“Chinese Gordon,” after serving faithfully and valiantly in the great Chinese rebellion, and receiving the highest honors of the Chinese Empire, returned to England, caring little for the praise thus heaped on him.  He took some position at Gravesend, just below London, where he filled his house with boys from the streets, whom he taught and made men of, and then secured them places on ships,—­following them all over the world with letters of advice and encouragement.

Hishead in A hole.

“I was appointed to lecture in a town in Great Britain six miles from the railway,” said John B. Gough, “and a man drove me in a fly from the station to the town.  I noticed that he sat leaning forward in an awkward manner, with his face close to the glass of the window.  Soon he folded a handkerchief and tied it round his neck.  I asked him if he was cold.  “No, sir.”  Then he placed the handkerchief round his face.  I asked him if he had the toothache.  “No, sir,” was the reply.  Still he sat leaning forward.  At last I said, “Will you please tell me why you sit leaning forward that way with a handkerchief round your neck if you are not cold and have no toothache?” He said very quietly, “The window of the carriage is broke, and the wind is cold, and I am trying to keep it from you.”  I said, in surprise, “You are not putting your face to that broken pane to keep the wind from me, are you?” “Yes, sir, I am.”  “Why do you do that?” “God bless you, sir!  I owe everything I have in the world to you.”  “But I never saw you before.”  “No, sir; but I have seen you.  I was a ballad-singer once.  I used to go round with a half-starved baby in my arms for charity, and a draggled wife at my heels half the time, with her eyes blackened; and I went to hear you in Edinburgh, and you told me I was a man; and when I went out of that house I said, ’By the help of God, I’ll be a man;’ and now I’ve a happy wife and a comfortable home.  God bless you, sir!  I would stick my head in any hole under the heavens if it would do you any good.”

    “Let’s find the sunny side of men,
      Or be believers in it;
    A light there is in every soul
      That takes the pains to win it. 
    Oh! there’s a slumbering good in all,
      And we perchance may wake it;
    Our hands contain the magic wand: 
      This life is what we make it.”

He indeed is getting the most out of life who does most to elevate mankind.  How happy were those Little Sisters of the Poor at Tours, who took scissors to divide their last remnant of bedclothing with an old woman who came to them at night, craving hospitality!  And how happy was that American school-teacher who gave up the best room in the house, which she had engaged long before the season opened, at a mountain sanitarium, during the late war, taking instead of it the poorest room in the house, that she might give good quarters to a soldier just out of his camp hospital!