SAFED’S PARABLE.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16081, 22 April 1924, Page 7

SAFED’S PARABLE.

THE SEAT AT THE WINDOW. CROSS-SECTION OF HT'M.AX LIFE. “There was a day when I entered into a restaurant. ” writeth “Kafed the Sage” in the “Congrcga* tionalist.’ “And the Headwaiter. who was a Person of Distinction, whose name I should have prohahly have found in the Blue Book if not in Burke s Peerage. showed unto me a seat at a table against the Wall. “And f said unto him. What is the matter with that Table in front of the Window?” “And lie said. I will seat you there, sir, if you prefer. “And f said. I prefer. “And be seated me there. “Now I understood the thoughts and intents of his heart. For he was keeping that seat by the Window tor Two persons, who would he likely to give a Larger 'Tip than a man who was eating alone. “So i. sat at the Table by the window. even though 1 ate my morsel alone, which Job thanked Cod he had not done. “And I looked out, and f beheld a cross-sect ion of human life, tor there passed the window a Child in a Babv-Cab. and 1 thought a. loving thought for the little one and its Mother. And there passed by an Hearse, and I meditated for a moment upon the dignity of sorrow and the perpetual need of comfort and tin* solemn mystery of death. And t beheld schoolboys pushing each other off the walk and laughing as they gave and took. And I beheld men going to their labour, and others wandering care-free and in no haste to move ahead. “And there rolled before me a mov-

ing picture show called Human Life, and 11 sat where I could see it as L stirred the Sugar in my Coffee. “And the more [ saw, the' better 1 felt about life. For in the. main the lives of the men and women thatpassed were of value to the world, and their faces were* not the faces of folk who wore down and out. And I considered that all of them had their burdens, hut were meeting life with resolution and hope, and none of them were free from care, hut most of them were either happy or putting up a good blue. And the day was brighter for me because II had my seat at the window. And 1 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 .1 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, hut there were many who would have been kind to me had II asked it of them. “Now as I was using the fingerhowl, I reminded myself that the waiter had probably been holding that table for a. Better Tip than I Had intended to give. Therefore did 1 increase my customary tin, for the seat was worth the monev.”