rtions, and know that better than the best friend you can have
is unquestionable determination, united with decision of character.

How little is known of what is in the bosom of those around us! We
might explain many a coldness could we look into the heart concealed
from us; we should often pity where we hate, love when we curl the lip
with scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of any human
action is a culpable temerity, of all our sins the most unfeeling and
frequent.

How a common sorrow or calamity spans the widest social differences and
welds all, the rich and poor, in one common bond of sympathy, which,
begetting charity and all her train, softens the hardest heart and
banishes the sturdiest feeling of superiority! Over the lifeless body
of the departed, enemies and friend can weep together, and, burying
strife and differences with their common loss, feel a kinship which
unites them, and which all humanity shares.

Don't be exacting.--An exacting temper is one against which to guard
both one's heart and the nature of those who are under our control and
influence. To give and to allow, to suffer and to bear, are the graces
more to the purpose of a noble life than cold, exacting selfishness,
which must have, let who will go without, which will not yield, let who
will break. It is a disastrous quality wherewith to go through the
world; for it receives as much pain as it inflicts, and creates the
discomfort it deprecates.

Verily, good works constitute a refreshing stream in this world,
wherever they are found flowing. It is a pity that they are too often
like oriental torrents, "waters that fail" in times of greatest need.
When we meet the stream actually flowing and refreshing the land, we
trace it upward, in order to discover the fountain whence it springs.
Threading our way upward, guided by the river, we have found at length
the placid lake from which the river runs. Behind all genuine good
works and above them, love will, sooner or later, certainly be found.
It is never good alone; uniformly, in fact, and necessarily in the
nature of things, we find the two constituents existing as a complex
whole, "love and good works," the fountain and the flowing stream.

Never give up old friends for new ones. Make new ones if you like, and
when you have learned that you can trust them, love them if you will,
but remember the old ones still. Do not forget they have been merry
with you in time of pleas