“Leave the bitter word unspoken;
      So shalt thou be strongly glad,
   If there lies no backward shadow
      On dead faces, wan and sad.”

“To repress a harsh answer, to confess a fault, to stop, right or wrong, in the midst of self-defence, in gentle submission, sometimes requires a struggle like life and death, but these three efforts are the golden threads with which domestic happiness is woven.”

How frequently we exclaim,—­“If I ever get the opportunity, I will give that woman a piece of my mind!” or, “I shall some time have the satisfaction of telling that man what I think of his behavior.”

It is a very melancholy and most unsatisfactory satisfaction to know that you have made a person uncomfortable.  It is folly for you to suppose for a moment that an angry speech of yours will turn a man from a course of which you do not approve.  It will make him hate you, perhaps, but it will not change him.  It is not only foolish, but un-Christian to triumph in another’s discomfiture.  Then why “give the piece of your mind,” which you can never take back?  What good will it do?

The same question may be asked with regard to the uncharitable remarks which nearly all of us make daily.  Once in a great while, we meet a human being, still permitted to dwell on this sinful earth, who rarely says anything unkind of anybody, whose rule is, “If you cannot say a kind thing say nothing.”  In the course of a long and varied experience I may have known half-a-dozen such.  But what man has done, man may do again.  What is the baneful spirit which tempts the gentlest of us to take more pleasure in calling attention to a fault than to a virtue?  If a woman is a tender mother, a model wife, and an excellent housekeeper, why, when her virtues are discussed, is it necessary for some one to “think it is such a pity that she does not read more?” or what good comes from the remark that she is “sprightly, but not very deep?”

There is no habit more easily contracted than that of wholesale criticism, and it is a habit that grows with fungus-like rapidity.  Washington Irving says “that a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use,” and with many people the unruly member has acquired a razor-like edge which contains in itself the faculty of keeping sharp, and never needs “honing” or “setting.”

I have in mind one man to whom I hesitate to name a friend, unless it chances to be one over whom he has cast the mantle of his approval.  Those who are fortunate enough to live up to his standard are very few, and all others he criticises unmercifully, employing in his condemnation a ready wit and fluent speech that might be used in a nobler purpose.  Such a reputation as he holds for all uncharitableness is not an enviable one, and one wonders what would be his answer to our cui bono.  When there are so many truthful and pleasant things that may be said of everybody, why call attention to disagreeable points, which after all, are fewer than the agreeable ones?