A Chip or Two Hewn from the Tree of Life

A Chip or Two Hewn from the Tree of Life BY JOHN T. BARRETT A grouch in a palace makes it a worse place than a hovel. Sunshine in the soul makes the cot a restored Eden, and the inmates are in paradise already. A palatial house may be built with gold, but it takes true hearts, with mutual understandings, to make the palace a home. Why build a palace for a home and beautify the surroundings with that which gladdens the physical eye, and then make this visible Eden a hell by your presence in it ? The inmates are the life of the place. In them lies the power to make hell of an Eden, or heaven in the midst of the barren wastes. Not the place, but the life, and what we throw into it

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in the way of improvements, makes us happiest. It is easier to

get other's good opinion and approval of our conduct than to get our own. Be our professions what they may, the acts of men may be deceptive, but to get the approval of our own good conscience is a task that demands a straight life in secret and openly.

I cannot afford to strike my brother a blow or speak ill of him. In self-defense, Imust desist, for the act hurts me worse than it does him. By a strike I may injure the mortal frame of my enemy, or friend, but his injury will heal, but there remains within me a wound that is a scar on the soul, and it will not heal. The sooner we learn this lesson, the wiser and more cautious will we act in such matters. Strike if you must, but bear in mind, as you do it, that the act is going to glance off the object which you seek to injure and rebound upon yourself with added force. His body or reputation may be hurt thereby, but if I am the cause of the hurt, my mortal soul is sure to report a discord in the harmony of my life, and I am sure to be wounded. Christ recognized this great fact when he said: "When thou art reviled, revile not again." "If thine enemy smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also." A man who does not do so is ruining his own castle of character. His munitions of war are turned upon his own forces he is destroying his own defenses. ;