The daily paper chronicles instances of sensational charity, where men vie with each other to see who can give most and get the most advertising. These men overlook the wonderful opportunities at their door--they do not realize the beautiful love and charity that would stir in their hearts if they would but look into the out-of-the-way places and get direct connection with pain and suffering.
Little Spencer looked from his cot and saw the suffering of other little children and he wanted to help them, and the very resolve and impulse made him forget his own pain and misery.
In the Book of Good Deeds, the name of Spencer Nelson will be recorded as a sweeter act of charity than any million-dollar gift to a great inst.i.tution.
What one of you who read these lines can read the story of that little hero and not be touched by the generous love and beautiful conception of charity he possessed.
I don"t believe much in this far-away charity idea so many have.
[Sidenote: Do Good Here At Home.]
I believe in helping those near where I am rather than sending money to Siam. Poverty and dest.i.tution, unhappily, are familiar spectres at home, as elsewhere. He who seeks to do good will not need to range afar. He can find opportunity close at home, near by, where all of us can find it if we only look.
It may be a pleasurable sensation for you to contribute fifty dollars to a missionary scheme in Siam, and get the Missionary report of the budget made up by the committee for the foreign missionary fund.
I know that a bucket of coal in an empty stove, a basket of bread and a liberal hunk of round steak to the starving family around the corner brings the donor a better sensation.
Take a trip to the hospitals, learn about the homes of the suffering patients in the charity ward, and you will resolve it"s a better act to send flour to the poor than flowers to the rich.
Little Spencer Nelson had the right idea of charity: definite, immediate help to those he could reach right where he was, rather than sending money to sufferers far, far away.
Let your gifts be princ.i.p.ally flour and beef; they help those who need help. Flowers are all right in their place, but there are more places where flour can be used to better purpose.
I"m keener for filling the coffee can of my suffering neighbor than filling the coffers of the big charity five thousand miles away.
I try to help both ways, but the home help pays the bigger dividends.
What do you think about it?
26.
You have found a friend who has been so much help and comfort to you. I have such a friend too. To-night I am in the mood to think of that friend and write him a letter like this:
[Sidenote: What I Think of You.]
This is to You. It is for You. It is about You. You I have in mind and the good influence you have had on me. It is a happiness and satisfaction to know you, and to bask in the sunshine of you.
The world is better because of you. You have helped to raise the average.
You and your goodness--you do not appreciate what that means. You are so modest, so loath to think of yourself, so thoughtful of others, so unselfish that I must tell you of you and about you.
You have a warm heart that throbs for others" woes and holds sympathy.
The great world is cold, selfish, and cares little for others. But you are different; you are a great pillow of rest on which I and others who love you may lay our tired, weary heads, and you wrap your arms of friendship and goodness about us and feel our very heartbeats.
[Sidenote: What I Love in You.]
You with your great goodness, your quiet, sympathetic understanding--you soothe our troubled spirits and make us glad of you and glad we have the precious privilege of knowing you.
Even now, as I am telling you how I love you, you are trying to wave me aside and stop me, but I am in the mood and I want to express myself.
You know that it is a great sin of omission to refrain from expressing our grat.i.tude for goodness extended to us.
I want to express my grat.i.tude. I do not want to be guilty of the sin of omission.
So here, then, is this little message for you, to tell you that I appreciate you and love you, and these words will last after you are gone and after I am gone, to tell those of to-morrow about you and what those of to-day thought about you.
Your life, your goodness, is an everlasting plant that will flourish in many hearts. Your influence will last beyond the calendar of time; it is indestructible. You have a great credit in the universal bank of good deeds, where you have deposited worth-while acts, deeds, kindnesses, cheer, help, friendship, sympathy, courage, grat.i.tude, and all the most precious jewels of humanity.
I am happy the very moment I think of you. I try to express myself but the feelings and emotions I would describe have not words or sentences to express them. You understand. You are so big in heart, so sensitive in fabric of feeling, so wise in understanding, that I want you to think and feel all the genuine, n.o.ble, lovable, appreciative thoughts you can gather together about the one you can most appreciate.
Think hard, sincerely, deeply, about that one, with all your resources of beautiful thought. Think hard that way, and now you will begin to understand my feelings about you, and how I appreciate you.
You, my inspiration, who are so sensitized to feeling, so delicately adjusted to read heart vibrations--you must feel this within me that I am trying to express. Not the love between sweethearts, not the love of kin, not the love of friends, but a great universal love I have for you--a love which all who are fortunate enough to know you have for you.
It is a love you cannot return to me in equal measure, because you have not the object in me that can merit such love. That you should love me in the way I love you even in the smallest measure is satisfaction supreme.
It is glorious to know you. You water the good impulses I have; you encourage all that is n.o.ble, elevating, and bettering, in me. I shall try to be like you--that is, so far as I can. You are my model; there is but one _You_. Many may copy you, none may equal you. You my comfort, you my joy. A great glorious _You_ that a little _I_ am trying to paint a picture of.
How futile my efforts. I might as well try to improve the deep beautiful colors of the morning-glory, or try to retint the lily with a more beautiful white.
And so I bid you good-bye, happy that there is such a one as you in the world--more happy that I know you, and most happy that I know how to appreciate you.
The sum of all good things I can say is, "I love you," and the word "love" I use in its greatest, broadest sense, which covers all the good adjectives.
This is what I think of YOU.
27.
There is a time in the business man"s life, between the age of 48 and 52, when he undergoes a p.r.o.nounced change.
More big men are cut off at 50 than at any other age between 45 and 60.
From 48 to 52 most men change vitally in their physical and mental make-up.
[Sidenote: Dangers of Middle Life.]
Many men--hitherto straight, moral men--go to the bad at this time, and per contra, many men quit their immoral and health-hurting habits and change to moral men. This danger period is when the newly-rich find fault with the wives who have helped them to their success. They grow tired of their wives and seek the companionship of younger women.
The divorce courts give most interesting figures on this point.
At this danger period, men who have been high livers, voracious eaters and heavy drinkers find themselves victims of diabetes, Bright"s disease or other forms of kidney trouble. The country is full of prematurely broken-down men who have failed to heed the danger signals along their way. To persist in self-indulgence is to invite disaster. You must deliberately set about to change your mode of living if you would avoid these shoals on which so many men of middle age have foundered.