True, it is most painful not to meet the kindness and affection you feel you have deserved, and have a right to expect from others; but it is a mistake to complain, for it is no use; you cannot extort friendship with a cocked pistol. --Sydney Smith. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. --Matthew 22. 39. Lord God, help me to understand that true affection is not that which as it gives feels it merits return. May I avoid being selfish and stubborn; and with my affections give peace and joy. Amen. OCTOBER ELEVENTH Sir Thomas Wyatt died 1542. Dr. Samuel Clarke born 1675. James Barry born 1741. Ask God to give thee skill In comfort's art, That thou may'st consecrated be And set apart, Unto a life of sympathy; For heavy is the weight of ill In every heart; And comforters are needed much Of Christlike touch. --Alexander Hamilton. The man who melts With social sympathy though not allied, Is than a thousand kinsmen of more worth. --Euripides. Who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. --2 Corinthians 1. 4. Heavenly Father, thou hast made sympathy divine. May I never make it commonplace. Grant that as thou dost bless and comfort me I may be willing to comfort others, and do whatsoever thou wouldst have me do. Amen. OCTOBER TWELFTH Columbus discovered America 1492. Lyman Beecher born 1775. George W. Cable born 1844. Helena Modjeska born 1844. One poor day! Remember whose and how short it is! It is God's day, it is Columbus's. One day with life and heart is more than time enough to found a world. --James Russell Lowell. An illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments." We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life or grand moments that signify. Let the measure of Time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance--what ample borrowers of eternity they are! --Ralph Waldo Emerson. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. --2 Peter 3. 8. My Father, I pray that when the "sun sets to-day my hope may not set with it." Be with me earlier than the dawn, that I may plan with thee a new day. I pray that thou wilt release me from anything that keeps me from reaching the highest. Amen. OCTOBER THIRTEENTH Theodore Beza died 1605. Murat, King of Naples, shot 1815. Elizabeth Fry died 1845. What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. --William Shakespeare.