Have you ever gone out on a frosty night and looked up at the sky and thought of the great spaces above you, and the sun millions of miles off? Did you know that if a train travelling one mile every minute could fall off the earth and keep going, it would take forty millions of years to reach the nearest fixed star? And yet your soul is more important than it all!
"Knowest thou the value of a soul immortal?
Behold the midnight glory, worlds on worlds
Amazing pomp. Redouble this amaze;
Ten thousand add, add twice ten thousand more
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,
And calls the astonishing magnificence
Of unintelligent creation poor."
There is a wonderful instrument used by men of science, called a microscope, and it shows us that the smallest things are more wonderful even than the big things you can see with your eye. The little insect that makes the coral, that is so graceful, is an object of wondrous beauty under the microscope.
When you buy a flower, it is not the biggest you want, it is the richest and loveliest, the one of quality.
What is it makes a man? Not size. That may make a prize-fighter, but who wants to be a prize-fighter? He is muscle and bone and beef, but that is not manhood.
A real man is a gentleman, even if he is not much to boast of in size. The real signs are not those of bigness, but something inside of him—the peculiar quality that makes you honour and love him.
Here is what Margaret Sangster says of it:
THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN
I knew him for a gentleman
By signs that never fail;
His coat was rough and rather worn,
His cheeks were thin and pale;
A lad who had his way to make
With little time for play;
I knew him for a gentleman
By certain signs to-day.
He met his mother on the street,
Off came his little cap;
My door was shut, he waited there
Until I heard his rap.
He took the bundle from my hand;
And when I dropped the pen,
He sprang to pick it up for me—
This little gentleman of ten.
He does not push or crowd along.
His voice is gently pitched;
He does not fling his books about
As if he were bewitched.
He stands aside to let you pass,
He always shuts the door.
He runs on errands willingly,
To forge or mill or store.
He thinks of you before himself;
He serves you if he can,
For in whatever company
The manners make the man.
At ten or forty 'tis the same.
The manner tells the tale;
And I discern the gentleman
By signs that never fail.
I have read of three women who were once talking about pretty hands. Not one of them tested the matter by the size of their hands, and yet they, too, forgot quality. One said she kept hers pretty by washing them in milk; another dipped hers in berry juice, and the third washed hers in the fragrance of flowers.