r to door to amuse
people with my viol and my flute." The hermit insisted that he must have
done some good deeds. The minstrel replied, "Nay, I know of nothing good
that I have done." "But how hast thou become a beggar? Hast thou spent
thy substance in riotous living?" "Nay, not so," replied the minstrel.
"I met a poor woman running hither and thither, distracted, because her
husband and children had been sold into slavery to pay a debt. I took
her home and protected her from certain sons of Belial, for she was very
beautiful. I gave her all I possessed to redeem her family and returned
her to her husband and children. Is there any man who would not have
done the same?" The hermit shed tears, and said in all his life he had
not done as much as the poor minstrel.

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor
than silver or gold."

A gentleman, traveling through West Virginia, went to a house, and
procured food for himself and companion and their horses. He wanted to
make payment, but the woman was ashamed to take pay for a mere act of
kindness. He pressed the money upon her. Finally she said, "If you
don't think I'm mean, I'll take one quarter of a dollar from you, so as
to look at it now and then, for there has been no money in this house for
a year."

Do not take the world's estimate of success. The real height of the
Washington Monument is not measured between the capstone and the earth,
but includes the fifty feet of solid masonry below. Many of the most
successful lives are like the rivers of India which run under ground,
unseen and unheard by the millions who tread above them. But have these
rivers therefore no influence? Ask the rich harvest fields if they feel
the flowing water beneath. The greatest worth is never measured. It is
only the nearest stars whose distances we compute. That life whose
influence can be measured by the world's tape-line of dollars and corn is
not worth the measuring.

All the forces in nature that are the most powerful are the quietest. We
speak of the rolling thunder as powerful; but gravitation, which makes no
noise, yet keeps orbs in their orbits, and the whole system in harmony,
binding every atom in each planet to the great centre of all attraction,
is ten thousand times ten thousand times more powerful. We say the
bright lightning is mighty; so it is when it rends the gnarled oak into
splinters, or splits solid battlements into f