Now, if you help your fellow man to maintain his rights, do you not see that you are laying the foundation for help to maintain your own?
If you trample on any person you must expect to be trampled upon in your turn, and then away go your rights, and trouble ensues.
If you help your friends and neighbors in their need, you are opening the way to be a success in whatever you may undertake. Under such circumstances, men will swear by you, and if you cannot be helped by them—there being some things that are too deep to be aided, sorrow for instance—you will at least have their sympathy, good will and countenance in your undertakings.
Let all your dealings and intercourse with your fellow men be based upon mutuality. There is a proverb which may not be inappropriate, which says, “Molasses catches more flies than vinegar.” Of course, helping your neighbor out of his difficulties or even sympathizing with him in his sorrows or grief, is a sweetness to him and to you.
Every kind, every good act, has a reciprocal effect. It may not be done out of whole heartedness, and there may be a grain of selfishness in it, but the principle is there, and often repeated, it becomes a second nature to act like the Good Samaritan without hope of reward.
Nevertheless there is always a reward more or less substantial.
Take Counsel of Your Best Friends
It is as old as the hills that “Two heads are better than one.”
It is true that every man has two feet, two hands, two eyes, two ears, and so on, but only one head. Things do not seem to balance with only one thing, so to complete the balance it is the height of policy to have two heads. Why not?
But one of the two heads is that of your best friend who can advise you when your one head is apt to go astray in some important step or undertaking.