ow old
alone, unloving and unloved. At any cost cultivate a loving nature.
Then you will find as you look back upon your life that the moments
when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in
a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the
transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those supreme hours
when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those around
about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have
entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beautiful
things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has
planned for man; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all
the life that has gone, four or five short experiences when the love of
God reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love of
mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's life
abide. Everything else in all our lives is transitory. Every other
good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or
can ever know about--they fail not.

Odd-Fellowship ought to grow. The kinship of the human race--how
beautiful a thought! Without mutual aid the race would perish. Think
of it. Throughout life you are dependent upon your fellow-man. Who
can live without a friend? When you have no money and no home, where,
brothers, will you find food and shelter? When low with fever, the
tongue parched, the brain wandering, who will give you water, bathe
your throbbing temples, and watch over you lest you die? See the old
man. The frosts of seventy winters have whitened his head; his eye is
dim; his limbs tremble; reason and memory fail; he is an infant again.
He goes down to the valley of the shadow of death. Who shall lead him
and comfort his weary soul? Who lay his body gently and reverently in
the grave, and sod it over with green grass? So with us all. A man
alone in the world, without a human being who cares whether he live or
die! Not a hand to touch, nor a voice to hear, nor a smile to receive!
Human affections forever sealed to him; no fireside; no home with
father, mother, brothers, sisters; no little children, no son to be
proud of; no daughters to caress; no "good night;" no "good morning."
Who could bear it? The sun could not warm such a man. The brightest
days and the greenest fields could not give him pleasure. Better chain
him on a rock in mid-ocean and leave him to th