in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.
Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no
touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have
felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feelings in the glow of battle and
behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar
animal; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his
non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine
nature--not in his insensitive hide nor in his clumsy foot, but in the
way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his
sensitive trunk and still more sensitive mind and capability of pique on
points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of
high breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and mercifulness,
these always indicating more or less firmness of make in the mind."

Can any one fancy what our society might be, if all its members were
perfect gentlemen and true ladies, if all the inhabitants of the earth
were kind-hearted; if, instead of contending with the faults of our
fellows we were each to wage war against our own faults? Every one needs
to guard constantly against the evil from within as well as from
without, for as has been truly said, "a man's greatest foe dwells in his
own heart."

A recent English writer says: "Etiquette may be defined as the minor
morality of life. No observances, however minute, that tend to spare the
feelings of others, can be classed under the head of trivialities; and
politeness, which is but another name for general amiability, will oil
the creaking wheels of life more effectually than any of those unguents
supplied by mere wealth and station." While the social observances,
customs and rules which have grown up are numerous, and some perhaps
considered trivial, they are all grounded upon principles of kindness to