better stand to them is a practical, this-world question, and not a sentimental or next-world question. Shall we love or hate them, bless or curse them, help or hinder them? These are not theoretical questions which arise out of religious speculation or some abstract philosophy. They are earthly, everyday, concrete questions, as intensely practical as the question, How are we to get our daily bread, or, Where are we to find shelter from the snowstorm? Human beings are all about us; we and they are mutually dependent in ways so complex and intricate that no wisdom can unravel them. It is in vain for us or them to say, Let us alone; for that is a downright impossibility. To the question, How do reasonable men under these circumstances naturally and inevitably incline to act toward their fellow beings, there is but one commonsense, matter-of-fact answer, namely, they incline to serve and coöperate with them. ... The most satisfactory thing in all this earthly life is to be able to serve our fellow beings first those who are bound to us by ties of love, then the wider circle of fellow townsmen, fellow countrymen, or fellow men. The amount of the service is no measure of the satisfaction or happiness which he who renders the service derives from it. One man founds an academy or a hospital; another sends one boy to be educated at the academy, or one sick man to be treated at the hospital. The second is the smaller service, but may yield the greater satisfaction. Sir Samuel Romilly attacked the monstrous English laws which affixed the death penalty to a large number of petty offenses against property, like poaching, sheepstealing, and pocket-picking. In the dawn of a February morning, when the wind was blowing a gale and the thermometer was below zero, Captain Smith, of the Cuttyhunk Lighthouse, took three men off a wreck which the heavy sea was fast pounding to pieces on a reef close below the light. Sir Samuel Romilly's labors ultimately did an amount of good quite beyond computation; but he lived to see accomplished only a small part of the beneficent changes he had advocated. The chances are that Captain Smith got more satisfaction for the rest of his life out of that rescue, done in an hour, than Sir Samuel out of his years of labor for a much-needed reform in the English penal code. There was another person who took satisfaction in that rescue ever after, and was entitled to it. When day dawned on that wintry morning, Captain Smith's wife, who had been listening restlessly to the roar of the sea and the wind, could lie still no longer. She got up and looked out of the window. To her horror there was a small schooner on the reef in plain sight, one mast fallen over the side and three men lashed to the other mast. Her husband was still fast asleep. Must she rouse him? If she did, she knew he would go out there into that furious sea and freezing wind. If she waited only a little while, the men would be dead, and it would be of no use to go. Should she speak to him? She did. Oh, it is not the amount of good done which measures the love or heroism which prompted the serviceable deed, or the happiness which the doer gets from it! It is the spirit of service which creates both the merit and the satisfaction. (From The Durable Satisfactions of Life) CHARLES W. ELIOT A GENTLEMAN I WAS much impressed by hearing my father say that his ideal of a true gentleman was an old admiral whom he once saw picking up oranges in a London street. He was going to the King's Court at St. James's Palace, and looked very splendid in his uniform, with his coat half covered with stars and crosses, the tokens of his brave deeds during the wars with France. A miserable-looking old woman kept an orange stall at a corner of the street, and this was upset by the wheel of a passing carriage and the fruit scattered on the ground. A number of boys dashed up and began cramming the oranges into their mouths and their pockets, regardless of the cries and shouts of the poor woman. Suddenly a cane was laid about their shoulders and the old admiral thundered out; "Cowards, to ill-use a woman!" The boys fled in terror, and the admiral, with sailor-like handiness, helped to set up the stall again, and to pick up as many of the oranges as they had left — my father, I am glad to say, joining him in the latter task. When the work was done, the admiral gave the old woman half a crown, took off his cocked hat, and made her as grand a bow as if she had been a princess. E. M. L. (From The Ideal of a Gentleman, by A. Smythe-Palmer, George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.) MEASURE WHEN We count out our gold at the end of the day, Save the love we have shown to the children of men? GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |