er call themselves our friends, although
we may live in the same house with them and exist side by side on the
most friendly terms. That is why, if we probe deep down into the hearts
of most men and women, we discover that, in spite of all their gaiety and
all their outward courage, inside they are very desolate, and in their
hearts they are indescribably lonely.

_The Few_

But just a few people seem to be enabled to see beneath the surface of
things. Around them they seem to shed an extraordinary kind of
understanding sympathy. They are not entirely the "people in trouble"
who appeal to them; rather they seem able to perceive the misery of a
"state of life"--something which obtains no sympathy because people
either condemn it or fail to realise the steps which led up to it--in the
long, long ago. To them, everybody unfortunate--whether it be by their
own fault or by the economic, moral, or social laws of the
country--arouses their sympathy. It would seem as if Nature had given
them the gift of intuition into another's sorrow--especially when that
sorrow is not apparent to the outside world. You will find these people
working, for the most part, among the poor and needy, in the slums of big
cities, in the midst of men and women whose life is one long, hard
struggle to keep both ends meeting until death releases them from the
treadmill which is their life. They do not advertise themselves nor
their philanthropy. One often never hears of them at all--until they are
dead. They do not seek to hide their light under a bushel, because to
them all self-advertisement is indecent. They do not realise that what
they do is "light" at all. But the world does not realise all that it
owes to these unknown men and women, whose sympathies are so wide, so
all-absorbing, that they can give up their lives to minister to the
sorrows and hardships of others--and, in succouring them, find their only
reward. I have known one or two of these people in my life, and they
have given me a clearer insight into the nobility inherent in human
nature than all the saints whose virtues were ever chronicled, than all
the wealthy philanthropists whose gifts and generosity were ever
overpraised.

_The Great and the Really Great_

I always think that one of the most amusing things (to watch), in all
life, is what I term the "Kaiser-spirit" in individuals. Nearly everyone
mistakes the trimmings of greatness for the real article,