It is not necessary to condone or to condemn all.  What would you say to the gardener who let your choice young vines run in straggling lines all over the ground and in all directions,—­or who ruthlessly cut off all the stalks within an inch of the roots?  Young people need training, encouragement and urging in some directions, repression and pruning in others.  Above all, they need tender forbearance.

Another trying feature of the Young Person is his wholesale intolerance of everything and everybody.  Only himself and perhaps one or two of his own friends escape his censure.  These being covered with the mantle of his approbation, are beyond criticism.  This habit of uncharitableness is such an odious one that our boy or girl should avoid it carefully.

If you would acquire the custom of saying no evil, it is advisable to guard against thinking it.  Difficult as it may seem, it is quite possible to put such a guard upon the mind as to accustom it to look on the best side of persons and things.  Nobody is wholly bad, or, at least, few people are so entirely given over to disagreeable traits as the Young Person would lead us to think.  Only a few days ago a young man was speaking in my presence of another fellow, who was, as far as I know, a respectable, well-bred boy.

“Oh!” said the Young Person, when his name was mentioned, “he is no good.”

“Why not?” queried I.  “Is he bad?”

“He is too much of a fool to be bad.”

“Is he such a fool?  I thought he was considered rather bright?”

“Well, he thinks himself awfully bright.  He is a regular donkey.”

“Are his manners disagreeable?”

“No-o-o, I don’t know that they are.  In fact, I believe he prides himself on the reputation he has acquired for gentlemanliness.”

“Then, what is so disagreeable about him?”

“Perhaps,” dryly suggested the father of the Young Person, “he is not particularly fond of you, and that it why you disapprove of him.”

“No, sir!” was the indignant rejoinder, “that is not it.  To be sure, he never troubles himself to pay me any marked attention.  Nor do I care to have him do so.  He is a low fellow.”

Deny it as he might, the reason my young friend disliked the “low fellow” was because the tiny thorn of neglect had wounded his vanity and pricked and rankled into a fester.  This is human nature, but as we advance in years, we appreciate that people may be really excellent in many respects, and yet have no great fondness for us.  Youth still has much to learn.

Ten girls whom I know formed a society for the repression of unkind criticism.  The members pledged themselves to try, as far as in them lay, to speak kindly of people when it was possible for them to do so, and when impossible to say nothing.  At first it was hard, for self-conceit would intrude, and it is hard for one girl to praise another who dislikes her.  Little by little the tiny seed of effort grew into a habit of kindly speech.