XCI.
A HELPFUL MESSAGE.
Life is too short to spend any time on a book that is not worth reading; but when you read a good book you will be richly repaid if you stick a sort of mental pin in sentences that especially impress you and return to them again and again. If the book is your own, it is sometimes helpful to mark it neatly here and there, and to copy some of the nuggets of thoughts. In that way you help to fasten them in your brain, and perhaps to engraft their meaning upon your lives. From a book of the writings and speeches of a New York preacher, Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock, who went a year or two ago to “the better land,” I have culled the following sentences that hold, I think, a helpful message for boys and girls as well as for old people.
“Look out for your choices. They run into conduct, character, destiny.
“To make the best of things is the right way to let things make the best of you.
“Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. This is the only world in which a Christian can suffer.
“Whenever you feel blue remember that God loves you and think up some kindness, if no more than sending a flower to some one or writing a note.
“If you can help anybody, even a little, be glad.
“Do not let the good things of life rob you of the best things.
“What have you done to-day that none but a Christian would do?”