ater give way to storms, or, what is much worse,
harden into unforgiving selfishness.

Our influence with others depends primarily upon what we are, and only
secondarily upon what we think or upon what we say. It is so with
babies and young children, and more so with our older friends. If we
honestly feel that there is something for us to learn from another,
however wrong or ignorant, in some ways, he may seem, we are not only
more able to find and profit by the best in him, but also to give to
him in return whatever he may be ready to receive. How little quiet
comfort there is in families where useless resistance to one another is
habitual! Members of one family often live along together with more or
less appearance of good fellowship, but with an inner strain which
gives them drawn faces and tired bodies, or else throws them back upon
themselves in the enjoyment of their own selfishness; and sometimes
there is not even the appearance of good fellowship, but a chronic
resistance and disagreement, all for the want of a little sympathy and
common sense.

It is the sensitive people that suffer most, and their sensitiveness is
deplored by the family and by themselves. If they could only know how
great a gift their sensitiveness is! To appreciate this, it must be
used to find and feel the good in others, not to make us abnormally
alive to real or fancied slights. We must use it to enlarge our
sympathies and help us understand the wrong-doing of others enough to
point the way, if possible, to better things, not merely to criticise
and blame them. Only in such ways can we learn to realize and use the
delicate power of sensitiveness. Selfish sensitiveness is a blessing
turned to a curse; but the more lovingly sensitive we become to the
need of moral freedom in our friends, the Dearer we are led to our own.

There are no human relations that do not illustrate the law which bids
me "love my neighbor as myself;" especially clearly is it revealed,--in
its breach of observance,--in the comparatively external relations of
host and guest in ordinary social life, and in the happiness that can
be given and received when it is readily obeyed.

A lady once said, "I go into my bedroom and take note of all the
conveniences I have there, and then look about my guest chamber to see
that it is equally well and appropriately furnished." She succeeds in
her object in the guest chamber if she is the kind of hostess to her
guest that she woul