
be very much obliged to any nice Vir-
ginian girl who swallowed down her dis.
like of Yankees in general, and come and
welcomed you as prettily as you did the
Percivals when your father brought you
to them. The doing as you would be done
not of the mere outside accident of the
moment.


The direction Familiarity given is, that
we should meet strangers half way. But
1 do not find that this wholly answers
These strangers may be represented by
globules of quics silver, or, indeed, o.
water, on a marble table.


Suppose you pour out two little glo
\ bules nf quicksilver at each nf two points
like these two. Suppose you make
the globules Just so large that they NEE
hall way, thus, 90. At these points
where they touch they only touch.
even seems as if they were a LITTLE
Iepulsive, so that they they shrink ava,
from each other.


But if you will enlarge one of the drop
never so little, that 1t shall meet the othe
a very little beyond half way, why tn
two will gladly run together into one, AM
will even forget that they ever had beel
parted.


That is the rule for meeting strangers
Meet them a little bit more than half way
You will find in life that the people wh'
do this are the cheerful people and happy
who get the most out of society, and, In
deed, are everywhere praised and loved.


"But am sure l do net know what t
say to them" says Robert, who, with
good deal of difficulty, has been made Il
read this paper thus far.


l. II - &I,aA,
talk to them? / know YOU pretended yol
could not talk TO people, though yester
day, when was trying to get my nap il
the hammock, certainly heard a goo
deal of rattle from somebody who was fiS
ing his boat with Glen Waters in tn,
wood house. But have never supposet
that you were to sit in sgreeable converse
ton about the weather, or the opera, wit
these strange boys and girls. Nobody bu
prigs would do that, and am glad to sa,
you are not prig. But if you were turne'
in on two or three boys, as Clara was o.
The Percival girls, a good thing to So.
would be:


would you like to go in swimming ?
or, "How would you like to see us clea
our fishP or, al am going up to sc
snares for rabbits; how would you Ike I
, go"


Give them a piece of yourself That
what mean by meeting them more tina
half way. Frankly, honorably, withou
reserve-which is 10 say, like a gentle
man; share with these strangers som
part of your own life which makes 20
, happy.


Clara, there, will do the same thing
She will take these girls to ride, or sh
will teach them how to play "copack," o
she will tell them about her play of tn
. Sleeping 3 eauty, and enlist some of ther
| to take parts. This is what / mean b
meeting people more than half way
Yna,thia (Ior,, r,n,inr