Take the case of a young man whose virtue is more than wavering, and the flights of whose imagination cause you anxiety. Set him at work to reform others, or to make the effort on some notorious offender. {106} He will do his part wonderfully well; his own virtue will be strengthened and confirmed thereby, and you will have given beneficent scope to an exuberant vivacity which the youth himself did not know how to utilize. It is related that a president of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul had reason to fear that some of its members failed to discharge their Paschal obligations. There were, at the same time, several poor families to be converted, and he committed the task to the suspected defaulters. The result was that they were the first to partake of the Holy Communion. The thing was simple enough: before leading others to the confessional, it was necessary that they themselves should show them the way. Every effort made by the higher classes to benefit those below them, revives and sustains in the former the spirit of compassion, of benevolence, and of self-sacrifice--the best sentiments of the human heart. It imparts life to them; for to live is to feel, is to love, is to be loved, and to cause love in others. To have sympathy with and fellow-feeling for the poor--that is to live; but to be wholly absorbed in business matters, in advancing one's own fortune, or in concocting intrigues--that is not to live; rather it is to become brutish and to go to ruin. Nothing is more immoral and contrary to nature than to be always taken up with self. {107} Moreover, the course which we are recommending tends to draw the different classes closer together, to teach them to know and esteem each other, and to assuage mutual jealousies and antipathies. The people are fond of being thought of, of having interest manifested toward them. Under such treatment they readily yield, and are glad to be reconciled. They become even proud of the tokens of benevolence bestowed on them by some wealthy individual; it is a kind of safeguard to them against evil passions. They say to themselves:-"We are loved and esteemed: let us by honest and Christian conduct continue to deserve such consideration."