SAEED’S PARABLE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 26 April 1924, Page 13

SAEED’S PARABLE

the seat at the window "There was a day when I entered into a restaurant,” writeth “Safed the Sage” in the “Congregationalist.” “And the head waiter, who was a person of distinction, whoso name I should probably have found in the Blue Book if not in Burke’s Peerage, showed unto me a seat at a table against the wall. . “And I said unto him, 'What is the matter with that table in front of the window?”’ “And he said, ‘I will seat you there sir, if you prefer.’ “And I said. ‘I prefer.' “And he seated me there. “Now I understood the thoughts and intents of his heart. For ne was keeping that seat bv the window for two persons, who would be likely to give a larger tip than a man who was eating alone. ~ , “So T sat at the table by the window, even though I ate my morsel alone, which Job thanked God he had not done. , . “And I looked out, and I beheld a cross-section of human life. I’or there passed the window a child in a babycab. and I thought a loving thought for the little one and its mother. And there passed by a hearse, and I meditated for a moment upon the dignity of sorrow and the perpetual need of comfort and the solemn mystery of death. And I beheld schoolboys pushing each other off the walk and laughing as they gave and took- And I beheld men going to iheir labour, and others wandering care-free and in no haste to move ahead. “And there rolled before me a moving picture show called Human Life, and I sat where J. could see it as I stirred the sugar in my coffee. “And the more I saw, the better I felt about life. For in the main the lives of the men and women that passed were of value to the world, and their faces were not the faces of folk who were down and out. And considered that all of them had their burdens, but were meeting life with resolution and hope, and none of them were free from care, but most of them were either happy or putting up a good bluff. And the day was brighter for me because I had my seat at the window. And I said, behold thus will I ever seek to sit where I can look out on life as it passeth, with sympathy and respect and a friendly thought. “And I considered that among all the hundreds of men and women who passed by that day as I sat before the window there was not one who wished me ill, but there were many who would have been kind to me had I asked it of them. ' “Now as I was using the fingerbowl. I reminded myself that the waiter had probably been holding that table for a better tip than I had intended to give. Therefore did I increase my customary tip, for the seat was worth the money.”