Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1898 — Small Courtesies. [ARTICLE]

Small Courtesies.

We are all born but once. Most of us marry but once. We certainly can die but once. And if we look at life “as a small bundle of great things,” we shall certainly not think it worth while to practice small courtesies. But if we regard It, far more truly, as “a big bundle of small things,” we shall as_ certainly feel that few things in life are better worth-doing. It may never be in our power to save anybody’s life, make for anybody a fortune, shed luster upon the family name, die for our country, or set the smallest river on fire in any way whatever. But If we conscientiously and sweetly give ourselves to the practicing of small courtesies, only the recording angel can ever set down the good we shall do in our day and generation to hundreds and thousands of our fellow creatures In the course of a lifetime. Most people despise them as not worth fining. Few people perform them with any degree of consistency or loving kindness. Fewer still are content to do them in the best way, unnoticed, unrememdered, really feeling it to be emphatically a Virtue that is its own reward. Yet it is a wonder that preachers do not urge it upon their congregations from a thousand pulpits—on offSundays, say, when they have time for the marrow of .ill creeds, and can be content to let the bones take care of themselves,- jLipplncott’s,