or sniffing cocaine or
doing something dishonorable, like forging your father's signature.

None of these things affect her directly or personally, but
sympathetically, through her love for you.

So it is in the case of the boy who, after promising not to drive over
thirty miles an hour, goes speeding on the highway and gets arrested.
The fine which has to be paid by father is an infinitesimal part of the
harm and hurt which is caused the parents.

You cannot sit in a draft and catch a heavy cold, without causing a
certain amount of anxiety and distress to your sister, or your wife, who
are devoted to you--if it runs into pneumonia, the hurt to them is
greater; and if you happen to die of it, that may release you from
further suffering, only to make theirs heaviest of all.

I went to a dance, last summer, at the home of a young married couple in
a fashionable community. The hostess was rather an extreme example of
the up-to-date school, with the well formed habit of looking at things
from the point-of-view of her own inclinations.

After the dancing had been going on a short while, she found she was not
in the humor for it; the men who asked her to dance didn't interest her,
and she felt like going to bed. Being a firm believer in individualism
and thinking only of herself, she quietly withdrew and went to bed.

A number of her guests had not yet arrived. When they did and sought to
greet their hostess, inquiries were made and in the end everybody was
apprised of her behavior. She imagined that it concerned only herself,
whereas the sympathy, affection, the kindly attitude which all those
people were disposed to have for her suffered a shock. A touch of
resentment and antipathy was left behind which would make itself felt in
future relations. The sympathy and affection of those about us is a part
of life too precious and necessary to our well-being to be lightly cast
aside. The loss to us and to them, however trifling in any one
instance, may in the course of time involve lasting consequences.

In the various examples we have cited so far, it has been a question of
hurting or depriving others, through lack of consideration. A similar
motive comes into play in prompting us to bestow pleasure upon others.
Human sympathy causes us to delight in the joy of those we love, just as
their sorrow saddens us. We like to give them presents, prepare
surprises for them, devise ways and means of adding to their happiness.
Such