orth its gaining. Give
encouragement. Everybody needs it--men, women and even children. Oh!
how many a dear little heart has been chilled into ice when the coarse
laugh has greeted its rude hieroglyphics in the first attempt to
portray its ideal. The child sees warm visions of sunlight and beauty
in those uncouth angles. Whole minds of thought lie concealed under
those strange shapes. To the young mind's eye they are wonders, and
the tiny fingers have built monuments that deserve not to be thrown
down so rudely, when a smile that costs nothing would have left them
standing to be finished into finer shape and more classical proportions
in the years that are to come. You do a positive injury to the dullest
child when you reward his little efforts with contempt. It is a wrong
that can never be repaired, for the disheartment that strikes the happy
spirit, flushed with the consciousness of having achieved something new
and great, comes up in after time with the very same vividness at every
trivial disappointment. Give encouragement. You men of business, who
know so well what a good, hearty "go ahead," coupled with a frank,
merry face, will do in your own case--give encouragement to the young
beginner, who starts nervously at the bottom of the race, and who,
though he may put a bold outside on, quakes at the center of his being
with the dread that among so many competitors he shall always be left
in the rear. Hold out your hand to him as if you thought the world was
really large enough for two, and bid him God-speed. Tell him to come
to you if he feels the need of a friend to advise with him. Don't
emulate your sign in overshadowing him. Out upon these mean, cringing
souls who would grudge God's sunlight if it shone upon a piece of
merchandise as good as their own. They are poor, barren wretches, who
plow furrows only in their own cheeks, and plant wrinkles on their
brows. Above all things, if you have any tenderness or compassion,
encourage your pastor, your physician, and your editor. Suppose, once
in a while, they do, in expressing their own honest views, say
something that conflicts a little with your own starved or plethoric
notions. Suppose they do dare to tell you the truth sometimes in a way
that makes you cringe, and you say to yourself, "he has no business to
be personal," when the poor man never thought that his homely coats
would fit; don't grow cold, and cast sheep's eyes, and nudge somebody's
el