policy! Why not do everything that may be done for the happiness of
our fellow creatures, without seeking out their weak points,
irritating their half-healed wounds, jarring their sensibilities, or
embittering their thoughts! The magic of kind words and a kind
manner can scarcely be over-estimated. Our fellow creatures are more
sensitive than is generally imagined. We have known cases in which a
gentle courtesy has been remembered with pleasure for years. Who
indeed cannot look back into "bygone time," and discover some smile,
some look or other demonstration of regard or esteem, calculated to
bless and brighten every hour of after existence! "Kind words," says
an eminent writer, "do not cost much. It does not take long to utter
them. They never blister the tongue or lips on their passage into
the world, or occasion any other kind of bodily suffering; and we
have never heard of any mental trouble arising from this quarter.
Though they do not cost much, yet they accomplish much. 1. They help
one's own good nature and good will. One cannot be in a habit of
this kind, without thereby pecking away something of the granite
roughness of his own nature. Soft words will soften his own soul.
Philosophers tell us that the angry words a man uses in his passion
are fuel to the flame of his wrath, and make it blaze the more
fiercely. Why, then, should not words of the opposite character
produce opposite results, and that most blessed of all passions of
the soul, kindness, be augmented by kind words? People that are for
ever speaking kindly, are for ever disinclining themselves to
ill-temper. 2. Kind words make other people good-natured. Cold words
freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and sarcastic words
irritate them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words
make them wrathful. And kind words also produce their own image on
men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe, and quiet,
and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose,