he tendency to neutralise
and, if continued for a sufficient length of time, deaden sympathy and
thereby all friendly relations.

We have heard much of "personal magnetism." Careful analysis will, I
think, reveal the fact that the one who has to any marked degree the
element of personal magnetism is one of the large-hearted, magnanimous,
cheer-bringing, unself-centred types, whose positive thought forces are
being continually felt by others, and are continually inspiring and
calling forth from others these same splendid attributes. I have yet to
find any one, man or woman, of the opposite habits and, therefore, trend
of mind and heart who has had or who has even to the slightest
perceptible degree the quality that we ordinarily think of when we use
the term "personal magnetism."

If one would have friends he or she must be a friend, must radiate
habitually friendly, helpful thoughts, good will, love. The one who
doesn't cultivate the hopeful, cheerful, uncomplaining, good-will
attitude toward life and toward others becomes a drag, making life
harder for others as well as for one's self.

Ordinarily we find in people the qualities we are mostly looking for, or
the qualities that our own prevailing characteristics call forth. The
larger the nature, the less critical and cynical it is, the more it is
given to looking for the best and the highest in others, and the less,
therefore, is it given to gossip.

It was Jeremy Bentham who said: "In order to love mankind, we must not
expect too much of them." And Goethe had a still deeper vision when he
said: "Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own."

The chief characteristic of the gossip is that he or she prefers to live
in the low-lying miasmic strata of life, revelling in the negatives of
life and taking joy in finding and peddling about the findings that he
or she naturally makes there. The larger natures see the good and
sympathise with the weaknesses and the frailties of others. They realise
also that it is so consummately inconsistent--many times even humorously
inconsistent--for one also with weaknesses, frailties, and faults,
though perhaps of a little different character, to sit in judgment of
another. Gossip concerning the errors or shortcomings of another is
judging another. The one who is himself perfect is the one who has the
right to judge another. By a strange law, however,