A quiet
insistence on seeing these pebbles in their natural size would
reduce them shortly to a pile of sand which might be easily smoothed
to a level, and add to the comfort of the path. Moods are stones
which not only may be stepped over, but kicked right out of the path
with a good bold stroke. And the stones of intolerance may be
replaced by an open sympathy,--an ability to take the other's point
of view,--which will bring flowers in the path instead.
In dealing with ourselves and others there are stones innumerable,
if one chooses to regard them, and a steadily decreasing number as
one steps over and ignores. In our relations with illness and
poverty, so-called, the ghosts of stones multiply themselves as the
illness or the poverty is allowed to be a limit rather than a guide.
And there is nothing that exorcises all such ghosts more truly than
a free and open intercourse with little children.
If we take this business of slipping over our various nerve-stones
as a matter of course, and not as a matter of sentiment, we get a
powerful result just as surely as we get powerful results in
obedience to any other practical laws.
In bygone generations men used to fight and kill one another for the
most trivial cause. As civilization increased, self-control was
magnified into a virtue, and the man who governed himself and
allowed his neighbor to escape unslain was regarded as a hero.
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