THE INFLUENCE OF WORDS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 131, 29 November 1902, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE INFLUENCE OF WORDS.

Every man begins life, whether he is born rich or poor, with his fortune .to make — that is, with his prosperity and his happiness to secure — and in this business (says the Spectator) there can be no doubt that his chief &tock-in-trade rs words. On what does happiness —we mean well-being rather than joy — depend? Principally, we take it, upon the good- | will of our fellow-creatures. Few of us I intentionally do "shrewd turns" to our neighbours. On the other hand, we do not, as a rule, do acts of startling beneficence towards them. Our relations with them are for the most part verbal, and on the nature of these verbal relations deX^ends what we may call our inward prosperity. Take the extreme instance of a man's relation to his children. The average father is kind in action. Nature, principle, and public opinion alike pr-jss him to kindness, and he probably .spends upon them a generous, or at least ajust, proportion of his income. Bui i whether their mutual relations are a conslant source of happiness or a continual source of friction is in nine cases | out of ten a matter of words. To go ' outside the family and consider friendship. Most friendships, if we could trace them to their origin, if we could fix the precise psychologica 1 moment at which they were evolved out of acquaintanceship, we should find to be founded on a single conversation, or even on a single sentence. But, apart from the greater J affections and intimacies of life, the general consensus of goodwill which a man earns by his words is of inestimable value. Nothing is so likely to bring him worldly success, and nothing so sure to sweeten worldly failure. A congenial menial atmosphere such as a man moves in who is really well liked is to his advantage in i every single pirliculwr, and may. even benefit his health, and tend to longevity. Now, if all this is true, Avhy do s^icli an extraordinary number of people play fast and loose with their happiness, take so little trouble to bind the affections of their world by fair words, and indulge themselves so wantonly in verbal cruelty? It is not uncommon for those who, so far as action is concerned, leave little to be desired, to go about armed with the whip of sarcasm with which to torment their neighbours. They get so much pleasure out af watching the accurate way in which their cuts go home and the winces of their victims tliat finally the sport becomes absorbing, and they do not spare I even those they love until one day they find to their horror that they have de- 1 stroyed that delicate plant known as natural affection., and that their children stand by unmoved while they remind them of every sacrifice they have made for their sakes.