I was going to a funeral one day, and saw a large boy on the street, seated on a small boy who was lying helpless on his back and enduring all kinds of nasty actions by the young bully. If I had not been at the head of the funeral, I would have stopped and gone and spanked him!
How boys hate a bully. He is a coward, you know, at heart. A real brave boy will never take advantage of some one weaker and smaller than himself. A real brave hero protects others. The boy who hurts some one who can't defend himself is a mean coward. It does not matter how big his breast is or how far it sticks out, his inside heart is small, and narrow and hard. Now, don't you be like that!
(2) You can be cruel to animals—torturing them—loving to hurt them, just for the fun of killing. It is so strange the way some people think they are having no sport unless something is suffering.
"It's a fine day," some one is reported as saying, "let us go out and kill something."
We live in a day when Children's Aid Societies and Humane Societies are telling us of the beauty of a kind life, and that even animals are God's creatures and should be treated with reverence, or at least with the gentleness that will not cause unnecessary pain.
The cruel spirit hardens us. It takes away what learned men call sensitiveness; i.e., it makes us so we do not feel. It makes our hearts like our hands sometimes get when not cared for—it makes callous marks; and when fine feeling is lost, we are less than we ought to be.
A little Indian girl, the educated daughter of a chief, said she could never forget the first time she ever heard God's name.
In her play she found a wounded bird by her tent and picked it up and said, "This is mine." One of the men who saw her said, "What have you?" "A bird," she said, "it's mine."
He looked at it and said, "No, it's not yours. You must not hurt it." "Not mine," she said, "then whose is it?" "It's God's," he said. "He can care for it. Give it back to Him." She felt scared and awed. "Who is God? Where is God? How will I give it back?" "Go and lay it down near its nest," he said, "and tell God there is His bird."
She went very softly back and laid it down and said, "God, there is your bird."—And she never forgot!