ity of opinion in this world; to look for judgment and experience in youth; to endeavor to mould all dispositions alike; to yield to immaterial trifles; to look for perfection in our own actions; to worry ourselves and others with what cannot be remedied; not to alleviate all that needs alleviation, so far as lies in our power; not to make allowance for the infirmities of others; to consider everything impossible that we cannot perform; to believe only what our finite minds can grasp; to expect to be able to understand everything. 66 Garfield's death did what his life could not. Southern papers spoke of him, while lying in that terrible suspense after he was shot, as our President." Even in those States which had fought him most bitterly the papers gave columns of praise to the wounded man. Charity is the brightest star in the Christian's diadem. When any one was speaking ill of another in the presence of Peter the Great, he at first listened to him attentively, and then interrupted him. "Is there not," asked he, 66 a fair side also to the character of the person of whom you are speaking? Come, tell me what good qualities you have remarked about him." One would think this monarch had learned the precept, "Speak not evil one of another." Lord Chesterfield, in his will, referred to his servants as his "unfortunate friends, equal by birth, and only inferior by fortune." "In my youth," said Horace Walpole, "I thought of writing a satire on mankind, but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them." "I will chide no heathen in the world but myself," said Shakespeare, "against whom I know the most faults." Every man has little infirmities of temper and disposition which require forgiveness; peculiarities which require to be managed; prejudices which should be avoided; innocent habits which should be indulged; fixed opinions which should be treated with respect; particular feelings and delicacies which should be consulted. "Let us resolve," says Harriet Beecher Stowe, "first to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all faultfinding that does no good a sin, and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling on them to mark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life; third, to practice the grace and virtue of praise." "Alas!" exclaimed Cowper, " if my best friend, who laid down his life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such." "Forbear to judge," says Shakespeare, "for we are sinners all." "He has a measuring-tape," said a friend of Carlyle, "which is made up of the preferences and prejudices of Thomas Carlyle. By it he tries everybody, dead or alive. If they exactly fill it, as did Napoleon, Cromwell, and other men of force, he deifies them. If they fall short, he tramples them under foot, and shrieks out his hatred and contempt, for all the world to hear." The wounds I might have healed! The human sorrow and smart! And yet it never was in my soul To play so ill a part: But evil is wrought by want of Thought, As well as want of Heart! HOOD. There is a pathetic story in the "Youth's Companion of a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit and vigor, who married and had four children. In course of time the husband died penniless, and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate the children. She taught school, painted, sewed, and succeeded in sending the boys to college and the girls to a boarding-school. The story concludes: "When they came home, pretty, refined girls and strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their times, she was a worn-out, commonplace old woman. They had their own pursuits and companions. She lingered among them for two or three years, and then died, of some sudden failure in the brain. The shock woke them to a consciousness of the truth. They hung over her, as she lay unconscious, in an agony of grief. The oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried, 'You have been a good mother to us!' Her face colored again, her eyes kindled into a smile, and she whispered, You never said so before, John.' Then the light died out, and she was gone." 6 "Oh, the malignity of a wrong world!" said Bulwer; "oh, that strange lust of mangling reputations, which seizes on hearts the least wantonly cruel! Let two idle tongues utter a tale against some third person, who never offended the babblers, and how the tale spreads, like fire, lighted none knows how, in the herbage of an American prairie! Who shall put it out?" Beecher says: "When the absent are spoken of, some will speak gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and some always speak dirt; for they have a natural attraction toward what is evil and think it shows penetration in them. I will not say that it is not Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you are such a one." "T was but one whisper- -oneThat muttered low, for very shame, That thing the slanderer dare not name, And yet its work was done." It is reported of Titus Vespasian, that when any one spoke ill of him, he was wont to say that he was above false reports; and if they were true, he had more rea son to be angry with himself than with the relater. And the good Emperor Theodosius commanded that no man should be punished that spake against him; "for what is spoken slightly," said he, "is to be laughed at; what spitefully, to be pardoned; what angrily, to be pitied; and if truly, I would thank him for it." In our criticism of others we should be mirrors reflecting beauties and excellences as faithfully as blemishes and deformities. Let us remember that, other things equal, it is the noblest man or woman who puts the highest and noblest estimate upon others. "I am not in the habit of deciding upon such matters hastily or in anger," wrote Wellington late in life to a friend; "and the proof of this is, that I never had a quarrel with any man in my life." Charity seeketh not its own. No man can be truly rich who is selfish. Money, like a spring of water in the mountains, holds the fertility of the valley in its bosom, if it will only expend itself. Dashing down. the height, it makes the meadows glad with its wealth, while beautiful flowers spring up along its banks, and bathe their fair faces in its sparkling surface. Obstruct it and the valleys become parched, the flowers and grass wither and die. The water loses its sparkle. The beautiful fountain becomes a stagnant swamp. The deer no longer comes to quench his thirst at the pool; the blessing becomes a curse. So it is with money; while it flows out freely it blesses humanity; but when its good work is interrupted by hoarding, squandering, or abusing it, its whole influence is injurious. The heart hardens, the sympathies dry up, the soul becomes a desert under its blighting influence. The following epitaph was placed upon the tomb of Edward (the Good): "What we gave, we have ; |