A friend of mine, who radiates love and helpfulness to every human being no matter how low and degraded, once helped a poor, ugly, besotted son of the gutter, who had sunk about as low as he possibly could sink. One day as he sat on his piazza enjoying the beautiful calm of a glorious spring afternoon he saw his protégé approaching. Giving him a glad welcome the two were soon in conversation and the gutter-waif finally expressed his thanks for the help and encouragement he had received, and, as is natural with every really awakened soul, wanted to _do something_ in return for what he felt my friend had done for him. In vain the helper of men protested there was nothing he wished to have done, but the one who had been helped kept on insisting that he must do something. He said, "I not only want to be good, but I want to be _good for something_. Now, what can I do?" "Well," at last said my friend, "since you must do something, go out and find somebody worse off, lower down, more needy than you were when you first came to me, and help him." As he went away my friend settled down to an afternoon's study and enjoyment of his books, and of Nature, but within an hour his protégé returned wearing a smile that reached almost from ear to ear. As he entered the gate he called out: "I've got him! I've got him!" "Got who?" "Why, the man you sent me for!" "What man?" "The man you told me to go and find and help. I've found him, and I thought I couldn't help him better than by bringing him to you." "Where is he?" "He's waiting out here by the barn, for I couldn't persuade him to come up until I had first seen and told you." "Bring him along!" As the two derelicts returned, the one towing the other up the walk, my friend said the sight of the second vagabond and outcast was almost too much for him. He was not only ragged and filthy, but thin to emaciation, with that horrible look of long continued debauching degradation. The principal feature about him was his nose--the large, red, pimply nose of the habitual drunkard. Almost instinctively the _lower_ human in my friend asserted itself. It rebelled against having anything to do with so vile-looking and disgusting a wretch. "What's the use?" he exclaimed, almost aloud. Then, suddenly, these thoughts came: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren ye did it unto me." "This man is as much a child of God as I am. The _real_ man in him is as Godlike as I. He is my brother. We are both sons of God." "And," said he, "I instantly arose and went to meet him, with outstretched hand of cordial welcome." To shorten the story I can only relate how, after he had had a hearty meal and a long conversation, the outcast finally poured out his soul to the man who had met him as a brother.