consider that they were those of an habitually cold and selfish person.
She did not express love; but she showed the softening influence of
affection, and Emilie at least understood and appreciated it.

Fred had perhaps the hardest work of all the actors on this little
stage; he thought so at least. Joe White was an unamiable and, as Fred
expressed it, a sneaking boy. He had never been accustomed to have his
social affections cultivated in childhood, and consequently, he grew up
into boyhood without any heart as it is called. Good Mr. Barton was
quite puzzled with him. He said there was no making any impression on
him, and that Mr. Barton could make none was very evident. Who shall
make it? Even Fred; for he is going to try Emilie's receipt for the cure
of the complaint under which Master White laboured, a kind of moral
ossification of the heart. Will he succeed? We shall see.

Perhaps, had Joe White at this time fallen down and broken his leg, or
demanded in any way a _great_ sacrifice of personal comfort from his
school-fellow, he would have found it easier to return good for his evil,
than in the daily, hourly, calls for the exercise of forgiveness and
forbearance which occurred at school. Oh, how many will do _great_
things in the way of gifts or service, who will not do the little acts
of kindness and self denial which common life demands. Many a person has
built hospitals or alms houses, and has been ready to give great gifts
to the poor and hungry, who has been found at home miserably deficient
in domestic virtues. Dear children, cultivate these. You have, very few
of you, opportunities for great sacrifices. They occur rarely in real
life, and it would be well if the relations of fictitious life abounded
less in them; but you may, all of you, find occasions to speak a gentle
word, to give a kind smile, to resign a pursuit which annoys or vexes
another, to cure a bad habit, to give up a desired pleasure. You may,