It is the sensitive people that suffer most, and their sensitiveness is deplored by the family and by themselves.  If they could only know how great a gift their sensitiveness is!  To appreciate this, it must be used to find and feel the good in others, not to make us abnormally alive to real or fancied slights.  We must use it to enlarge our sympathies and help us understand the wrong-doing of others enough to point the way, if possible, to better things, not merely to criticise and blame them.  Only in such ways can we learn to realize and use the delicate power of sensitiveness.  Selfish sensitiveness is a blessing turned to a curse; but the more lovingly sensitive we become to the need of moral freedom in our friends, the Dearer we are led to our own.

There are no human relations that do not illustrate the law which bids me “love my neighbor as myself;” especially clearly is it revealed,—­in its breach of observance,—­in the comparatively external relations of host and guest in ordinary social life, and in the happiness that can be given and received when it is readily obeyed.

A lady once said, “I go into my bedroom and take note of all the conveniences I have there, and then look about my guest chamber to see that it is equally well and appropriately furnished.”  She succeeds in her object in the guest chamber if she is the kind of hostess to her guest that she would have her guest be to her; not that her guest’s tastes are necessarily her own, but that she knows how to find out what they are and how to satisfy them.

It is often difficult to love our neighbor as ourselves because we do not know how to love ourselves.  We are selfish, or stupid, or aggressive with ourselves, or try too hard for what is right and good, instead of trusting with inner confidence and reverence to a power that is above us.

Over-thoughtfulness for others, in little things or great, is oppressive, and as much an enemy to peace, as the lack of any thoughtfulness at all.  It is like too much attention to the baby, and comes from the same kind of selfish affection, with—­frequently the added motive of wanting to appear disinterested.

One might give pages of examples showing the right and the wrong way in all the varied relations of life, but they would all show that the right way comes from obedience to the law of unselfishness.  To obey this law we must respect our neighbor’s rights as we respect our own; we must gain and keep the clear and quiet atmosphere that we like to find about our friend; we must shun everything that would interfere with a loving kindliness toward him, as we would have him show the same kindliness toward us.  We must know that we and our friends are one, and that, unless a relation is a mutual benefit, it is no true relation at all.  But, first of all, we must remember that a true appreciation of the wonderful power of this law comes only with daily, patient working, and waiting for the growth it brings.