Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1876 — Practical Kindness. [ARTICLE]

Practical Kindness.

One of the most beautiful and practical instances of real kindness I ever saw came to me in this wise; I had gone into my butcher’s shop one Saturday night, and was waiting Tor my steak. While doing so a man, black with the toil and dust or machinery, came in. He was old and and homely, and meanly dressed, and I never should have looked upon him as a divine agent of consolation nad not a little girl come in and revealed him to me. “ How’s father to-day, Polly ?" he asked. “ He’s Worse to-day, and mother’s down, too;” and the weary little thing began crying to herself. Then the man stooped and said something in a low voice, to which she only shook her head and cried more bitterly. So he took the basket fromher,saying: “Run away home, Polly, or that baby she’ll be in mischief. I’ll bring the basket.” She offered him twenty-five cents but he hurried li|r away and would not touch it. Then he chose some good beef, a piece of bacon and plenty of vegetables, and, having paid for them, walked off toward p large tenement-house in sight. I gave him silent reverence as he passed me, for I knew him then as one of God’s messengers, unconsciously, but oh! how blessedly, taking a share in the ministry of angels! Opportunities like these are constantly thrown in our wav by the angel who watcheth for our souls; but “if a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily f ood, and one of you say unto them: "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?’ "—Mrs. Barr, in Christian at Work. .