That’s sweet music when nature hangs her wind-harps in the trees for autumn breezes to play thereon; that must have been sweet music when Jenny Lind so charmed the world with her voice, and when Ole Bull rosined the bow and touched the strings of his violin; that was sweet music when I sat in the twilight on the stoop of my childhood’s home and heard the welkin ring with the songs of the old plantation; but the sweetest music in this old world is that which thrills the soul when spoken in “words of love and deeds of kindness.”  Cultivate the trait of sympathy.  The good things you are going to say of your friend when he’s dead, say them to him while he’s alive.  Take care of the living; God will care for the dead.

To the trait of sympathy I would add two grand traits—­decision and courage.

  “Tender handed touch a nettle. 
    And it stings you for your pains;
  Grasp it like a man of mettle,
    Silk it in your hand remains.”

The decision to throw over the tea in Boston harbor, to write “Charles Carroll of Carrolton,” and the courage to say, “Give me liberty or give me death,” gave us this government by and for the people.

  “If you come to a river deep and wide,
    And you’ve no canoe to skim it;
  If your duty’s on the other side,
    Jump in, my boy, and swim it.”

Have the courage to stand for what you believe to be right.  You may have to go ahead of public sentiment at times, but you will be rewarded in having your conviction and conscience with you.

A number of years ago in Boston, I gave a temperance address on Sunday afternoon in Music Hall.  At the close of the lecture a friend said to me:  “You said some good things but though from the old bourbon State of Kentucky, you are ahead of public sentiment in Boston.”

I replied:  “Public sentiment does not always indicate what is right even in Boston.  On your beautiful Commonwealth Avenue yesterday afternoon I met an elegantly dressed lady, I suppose a wealthy one from her jewels and dress.  She had a poodle dog in her arms, with a blue ribbon on its neck.  Yet, the same woman wouldn’t be caught carrying her six-weeks’ old baby down the street for any consideration.”

Such is public sentiment in fashionable society in our cities, and yet the highest type of the world’s creation is a pure, sweet mother with a babe in her arms, and another holding her apron strings.  I think it would be a blessing to home life if an avenging angel should go through this country, smiting every English pug and poodle dog bought to take the place of babies.  In their places I would put bright-eyed, rosy cheeked children to greet fathers when they return home from their day’s labor.

Battle for the right, remembering that far better is a fiery furnace with an angel for company, than worshiping a brazen image on the plains of Dura.

Some young man may now be saying in his mind, “For me to always stand for the right would be to meet difficulties at every step of the way.”  Don’t get alarmed over difficulties.  Half of them are imaginary.