VICARIOUSNESS
There are men who reap consequences without having the advantages of the causes that brought them about. For instance, it takes the gout a good long time to grow in a family, but it does grow, and it often grows from a good cellar of port in the possession of an ancestor. Now, what I think hard is that a man should have the port without having the gout; and what I think more tragic still, is that another man should have the gout without having had the port. But still that is one of the great laws of life. We can not avoid it, and we dare not impugn its wisdom. Did we, we should be like the great civic functionary who determined to have a south wall built all around his garden.—George Dawson.
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Charles Wagner, in “The Gospel of Life,” gives this interesting incident:
Something happened last winter, in Paris, that I shall place side by side with the mite of the gospel. You will remark the profound analogy, the close spiritual kinship of these two cases.
In the north wind of December a shelter was raised where warm soup was given to the unfortunate. A very old woman, who had long waited her turn, at length sat down and was served. Before she touched her portion, she noticed that a young, robust working man beside her had already consumed his with an avidity that betrayed that he was famished. At once she pushed her plate toward the workman and said to him: “I am not hungry, will you eat this?” The workman accepted. But some one had noticed all that had passed. As they went out, he took the old woman aside and said to her: “You were not hungry then?” “Oh, yes,” she answered, blushing, “but I am old and can bear it, and that poor young man was more in need of it than I.”
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VICE DEN DISPLACED BY MISSION
Persons passing No. 293 Bowery, formerly the Germania Assembly Rooms, were invited to come in and be “rescued.”