THE APOSTLE OF YOUTH
he shall never arise. Unkindness is a negative word; its sound has grown familiar to us, and we do not realize the world of misery that vocable shuts up in its unholy bounds.
But what if positive harshness and violence and contempt put stings and swords into the act? And how do you know what state of pain your victim is in already? The heart may be filled to bursting, the mind crushed under disappointment and misfortune. O, this is terrible, when a grown man or woman is its prey! What, then, is it to the child just entering on the career of life in a world filled to repletion with the riches and beauty and love of the Creator? A world where happiness with outstretched hands awaits every step of yours, eager to be led to the rough and thorny ways where toil and suffer the little helpless waifs and strays, those early pilgrims of sorrow, those shorn lambs of God, shorn of all human comfort, made old with misery ere life has half begun. Ah, does not your gentle heart see and know that they should be playing in the gardens of innocent pleasure, their minds expanding in homes of learning, their souls uplifted in temples of worship and holy peace?
Can you save one—can you save many—and have you not done it? Look abroad over our free, beautiful republic, rolling in affluence, its wealth distributed over the nations of the world, a land where pleasure and luxury run riot,—and where crime and poverty run riot, too,—and see dotting
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