Part 3

"Are you feeling cross to-day? Stop and smile. And of course, if you feel gay, Why, you'll smile. You will find that it will pay If everywhere and every day At your work or at your play You will smile. Just smile."

It was a piece of fine advice one gave another. It was this:

"Smile a while, And while you smile Another smiles! And soon there will be miles And miles Of smiles. And life's worth while Because you smile."

May I add:

Don't frown and groan Or throw your stone. But pile up high Yes, just sky-high Your joy and love. Then by-and-by Down from above The holy dove Will come and move Our world with love.

*XII*

*UNTRUTHFULNESS*

"Oh, what do you want to talk so much about that?" said a boy to his mother. "It was only a white lie!"

And the poor little silly thought that you got your opinion of a lie by its colour!

A bad man may be white, or brown, or black, or yellow, but he is a bad man all the same! The colour does not matter; and so is a lie a bad thing, whether it is little or big, or white or black. I'll tell you why, girls and boys!

1. White lies give you a habit of telling lies, and when you get the habit you become a liar! In fact, white lies are almost the worse of the two, because a big black lie would scare you, but the little white lie eats into you without you knowing it.

2. White lies are like that awful disease called Cancer.

We hear a lot about it to-day, and the doctors are puzzled because they do not know how to trace it. But it eats and eats away until some of us have seen most loathsome forms of it consuming the poor body, while the life is still there, often in very intense suffering. And the doctors say, "Take care of the first pimple and have it cut out." Cancer often starts in a tiny spot or the smallest growth.

Now, the liar is just the same. He starts with lie pimples--just little white spots on his language tongue, but they grow until they eat away his best life.

In the East there is a dread disease called Leprosy.

It often begins with a little white spot, which grows and grows until the body gets rotten, and the poor fellow who has the disease has to be sent away by himself. And white lies grow and grow until the man becomes an evil one, who sometimes has to be sent off by himself in a jail, and the boy is sent off to some industrial home to keep him away so he cannot hurt others, until he has learned a better way of talking and living.

Be afraid of a lie!

3. They make people whom you cannot trust, and almost anything else I would wish for you than to be one who cannot be trusted.

You can't rely on a liar. Not only one who lies with his tongue, but who acts lies. He gets by-and-by so full of lies that if you try to lean on him, down you go!

Out in the West, one of the great wheat elevators at Fort William suddenly slid down into the river, because the foundation was too weak to hold it up.

And a liar is like that! He is a bad foundation for home or school or society!

He caves in if any weight is put on him.

Let the girls and boys who study about these foxes watch this bad one, and be straight and true and upright and strong, so people can be sure of them.

I like the story I read once of a Scottish schoolboy who was called "Little Scotch Granite." When the boys were supposed to tell how often they had whispered in school--and if they had not at all, got a perfect mark called "Ten"--they got the habit of saying "Ten," even when they had broken the school rule. Little Scotty came, and although he was bright and full of fun he would not say "Ten"--although his record got very low.

But he changed the whole school.

He was always a good sport, but he never would tell a lie to save himself.

At the close of the term he was away down on the list, but when the teacher said he had decided to give a special medal to the most faithful boy in the school and asked to whom he would give it--forty voices called out together, "Little Scotch Granite!"

*XIII*

*"I CAN'T BE BOTHERED!"*

Did you ever hear any girl or boy say that?

"Sonny, go and do that little job, will you?" "Oh, I can't be bothered!"

"Johnny, your sister Mary is having a hard time with her home work. Go and see if you can help her." "Oh, I can't be bothered!"

A load of firewood was dumped at the back gate and Billy, who was lying kicking up his heels on the porch in the sun, was asked to go and pile some of it in the cellar. "Oh, I can't be bothered! Wait till Dad comes home, he'll do it!"

The next door neighbour had a sick baby and Nellie was asked to go to the drug store for something. Now, Nellie really loved babies and she was a good little kiddie usually; but she was busy on some ribbons she was fixing for herself--so busy she forgot to shut the garden gate and that fox came in and bit one of the flowers off her soul, and she said, "Oh, don't bother me!"

My, girls and boys, you let that fox loose in your garden, and he'll make an awful mess of it! He'll chew up the loveliest thing and leave a wreck!

If he gets abroad in the home or the church or the city, or society, he'll ruin things without a doubt.

Because:

1. If everybody said that nothing ever would be done to help anybody, this poor old world would be left so that none of us would want to live in it.

Of course, I know there is a lot of "bother" that we should not bother with--the "bother" that your mother means when she says, "Stop bothering the baby!"--the "bother" that means teasing, and vexing and annoying, and making yourself a nuisance.

But think where you would have been if your mother and father had never bothered over you.

Think of where the world would have been if all men and women had refused to be bothered about its history. It would have had no heroes, no authors, and no leaders, and what we call history would have been a perfect mess!

It is because savages do not bother that we have the dark places where the missionary goes and bothers his soul to help; and if he did not, there would be no progress; and if he never had gone, you and I would still be savages!

Whenever you are tempted to say, "Don't bother me!"--just remember and be glad that it was bothering about things gave you home and friends and school and all that makes your life worth while!

2. There is another queer thing about bothering.

A lot of girls and boys never think it half as much a bother to bother about some people outside as they do to bother about people in their own homes. Some boys, and girls too, can be as sweet as an all-day sucker when some other lady asks them to go a message, and as sour as a dose of vinegar when their own mother wants something done!

"Oh, yes, dear Mrs. Smith, it will be no trouble at all to take that letter to the post. I'll gladly go!"

"Oh, confound it, Mother! I can't do that! I wanted to go down to the pond to skate!"

Girls and boys! Don't say, "I can't be bothered!"

Bothering for others is the bliss of life!

If you want to be happy, aid some one to-day!

*XIV*

*THANKLESSNESS*

Don't you love to hear the gentle voice of a child say, "Thank you!"?

Don't you like to see a girl or boy that feels and shows gratitude?

Everything in Nature seems to have it!

The birds twittering in the tree-tops always seem to be chirping, "Thanks." The flowers bordering the green lawn breathe out a fragrance that makes you so glad, it must be the odour of thanks! The sun is so glorious and scatters its rays so brightly, I think if you could hear it speaking as it shines, you would hear it saying, "Oh, I am so thankful I have all this power of sifting down these drops of sunlight!" When the rain sees the brown-burnt grass starting up into bright greenness, how thankful it must feel for its ability to refresh! I think even the wind is glad it can shake things up and scatter nasty germs and clean the air that people breathe!

"All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all."

And I really believe there is not one that is not glad and thankful for being and doing!

There is no spirit so dark, unhappy and unattractive as the one that is thankless.

Shakespeare says:

"Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend More hideous in a child Than the sea monster."

And again he says:

"How sharper is it than a serpent's tooth To have a thankless child."

Once Jesus cured ten lepers, and you know leprosy was a dreadful disease that little by little ate away the body and turned it into a rotting sore; and of the ten who were healed of that frightful trouble, only one came back to say, "I thank you!"

Isn't it a lovely sight to see the sweet spirit of a thankful heart saying it--to find people who appreciate what you do--that is, who think it is worth something, for appreciation just means putting a value on, and they say so!

The Bible says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."

Don't keep it to yourself. Say so! Pass it on! Tell some one you are glad they did something for you!

Everybody dislikes a girl or boy who is like a sponge, always soaking in!

I saw a lovely flower once. At first it was only a dirty-looking bulb. But it was put in nice clean water, in a glass, and soon beautiful white rootlets began to fill up the bottle; and one day the bulb was so glad that it was no longer a nasty earthy-looking brown bulb, but had graceful white roots, and a bud shooting out that it burst in a splendid poem of thanks; only the poem was called a flower, and its name was Hyacinth!

We all love to see a thankful life--At home it makes the atmosphere so soft and helpful--At school it straightens wrinkles off the teacher and fills the room with light--With one another it acts like good oil in an automobile. It makes things run smoother.

And girls and boys, God likes it too!

There is a fable of a lion that lay hot and tired, trying to sleep, when some field mice ran over his body and made him so mad he clapped down his paw and was going to tear it when the little mouse pled for mercy in such a way that the lion set him free.

Sometime later he heard a great roaring and found it was the lion caught by hunters in a great net. He remembered the mercy of the lion, and telling him not to fear, he set to work with his little sharp teeth and gnawed away at the cords and knots of the trap and set the lion free.

It is fine to be thankful.

It is even finer to prove it by doing things that make others thankful.

Be thankful for home, and school, for church and gospel.

Be thankful you are not children in a heathen land.

Be thankful for your happy girl and boy life.

Be thankful God cares for you.

A minister once told a bishop of a wonderful escape he had from a burning ship. He called it a "great providence of God."

"Yes," said the bishop, "but I know a greater. I know a ship where nothing happened and it arrived safely." That was God's providence too, for which he was thankful.

And all your life God is working over you.

Are you thankful?

And do you show it by helping others and being kind to those who are kind to you?

There is a legend from Norway, that wonderful sea-washed land in Europe, so full of tales that girls and boys like. It is called the legend of the "Gertrude Bird."

It is a woodpecker that is said to have been a woman once, who was making bread, when two men passed by who happened to be Christ and His disciple Peter, although she did not know.

They asked for some of the dough, for they had had a long walk and fast; and she pinched a piece off when lo, it grew till it filled the bake box. So she said, "No, that is too much," and pinched a piece off it, when the same thing happened! Three times it happened, and each time she got more selfish and hard and stingy. At last, as she saw how much dough she was getting, she said to the two strangers, "I cannot give you any. Go on, you can't stop here!"

They passed on and then she knew them; and oh, she got humble and sorry, and fell down asking for pardon, and the Christ said, "I gave you much, but you had no thanks. Now I'll try poverty. After this you must get your food between the bark and the tree. But because you are sorry, when your clothing is all black with your sorrow, it will stop, because then you will have learnt to be thankful!"

And so she was punished for a while by becoming a woodpecker, picking her food between the bark and the tree, until as she grew older her back and wings all got black; and then God turned them all white again!

Dear girls and boys, God loves you and me to be thankful!

*XV*

*CRUELTY*

There are two ways you can get a bad bite from the fox called Cruelty.

(1) By being cruel to people. Of course, most normal girls and boys would hardly like to be called cruel; and yet how often you can be without just knowing its name.

A boy that is a bully is a cruel boy. At school he likes to lord it over other boys, especially if they are smaller than he is.

I knew a boy once in a school in Toronto, who at recess was knocked down by a bigger boy who pushed his face into a snow bank and sat on him until he was in an agony of suffocation. I don't suppose the boy realized what he was doing, but he was a bully just the same.

He is the fellow who likes to see smaller fellows afraid of him, and likes to strut around with the feeling that he is cock of the walk!

I was going to a funeral one day, and saw a large boy on the street, seated on a small boy who was lying helpless on his back and enduring all kinds of nasty actions by the young bully. If I had not been at the head of the funeral, I would have stopped and gone and spanked him!

How boys hate a bully. He is a coward, you know, at heart. A real brave boy will never take advantage of some one weaker and smaller than himself. A real brave hero protects others. The boy who hurts some one who can't defend himself is a mean coward. It does not matter how big his breast is or how far it sticks out, his inside heart is small, and narrow and hard. Now, don't you be like that!

(2) You can be cruel to animals--torturing them--loving to hurt them, just for the fun of killing. It is so strange the way some people think they are having no sport unless something is suffering.

"It's a fine day," some one is reported as saying, "let us go out and kill something."

We live in a day when Children's Aid Societies and Humane Societies are telling us of the beauty of a kind life, and that even animals are God's creatures and should be treated with reverence, or at least with the gentleness that will not cause unnecessary pain.

The cruel spirit hardens us. It takes away what learned men call sensitiveness; _i.e._, it makes us so we do not feel. It makes our hearts like our hands sometimes get when not cared for--it makes callous marks; and when fine feeling is lost, we are less than we ought to be.

A little Indian girl, the educated daughter of a chief, said she could never forget the first time she ever heard God's name.

In her play she found a wounded bird by her tent and picked it up and said, "This is mine." One of the men who saw her said, "What have you?" "A bird," she said, "it's mine."

He looked at it and said, "No, it's not yours. You must not hurt it." "Not mine," she said, "then whose is it?" "It's God's," he said. "He can care for it. Give it back to Him." She felt scared and awed. "Who is God? Where is God? How will I give it back?" "Go and lay it down near its nest," he said, "and tell God there is His bird."

She went very softly back and laid it down and said, "God, there is your bird."--And she never forgot!

Be kind to all things, girls and boys.

"There's nothing so kingly as kindness And nothing so royal as truth."

And watch carefully that you may not be a cruel girl or boy to any person or to any of God's creatures.

*XVI*

*COWARDLINESS*

If there is any one in the world that a boy or a girl admires, it is a hero. You are all hero-worshippers.

You know how big you feel if you ever get a chance to shake hands with a great man who had made a name for himself, and if he is a great national hero and he speaks to you, why you never forget it; and you blow about it to all your chums!

When the Prince of Wales was in Vancouver, a little girl presented a bouquet to him, and I fancy she felt so big that her dress-waist grew very tight as she swelled up.

When I was a little boy, I had a very learned and eloquent minister; and I used to watch him, and made up my mind to be just like him, and to wear a gray silk hat some day. He was my hero.

It is a fine thing to be a hero and to love a hero; and one of the things we all believe our heroes possess is bravery.

No girl or boy would ever knowingly worship a coward.

The very fact that we have heroes that always stand to us for big, brave, noble people, should make us anxious to be big, brave and noble ourselves.

Everybody admires Scott who died in the search for the South Pole; and Shackleton who died on his way to explore that part of the earth. Everybody has learned to think highly of the fearless John Knox, who was not afraid to talk back to the Queen when she did wrong; or Luther, who defied the Emperor and the whole Empire because he knew he was right. It was one of the greatest moments in history when the little monk stood straight up and looked his enemies in the eye, and said, "I will not retract. I can do no other. Here I stand!"

When you think of people like that, how it makes us ashamed of ourselves when fear grips our heart.

And yet, cowardice is not quite the same as fear.

Wellington, England's great general, once in a battle ordered a young officer to a dangerous spot. The young fellow turned deadly pale, but put spurs to his horse and went straight to duty. And General Wellington said, "There goes a courageous man. He is afraid, but he only thinks of duty!"

Nor is physical courage the highest kind. That is a matter of physical nerve and sometimes of health. But moral courage is still higher--the very highest kind.

A poet once wrote:

"One dared to die, a swift moment's pace Fell in war's forefront, laughter on his face, Bronze tells the tale in many a market-place.

"One dared to live the whole day through, Felt his life blood ooze like morning dew, And smiled for duty's sake, and no one knew."

Neither were cowards, but I think the second was the braver, don't you?

Now, there are different ways of being cowards and of being brave. If you can't stand sneers when you are right, but give in because of laughs, you are a coward at heart. If you are afraid to do right, you are a coward, but if you can do it even when you are afraid, you are a brave hero.

If you can stand against a crowd when the crowd is wrong, and stand there even if you are the only one, you are brave and will never have the coward heart!

The coward spirit, especially the spirit of a moral coward, eats the power out of your life, and the only way to avoid it is to dare to do right, and dare to be true.

Sometimes it takes a lot out of you, but it is worth while.

The boys who stood the trenches and braved bullets and shells and mud stains and never faltered, were courageous. Those who funked were always despised cowards; and the girl or boy who stands strong wherever duty calls is a brave life, and will never be bitten by the fox called Coward.

*XVII*

*DISHONESTY*

Did you ever really hear in your heart and believe in your very soul that "An honest man's the noblest work of God"?

What is honesty?

It is the quality of your character that always rings true.

You can always tell when a bell has a crack in it. It does not ring true.

And you can tell when a girl or boy has a crack somewhere in his character. He or she does not give a clear ringing sound. One of the worst kind of cracks is dishonesty.

You can't trust that kind of person. He always has to be watched.

What a horrid kind of child that is, from whom you dare never take your eyes!

But when you see a real honest girl or boy, how you admire the sight.

They will not cheat. They play fair. They are true sports. They won't take advantage of you when your back is turned.

You know how even in school games you like a real sport, who plays the game and obeys the rules of the game.

You can't have a game with any other kind. He spoils everything and you can't have real life with a cheat. He spoils the school and disgraces a house.

More than that, an honest person will not take what does not belong to them. A lot of girls and boys forget the difference between "mine" and "thine."