"Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." Now do you comprehend what charity really is? It is toleration, it is kindness, it is humanity, it is truth, it is the spirit of God made manifest in man. He that gives liberally to the poor, to the church, to education, to the campaign fund, yet says to his brother, "Thou fool," because he's followed off after a different political folly, or differs from him on the doctrine of transubstantiation, is not staggering about under a load of charity calculated to give him flat feet. The supreme test of a charitable mind is toleration for the opinions of others,--an admission that perchance we do not know it quite all. It is much easier to give a $5 bill to a beggar than to forgive a brother who rides his pitiless logic over our prejudices. The religious world has contributed countless millions to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but has never forgiven Tom Paine for brushing the Bible contemptuously aside and looking "Through nature up to nature's God." Perhaps some future age will do justice to the memory of the man to whose daring pen we are so largely indebted for those dearly-prized privileges of free government, to the ablest advocate of human liberty the world has known, and whose piety was deep and fervent as that of St. Paul himself. But that cannot be until the freedom for which he toiled and prayed extends to the mind as well as the body; until the shackles are stricken from the brain as well as the hand,--until the sun of Knowledge dispels the empoisoned mists of Ignorance and divine Charity dethrones unreasoning Hate. Then will the infidel freely concede that Servetus' murder was rather the fault of his age than Calvin's crime, and the Christian will find in Paine, if not a guide, at least a learned philosopher and a loyal friend. Charity assumes as many shapes as Prospero's busy sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come in." A big, blustering fellow, well filled with booze, was making himself generally obnoxious, and the village constable approached him kindly and tried to quiet him. Instead of subsiding, the boozer whipped out a big six- shooter and began blazing away at the representative of the peace and dignity of the state. The constable threw his hand to his hip, but instead of pulling his gun sprang forward, disarmed the hoodlum, cracked him over the head with his own battery and sent him about his business. The officer looked as shamed after the melee as though he had stolen a sheep or scratched the Democratic ticket. I remarked that he'd taken unnecessary chances. "What would you have done, mister?" he inquired. I replied that I would have filled that fellow's hide so full of holes that it couldn't be stuffed with straw.