was a great gift.”  Returning an hour later he found the smile he had kindled still lingered on the beggar’s face.  His body had been cold; kindness had made his heart warm.  The good man was as a covert in time of storm.  History and experience exhibit now and then a man as unyielding as rock in friendships.  Years ago a gifted youth began his literary career.  Wealth, travel, friends, all good gifts were his.  One day a friend handed him a telegram containing news of his father’s death.  Then the mother faded away.  The youth was alone in the world.  In that hour evil companions gathered around him.  They spoiled him of his fresh innocency.  They taught the delicate boy to listen to salacity without blushing.  Soon coarse quips and rude jests ceased to shock him.  He thought to “see life” by seeing the wrecks of manhood and womanhood.  But does one study architecture by visiting hovels and squalid cabins?  Is not studying architecture seeing the finest mansions and galleries and cathedrals?  So to see life is to see manhood at its best and womanhood when carried up to culture and beauty.

Wasting his fortune this youth wasted also his friendships.  One man loved him for his father’s sake.  For several years every Saturday night witnessed this man of oak and rock going from den to den looking for his old friend’s boy.  One day he wrote the youth a letter telling him, whether or not he found him, so long as he lived he would be looking for him every Saturday night in hope of redeeming him again to integrity.  What nothing else could do love did.  Kindness wrought its miracle.  Clasping hands the man and boy climbed back again to the heights.  At first the integrity was at best a poor, sickly plant.  But his friend was a refuge in time of storm.  A good man became the shadow of a great rock in life’s weary land.

Our age is specially interested in the relation of happiness to the street, the market and counting-room.  We have not yet acknowledged the responsibility of strength.  Not always have our giant minds confessed the debt of power to weakness; the debt of wisdom to ignorance; the debt of wealth to poverty; the debt of holiness to iniquity.  Jesus Christ was the first to incarnate this principle.  By so much as the parent is wiser than the babe for building a protecting shield for happiness and well-being, by that much is the mother indebted to her babe.  Why is one man more successful than another in the street’s fierce conflict?  Because he has more resources; is prudent, thrifty, quick to seize upon opportunity, sagacious, keen of judgment.  All these qualities are birth-gifts.  The ancestral foothills slope upward toward the mountain-minded.  And what do these distinguished mental qualities involve?