In marked contrast with this incident is one which personally I knew to happen in a school.  A little country girl who had recently become an inmate of the school knocked at the room of her neighbor, a young lady who had been brought up amid all the refinements of life, and asked her if she would lend her her hair-brush.  Two or three other girls happened to be in the room, and this young lady replied, “Hadn’t you better ask me for my tooth-brush?  In this school, hair-brushes are private property.”  Never did the little country girl forget this rude rebuke, although she very shortly learned that among cultivated and refined people hair-brushes are considered private property.  But however cultivated externally the young lady was who thus rudely rebuffed even the ignorance of her companion, her conduct showed a spirit uncultivated in gentleness and kindness.

It often happens in schools that some become general favorites because perhaps they are blessed with good looks, or are able to dress with good taste and becomingly, or are possessed of a certain piquancy of manner and conversational powers which attract and entertain.  There are others equally good and talented who are not blessed with comeliness, who are not bright and winning in conversation, who are awkward in dress and manner.  What kindness and considerateness is due from the more favored to the less favored!  How careful should school-girls, and not school-girls only, but everybody be to extend courtesy and kindness to those of their number who are apt to be neglected, to be left lonely and forgotten while more favored ones enjoy special pleasures!  I do not mean by this that we are to be equally intimate and equally fond of all our daily associates, but we ought to be equally kind.  Our especial endearments and kindnesses and attentions to our particular friends ought to be in a measure kept for private expression, so that we may not wound the feelings of those less attractive, or less endowed with bodily and mental graces, by contrast or comparison.

To aid us in cultivating this spirit of kindness, no maxim is more useful than that laid down by Christ:  “Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.”  One of the best tests we can apply to ourselves is to imagine ourselves in the place of others.  Suppose we were conscious of homely features, ungainly forms and awkward manners, or of lack of information or knowledge; suppose we were in such straitened circumstances that we were obliged to wear coarse, cheap, unsuitable or unbecoming garments how would we feel and how would we wish to be treated?  And if we find within ourselves an unwillingness to be judged by this standard, or to conform our conduct to it, then we should realize that we do wrong, that we are wrong in spirit.  Then should come the conscious effort to do right, to change our spirit from selfishness to unselfishness, from unkindness to kindness.  This is the work that no human being can do for us.  Every individual soul must pass through that struggle alone.  Whenever we are conscious of the necessity of a decision between doing right and doing wrong, even though we may feel indisposed to do the right and disposed to do the wrong, yet if we can will to do the right we have taken a step toward God and heaven; we have begun the unfolding of the moral and spiritual nature.