PROMPT KINDNESS.
The fact that we are too apt to suppress our kindest emotions for loved ones, and withhold our words of approbation, is but too frequently apparent. This is often done with the best intent, fearing that more cordial expression and warmer approval may savour of flattery, and very frequently it is the outcome of pure carelessness or indifference. In this connection it is well to consider the words of Horace Mann. Says he:—
"Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier by them. The kind things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins, send to brighten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away, full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection, which they mean to break over my dead body, I would rather they bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without flowers, a funeral without eulogy, than life without the sweetness of love and tenderness and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post-mortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over the weary way."