Who ever really forgave you for being ill and missing a dinner engagement? You had no right to be ill. You gave your kind hostess a great deal of trouble and disappointment with that ptomaine poisoning of yours! “Be happy _my_ way!” says the parent “Marry this nice, rich man I have chosen for you--not the poor fellow you love!” But no, putting a cushion behind a man in an armchair isn’t kindness unless he happens to want it there. It may make him uncomfortable. And dear old country grandmother--who used to urge on us, nay, force on us that third generous helping of pudding. Grandma’s heart was big enough--but it wasn’t quite the right shape. WHAT’S the rarest thing in all the world? Intelligent sympathy. Why? Well, each one of us is working out his own evolution, I suppose, and our own interests must be paramount and absorb us, or we lose in the race. Still, it is rather pleasing to recall, in pessimistic moods--upon receiving a letter written in lead pencil, for instance, or one undated, or with no address, or, most irritating of all, with an illegible signature--it is even encouraging to recall that it isn’t always these inconsiderate, unimaginative, egoistic people, after all, who succeed most brilliantly in the world. Sometimes a good, plain writer, desirous of making it easy for his reader, gets to the top, too, God bless him! And my faith in kindness as a policy is restored, too, by the glaring fact that of all my acquaintances the one least to be suspected of an inferiority complex is the only one who begins a telephone conversation by decently introducing himself: “B. Ganning talking!” instead of peremptorily demanding _my_ name, like a census man breaking in the door. As many of our acquired habits, like walking, for instance, have been passed from the domain of the conscious to the subconscious and become automatic, so, perhaps, with the behavior of the Educated Heart. You set it in the direction of true kindness and courtesy and it will function without deliberate thought. And, alas, _vice versa!_ It steers as well towards selfishness. AND now, right there, before I find more fault, do, please, get my point of view. Am I fastidious? Why, all I ask is an unadulterated drop of your emotion. Am I querulous? Why should I be? No one is important enough to hurt me. Surely the very inadequacy of their feelings proves these skim-milk saints to be unworthy the time and energy it takes to resent or protest. Am I ungrateful? Not if you have done the least friendly act and done it wholly. Do I demand too much pay for my favors? If I long for a little of the old-time courtesy to color life, must you accuse me of preferring the glib, lace-sleeved, powdered-hair flattery, of the French salons?