The engineer said: "Well, I guess you've paid your fare; climb into the cab and help me run this train."
I commend to you the cultivation of tact, but don't let it lead you into the meanest trait of character—selfishness. To say,
"Of all my father's family I love myself the best,
If Providence takes care of me, who cares what takes the rest?"
In the days when there was a community hearse in a country neighborhood, and carpenters made the coffins, a young man, who was ashamed of the old worn-out hearse, went about soliciting money to purchase a new one. Presenting the purpose to an old man of means, he received from this selfish citizen the reply:
"I won't give you a dollar. I helped to buy the old hearse twenty years ago, and neither me nor my family have ever had any benefit from it."
Against this trait of selfishness I place the most beautiful of all traits—sympathy. I would rather have the record of Clara Barton in the great reckoning day than that of any statesman whose portrait hangs in a hall of fame.
During our Civil War she went from battlefield to battlefield, and was just as kind to the boy in gray as she was to the boy in blue.
After the Civil War Queen Victoria desired to communicate with Clara Barton regarding the same mission of mercy for the German army, where the Queen's daughter was then engaged. But Clara Barton was already on the ocean, and soon after was in the war zone with the German army. She was with the first who climbed the defenses of Strassburg, where she ministered to the wounded and dying. At the close of her work there she took ten thousand garments with her to France. There she waited till the Commune fell and again she was with the first to reach the suffering. In our own war with Spain she went to Cuba, and though then past sixty years of age, she stood among the cots of our wounded and sick soldiers, soothing their sufferings and cheering their hearts.