words, but you are the
lecture itself."

What a smile she gave me! "Yes, I know about the hard knocks," she
said. "I have been in pain most of my life. But I have learned all that
I know sitting in this chair. I have learned to be patient and kind and
loving and brave."

They told me this crippled woman was the sweetest-spirited, best-loved
person in the town.

But her mother petulantly interrupted me. She had wheeled the cripple
into the tent. She was tall and stately. She was well-gowned. She lived
in one of the finest homes in the city. She had everything that money
could buy. But her money seemed unable to buy the frown from her face.

"Mr. Lecture Man," she said, "why is everybody interested in my
daughter and nobody interested in me? Why is my daughter happy and why
am I not happy? My daughter is always happy and she hasn't a single
thing to make her happy. I am not happy. I have not been happy for
years. Why am I not happy?"

What would you have said? Just on the spur of the moment--I said,
"Madam, I don't want to be unkind, but I really think the reason you
are not happy is that you haven't been bumped enough."

I discover when I am unhappy and selfish and people don't use me right,
I need another bump.

The cripple girl had traveled ahead of her jealous mother. For
selfishness cripples us more than paralysis.

Schools of Sympathy

When I see a long row of cots in a hospital or sanitarium, I want to
congratulate the patients lying there. They are learning the precious
lessons of patience, sympathy, love, faith and courage. They are
getting the education in the humanities the world needs more than
tables of logarithms. Only those who have suffered can sympathize. They
are to become a precious part of our population. The world needs them
more than libraries and foundations.

The Silver Lining

There is no backward step in life. Whatever experiences come to us are
truly new chapters of our education if we are willing to learn them.

We think this is true of the good things that come to us, but we do not
want to think so of the bad things. Yet we grow more in lean years than
in fat years. In fat years we put it in our pockets. In lean years we
put it in our hearts. Material and spiritual prosperity do not often
travel hand-in-hand. When we become materially very prosperous, so many
of us begin to say, "Is not this Babylon that I have builded?" And
about that time there comes some han