Untitled

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 43, 25 February 1898, Page 20

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices and duties, but of little things, of which smiles and kindness and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort.

"If anyone speaks ill of thee," said Epictetus, " consider whether he hath truth on his side, and if so. reform thyself, that his censures may not affect thee." When Anaximander was told that the very boys laughed at his singing. •' Ah ! " said he, '• then I must learn to sing better." Plato, being told that he had many enemies who spoke ill of him, said, " It is no matter ; I shall live so that none shall believe them."

" I never paw a garment too fine for a man or a maid," writes Oliver Wendell Holmes ; " there never wai a chair too good for a cobbler or a cooper or a king to sit in — never a house too fine to shelter the human head. These elements about vs — the glorious sun imperial moon — are not too good for the human race. Elegance fits man ; but do we not value these tools a little more than they are worth, and sometimes mortgage a house for the mahogany we brinjr into it .' I would rather eat my dinner off the head of a barrel, or dress after the fashion of John the Baptist in the wilderness, or sit on a block all my life, than consume all on myself before I get a) home, and take so much pains with the outside when the inside was as hollow as an empty nut. Beauty is a great thing ; but beauty of garment, house, and furniture are tawdry ornaments compared with domestic love. All the elegance in the world will make a home ; and I would give more for a spoonful of real heart-love than for whole shiploads of furniture and all the gorgeousness all the upholsterers in the world can gather.