few kind words, a little sympathy
and encouragement have often brought sunshine and hope into the lives
of men and women who were on the verge of despair.

The great demand is on people's hearts rather than on their purses. In
the matter of kindness we can all afford to be generous whether we have
money or not. The schoolboy may give it as freely as the millionaire.
No one is so driven by work that he has not time, now and then, to say
a kind word or do a kind deed that will help to brighten life for
another. If the prime minister of England, William E. Gladstone, could
find time to carry a bunch of flowers to a little sick
crossing-sweeper, shall we not be ashamed to make for ourselves the
excuse, "I haven't time to be kind"?

A TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE

Clad in a homespun tow shirt, shrunken, butternut-colored,
linsey-woolsey pantaloons, battered straw hat, and much-mended jacket
and shoes, with ten dollars in his pocket, and all his other worldly
goods packed in the bundle he carried on his back, Horace Greeley, the
future founder of the New York Tribune, started to seek his fortune in
New York.

A newspaper had always been an object of interest and delight to the
little delicate, tow-haired boy, and at the mature age of six he had
made up his mind to be a printer. His love of reading was unusual in
one so young. Before he was six he had read the Bible and "Pilgrim's
Progress" through.

Like the children of all poor farmers, Horace was put to work as soon
as he was able to do anything. But he made the most of the
opportunities given him to attend school, and his love of reading;
stimulated him to unusual efforts to procure books. By selling nuts and
bundles of kindling wood at the village store, before he was ten he had
earned enough money to buy a copy of Shakespeare and of Mrs. Hemans's
poems. He borrowed every book that could be found within a radius of
seven miles of his home, and by many readings he had made himself
familiar with the score of old volumes in his log-cabin home.

Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton draws a pleasing picture of the farmer boy reading
at night after the day's work on the farm was done. "He gathered a
stock of pine knots," she says, "and, lighting one each night, lay down
by the hearth and read, oblivious to all around him. The neighbors came
and made their friendly visits, and ate apples and drank cider, as was
the fashion, but the lad never noticed their coming or their going.
When re