We do not naturally or off-hand—­any of us—­think of goodness as having much of a lunge to it.  It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pulls back kindly and gently.  Or it teases and says, “Please”—­God knows how helpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I have observed, He has not been paying very much attention to good people of late.

I do not believe I am alone in this.  There must be thousands of others who have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness toward what people seem to think should be called goodness.  Not that we say anything.  We merely keep wondering—­we cannot see what it is, exactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing.

In the meantime we hold on.  We do not propose to give up believing in it.  Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in the United States is the people who have taken hold of it.

They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting.  We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or people who are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they would make it hum!

I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have been sitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, with very good people a little longer than usual, and come out into the street, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk, businesslike man I see going by, and saying, “My dear sir, I do wish that you would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all, something cannot really be done.  I keep on trying to be hopeful, but these dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terrible mess of it!”

And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day, and this practically is what I did.  I had done it before with other business men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was more particular.  I went straight to the point.  “Here are at least sixteen valuable efficient brands of goodness in America,” I said, “all worth their weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is really using, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet I believe with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other men do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start.”

I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down on a piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished he would take a few of them—­the first five or six or so—­and make them work.

He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work.

I would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Lim as a kind of business angel.