ear, you are mistaken."

And so the contest goes on, each striving for the last word.

This love of the last word has made more bitterness in families and
spoiled more Christians than it is worth. A thousand little differences
of this kind would drop to the ground, if either party would let them
drop. Suppose John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late,--suppose
that fifty of the little criticisms which we make on one another are
well- or ill-founded, are they worth a discussion? Are they worth
ill-tempered words, such as are almost sure to grow out of a discussion?
Are they worth throwing away peace and love for? Are they worth the
destruction of the only fair ideal left on earth,--a quiet, happy home?
Better let the most unjust statements pass in silence than risk one's
temper in a discussion upon them.

Discussions, assuming the form of warm arguments, are never pleasant
ingredients of domestic life, never safe recreations between near
friends. They are, generally speaking, mere unsuspected vents for
self-will, and the cases are few where they do anything more than to
make both parties more positive in their own way than they were before.

A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair statement of reasons on
either side, may be valuable; but when warmth and heat and love of
victory and pride of opinion come in, good temper and good manners are
too apt to step out.

And now Christopher, having come to the end of his subject, pauses for a
sentence to close with. There are a few lines of a poet that sum up so
beautifully all he has been saying that he may be pardoned for closing
with them.

"Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love;
Hearts that the world has vainly tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something light as air, a look,
A word unkind, or wrongly taken,--
Oh, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken!
For ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin,
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day,
And voices lose the tone which shed
A tenderness round all they said,--
Till, fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts so lately mingled