LX.
WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS.
I often hear people making a big fuss about little things. My path in life leads me among many "kickers" and many "growlers." Do you know what I would like to do with some of these malcontents and whiners? I would like to send them up for a week to watch life in the county hospital. I would like to seat them by a bedside where a noble woman lies dying all alone of a terrible disease. I would like to have them become acquainted with her bravery and the more than queenly calm with which she confronts her destiny. I would like to have them linger in the corridors and hear the moans from the wards and private rooms where the maimed and the crippled and the incurable are faintly struggling in the grasp of death. I would like to lead them through the children's ward, where mites of humanity cursed with heredity's blight, removed from a mother's bosom, consigned to suffering throughout the span of their feeble days, lie faintly breathing their lives away. And then would like to say to them: "You contemptible cowards, you abominable fussers, you inexcusable kickers, see what the Lord might bring you to if he unloosed the leash and set real troubles in your track. Quit complaining and go to thanking heaven for all your unspeakable mercies!"