The world is so much accustomed to confound praise with flattery that if I were to go to a man with an honest tribute like this: "My friend, I admire you very much; I think you possess noble talents, fine tastes, and an excellent heart; and I regard your course of action and your life with the warmest approval," he would, nine times in ten, look into my face either with astonishment, or amusement, or offense. He would not know whether I intended to insult him or to practice a joke upon him. Praise between man and man is so rare that we neither know how to bestow it nor how to receive it. This is carried to such an extent that one-half of the family life of Christendom is deprived of it. The husbands who never have a word of praise for their wives, the wives who never have a word of praise for their husbands, and the parents who only find fault with their children, are, I fear, in the majority. I know that the women are numberless who devote themselves throughout all their life to the comfort, the happiness, and the prosperity of their husbands, and who lie down in their graves at last, thirsty for their praise. Their patient and ceaseless ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a loving and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise is due to the love and unselfish devotion of a wife, just as really as it is to the loving-kindness and beneficent ministry of God, differing only in kind and degree. Husbands may die worth millions, and leave it all to their wives, (subject to the usual contemptible provision that they do not marry again,) and yet be shamefully indebted to them forever and forever. Children are often spoiled because they get no credit for what they do. Of censure, they get their due; but of praise, never. They do a thing which they feel to be praiseworthy, but it is not noticed. When a child takes pains to do well, it feels itself paid for every endeavor by praise; and the most unsophisticated child knows when praise is its due. It often comes to its mother's knee in natural simplicity, and asks for it. It is very well for men to say that "virtue is its own reward," and that the highest satisfactions are those which spring from a sense of duty accomplished; but praise is pleasant and precious to men who not only say this, but feel it. Many a noble and sensitive pastor is disheartened because no one of the multitude which he so carefully and constantly feeds, ever tells him, with an open, honest utterance, his good opinion of him, and his satisfaction with his labors. Many an excellent author toils over his work in secret distrust, and issues it in fear and trembling, feeling that a word of praise will exalt him into a grateful and fruitful joy, and that an unjust and unkind criticism will half kill him.