manners, possessed the heart of a generous and sympathetic human being, and also respectfully declined.  A third made a like objection, and at last a female friend of the family was with much difficulty persuaded, in company with another, to undertake the mournful task.  And yet, we repeat, there are in society, individuals who delight in contributing to the misery of others—­who are eager to circulate a slander, to chronicle a ruin, to revive a forgotten error, to wound, sting, and annoy, whenever they may do so with impunity.  How much better the gentle, the generous, the magnanimous policy!  Why not do everything that may be done for the happiness of our fellow creatures, without seeking out their weak points, irritating their half-healed wounds, jarring their sensibilities, or embittering their thoughts!  The magic of kind words and a kind manner can scarcely be over-estimated.  Our fellow creatures are more sensitive than is generally imagined.  We have known cases in which a gentle courtesy has been remembered with pleasure for years.  Who indeed cannot look back into “bygone time,” and discover some smile, some look or other demonstration of regard or esteem, calculated to bless and brighten every hour of after existence!  “Kind words,” says an eminent writer, “do not cost much.  It does not take long to utter them.  They never blister the tongue or lips on their passage into the world, or occasion any other kind of bodily suffering; and we have never heard of any mental trouble arising from this quarter.  Though they do not cost much, yet they accomplish much. 1.  They help one’s own good nature and good will.  One cannot be in a habit of this kind, without thereby pecking away something of the granite roughness of his own nature.  Soft words will soften his own soul.  Philosophers tell us that the angry words a man uses in his passion are fuel to the flame of his wrath, and make it blaze the more fiercely.  Why, then, should not words of the opposite character produce opposite results, and that most blessed of all passions of the soul, kindness, be augmented by kind words?  People that are for ever speaking kindly, are for ever disinclining themselves to ill-temper. 2.  Kind words make other people good-natured.  Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and sarcastic words irritate them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful.  And kind words also produce their own image on men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is.  They soothe, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.  They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings; and he has to become kind himself.  There is such a rush of all other kinds of words in our days, that it seems desirable to give kind words a chance among them.  There are vain words, idle words, hasty words, spiteful words, silly words, and empty words.  Now kind words are better than the whole of them; and it is a pity that, among the improvements of the present age, birds of this feather might not have more of a chance than they have had to spread their wings.”