There are men who reap consequences without having the
advantages of the causes that brought them about. For instance,
it takes the gout a good long time to grow in a family, but it
does grow, and it often grows from a good cellar of port in the
possession of an ancestor. Now, what I think hard is that a man
should have the port without having the gout; and what I think
more tragic still, is that another man should have the gout
without having had the port. But still that is one of the great
laws of life. We can not avoid it, and we dare not impugn its
wisdom. Did we, we should be like the great civic functionary
who determined to have a south wall built all around his
garden.--GEORGE DAWSON.
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Charles Wagner, in “The Gospel of Life,” gives this interesting
incident:
Something happened last winter, in Paris, that I shall place
side by side with the mite of the gospel. You will remark the
profound analogy, the close spiritual kinship of these two cases.
In the north wind of December a shelter was raised where warm
soup was given to the unfortunate. A very old woman, who had
long waited her turn, at length sat down and was served. Before
she touched her portion, she noticed that a young, robust
working man beside her had already consumed his with an avidity
that betrayed that he was famished. At once she pushed her plate
toward the workman and said to him: “I am not hungry, will you
eat this?” The workman accepted. But some one had noticed all
that had passed. As they went out, he took the old woman aside
and said to her: “You were not hungry then?” “Oh, yes,” she
answered, blushing, “but I am old and can bear it, and that poor
young man was more in need of it than I.”
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