The peculiarity was this. The trees being within the scope of many contending and fierce and unremitting winds, there was not upon any twig, that I could see, one single _perfect_ leaf. Perhaps a young one, just born, and to die almost as soon as born, might keep somewhat of its intended shape. But those that had endured the fierce winds and the heat and the rain and the blights,--ah, how shattered and scarred and stained they were! Some marred out of any trace of the intention of their birth; rent and beaten into a sorry strip, hardly to be called a leaf at all. But even the best were defaced and disfigured, spotted and imperfect. Now sentiment about these leaves would, obviously, be extremely ill-placed. But my thought traced in these battered masses of the sycamore a picture of this life of ours, until the trees almost became a mirror, in which I, with the myriad race of much-enduring men, seemed to be exactly reflected. _Not one_ perfect leaf; many _so_ shattered and stained and marred. So beaten out of that pattern to which God had designed them. Some with hardly the very least trace of that Image in which mankind was at first moulded. Most with little to remind us of it. But, saddest of all, it seemed to me, there was not one, not even the best, which would bear close inspection. Not one but, even if the shape were somewhat preserved, had yet some ugly scar or hole or crack; not one perfect, no, not one! And so it is, that we are in truth fain to accept for our idea of a good man here, merely that one who is least defaced and disfigured. The wise among men, what is he, but only one not quite so foolish as most others. The kind, only one that is less often cruel. The dutiful, and obedient, only one that is at least and at best inadequately trying among the gross that are utterly careless, to fear God, and to regard man. How negative most of our goodness is, and the qualities whose possession inspires our fellow-men with admiration! A good son, a good husband--this surely only means one who is not bad, undutiful, unjust, unkind. And yet who could lay claim to either title, nor exhibit some, yea many, flaws and spots? And for positive goodness--ah, well, if it were not for the utterly marred and ragged growth with which we are surrounded, there would be little fear, surely of any, such as are we, laying claim to the possession of that here. _Great and good men?_--Rent and shattered, rent and shattered; and if in comparison with the shreds about us, we trace in ourselves some hint of the original shape, how often we must then think, “I was more in shelter, lower down on the tree,” and how little inclined shall we be, contemplating sadly our own stains and clefts, to think superciliously and pharisaically of those mere strips that, growing on the higher boughs, seemed the prey of every rough wind that blew. “Safe home, safe home in port!-- Rent cordage, shattered deck, Torn sails, provisions short, And _only not a wreck_.”