nd that people are drawn
to do right by being praised when they do it, rather than driven by
being blamed when they do not.

Right across the way from Mrs. Standfast is Mrs. Easy, a pretty little
creature, with not a tithe of her moral worth,--a merry, pleasure-loving
woman, of no particular force of principle, whose great object in life
is to avoid its disagreeables and to secure its pleasures.

Little Mrs. Easy is adored by her husband, her children, her servants,
merely because it is her nature to say pleasant things to every one. It
is a mere tact of pleasing, which she uses without knowing it. While
Mrs. Standfast, surveying her well-set dining-table, runs her keen eye
over everything, and at last brings up with, "Jane, look at that black
spot on the salt-spoon! I am astonished at your carelessness!"--Mrs.
Easy would say, "Why, Jane, where _did_ you learn to set a table so
nicely? All looking beautifully, except--ah! let's see--just give a rub
to this salt-spoon;--now all is quite perfect." Mrs. Standfast's
servants and children hear only of their failures; these are always
before them and her. Mrs. Easy's servants hear of their successes. She
praises their good points; tells them they are doing well in this, that,
and the other particular; and finally exhorts them, on the strength of
having done so many things well, to improve in what is yet lacking. Mrs.
Easy's husband feels that he is always a hero in her eyes, and her
children feel that they are dear good children, notwithstanding Mrs.
Easy sometimes has her little tiffs of displeasure, and scolds roundly
when something falls out as it should not.

The two families show how much more may be done by a very ordinary
woman, through the mere instinct of praising and pleasing, than by the
greatest worth, piety, and principle, seeking to lift human nature by a
lever that never was meant to lift it by.

The faults and mistakes of us poor human beings are as often perpetuated
by despair as by any other one thing. Have we not all been burdened by a
consciousness of faults that we were slow to correct because we felt
discouraged? Have we not been sensible of a real help sometimes from the
presence of a friend who thought well of us, believed in us, set our
virtues in the best light, and put our faults in the background?

Let us depend upon it, that the flesh and blood that are in us--the
needs, the wants, the despondencies--are in each of our fellows, in
every awkwa