I do not know; justice must surely mean the same rewards for the ox as it means for man, for how can simple justice discriminate between animals, and still remain simple justice? And the man who is willing to grasp an immortality that discriminates between him and the ox, is neither merciful, charitable, nor just. Immortality must surely embrace all the living creatures, or part of life would be left behind, and immortality would be incomplete and imperfect. God must be the God of all. If the ox is an inferior creature, the fault lies with the creator and not with the created thing. If there is no justice and mercy for the ox, then justice and mercy have limits, and God is not so powerful to save his creatures as he is to create them. I do not know; my faith in immortality may be the child of my hopes and longings. If I am always to be I always was in existence somewhere. I am positively certain that I know of no evidence to prove a past existence, for hope does not lead backward. Hope points always ahead, from where the winds of the future are always blowing. I know that I desire to live always, to think always, to hope always, to love on and on forever and ever. TEACH SENTIMENT Sentiment is a creature of education. A child will naturally imitate its parents. If they are unfeeling and cruel, the child will be the same, at least until it falls under a different influence. Sentiment is not inherited. The average child is cruel and heartless until old enough to imitate the sentimental spirit of old people. Therefore, it should be the first lesson impressed upon the child mind that cruelty and wanton heartlessness is brutal, and does not belong to civilized man. In my own case I have always been opposed to keeping pet animals or birds confined in a cage—no, not always: When a boy I was always catching birds and squirrels and rabbits to start a menagerie. I remember one time of keeping a red squirrel in a cage for two years. I hadn’t then learned that kindness to the weakest of God’s creatures shows a largeness of the human heart. I was then a lad of fifteen years. But one day while watching the red squirrel leaping from one side of the cage to the bottom, then bounding to the other side and back again, and on to the opposite side and back again, over and over again, all through the day, and day after day, for the exercise it needed to keep its health—one day while watching the poor imprisoned animal at its daily exercise, the thought came to me that the little animal would be so much happier outside the cage. Then it dawned on me that I was simply keeping the poor thing imprisoned to gratify my own selfish pleasure. Simply to look at and enjoy its efforts to make life tolerable under such distressing conditions. I had actually been enjoying the restless efforts of the squirrel to make prison life healthful; for had the animal sat down to mourn and pout and sorrow for the freedom it once enjoyed, it would have died in a few weeks.