The great thing we maun all do wi’ the laddies that are sae maimed and crippled is never tae let them ken we’re thinking of their misfortunes.  That’s a hard thing, but we maun do it.  I’ve seen sic a laddie get into a ’bus or a railway carriage.  And I’ve seen him wince when een were turned upon him.  Dinna mistake me.  They were kind een that gazed on him.  The folk were gude folk; they were fu’ of sympathy.  They’d ha’ done anything in the world for the laddie.  But—­they were doing the one thing they shouldna ha’ done.

Gi’en you’re an employer, and a laddie wi’ a missing leg comes tae ye seeking a job.  You’ve sent for him, it may be; ye ken work ye can gie him that he’ll be able tae do.  A’ richt—­that’s splendid, and it’s what maun be done.  But never let him know you’re thinking at a’ that his leg’s gone.  Mak’ him feel like ithers.  We maun no’ be reminding the laddies a’ the time that they’re different noo frae ither folk.  That’s the hard thing.

Gi’en a man’s had sic a misfortune.  We know—­it’s been proved a thousand times ower—­that a man can rise above sic trouble.  But he canno do it if he’s thinking of it a’ the time.  The men that have overcome the handicaps of blindness and deformity are those who gie no thought at all to what ails them—­who go aboot as if they were as well and as strong as ever they’ve been.

It’s a hard thing not to be heeding such things.

But it’s easier than what these laddies have had to do, and what they must go on doing a’ the rest of their lives.  They’ll not be able to forget their troubles very long; there’ll be plenty to remind them.  But let’s not gae aboot the streets wi’ our een like a pair of looking glasses in which every puir laddie sees himsel’ reflected.

It’s like the case of the lad that’s been sair wounded aboot the head; that’s had his face sae mangled and torn that he’d be a repulsive sicht were it not for the way that he became sae.  If he’d been courting a lassie before he was hurt wadna the thought of how she’d be feeling aboot him be amang his wairst troubles while he lay in hospital?  I’ve talked wi’ such, and I know.

Noo, it’s a hard thing to see the face one loves changed and altered and made hideous.  But it’s no sae hard as to have tha face!  Who wull say it is?  And we maun be carefu’ wi’ such boys as that, tae.  They’re verra sensitive; all those that have been hurt are sensitive.  It’s easy to wound their feelings.  And it should be easy for all of us to enter into a conspiracy amang ourselves to hide the shock of surprise we canna help feeling, whiles, and do nothing that can make a lad-die wha’s fresh frae the hospital grow bitter over the thocht that he’s nae like ither men the noo.

Yon’s a bit o’ a sermon I’ve been preaching, I’m afraid.  But, oh, could ye ha’ seen the laddies as I ha’ seen them, in the hospitals, and afterward, when they were waiting tae gae hame!  They wad ask me sae often did I think their ain folk could stand seeing them sae changed.