e good die young," and that a
jolly, genial, fun-loving boy, bubbling over sometimes with mischief,
cannot be a Christian, when he is the very one that most pleases his
heavenly Father.

Tom had his fun, his enjoyment, and now and then his crosses. Such things
are inevitable and must be looked for. A thorn appeared in his side from
the first. A young clerk that had entered the store a few weeks ahead of
him was a sly, mean, gnarly fellow, who showed a dislike to the new-comer
and annoyed him in every way possible. He was larger and apparently
stronger than Tom, and seemed determined to provoke a quarrel with him.

Tom would have been glad to challenge him to a bout at fisticuffs, for he
was confident he could vanquish him in short order. He often yearned to do
so. More than once the hot defiance was tugging at his lips; but the
memory of poor Jim Travers's parting words, "Tom, try to be better: I tell
you, you won't be sorry when you come to die," restrained the angry
utterance and the hasty blow.

Max Zeigler was one of those young men that are inherently mean. He was
born that way, and his ugly disposition increased with his years. You
occasionally meet such persons, whose nature it seems impossible to affect
by any method of treatment. What was specially aggravating in Tom Gordon's
place was that Zeigler seemed to feel no dislike of any one in the store
besides himself. He slurred him the first day he met him, and kept it up
unremittingly.

Tom's first course was to accept these slurs in silence. His face often
flushed, when he saw the smiles on the countenances of the other clerks,
excited by some cutting witticism of Zeigler at the expense of himself.
His tormentor accepted the silence as proof of the timidity or rather
cowardice of the new employee, and rattled off his insults faster than
ever. While kindness as a rule will disarm a foe, there are some ingrates
so constituted that it moves them the other way. When Tom replied gently
to Zeigler, and asked him privately why he annoyed him without cause, the
fellow sneered the more at him. He took pains to indulge in profanity and
obscenity before Tom, and received the full reward he sought when he saw
how much his course grieved him.

Finally Tom struck the remedy. It was simple. He showed perfect
indifference toward his persecutor. When Zeigler made a cutting remark, he
acted as if he did not hear him. He continued his conversation with
another; and though his