My heart smote me. I saw what a cruel jailor I had been. It’s bad enough to imprison bad men and shut them away from the sunlight and flowers and the smiles of good women and children, just as though darkness and heartaches and misery would make a human being better. But here I was imprisoning an innocent animal simply for the selfish pleasure that comes from the possession of things not justly my own. Like the millionaire who gets a monopoly on the necessaries of life, and forces the people to pay tribute into his coffers for the sole and only pleasure of possessing more dollars than his neighbors. If he has sentiment enough to use those dollars for the benefit of civilization and to relieve the distress of the people, it is not so bad, but hoarding up for the pleasure that comes from sheer possession, is worse than brutal—it is maniacal. Well, my conscience smote me on the educated end of my sentiment, and one day I opened the cage and let the squirrel go back to the woods. I had learned a lesson I never forgot. The awakened sentiment in my soul never slumbered again. Sentiment is contagious. My boy caught the happy mental disorder much earlier than his father did. A few weeks ago, he, too, started a menagerie. He caught two mice and put them in a cage. At the end of two weeks his young heart felt the sentimental pangs of conscience, and he liberated his unwilling prisoners. The world is growing better. The boy’s sentiment did as much for him in two weeks as mine did for me in two years. The two liberated mice may do me a trifle of damage while at large, but when I consider that the boy let his heart out at the same time he liberated the mice, I knew the world would be the gainer in the end. THE SOUL OF SORROW Sorrow is not always gruesome and heart-breaking. It has a lifetime influence, providing the fiber of the soul is strong enough to withstand the strain. Not long ago there was a musical contest in a Pennsylvania city, and one of the young ladies to take part in it had given up the thought of going into the contest, because her mother lay at the point of death the day previous to the departure of the companies who were going to the distant city to show what their town could do in a musical way. But during the night the mother’s condition changed for the better, and she urged her daughter to go; for on her the town depended to bring back some of the prizes to be given to the sweetest singers of the state. And so she went, her heart very much lighter since the happy change in her mother’s condition. Anyhow, going out into the world to compete for a prize, with some hope of winning, has a buoyant effect on the heart. Oh, if all the world could but feel a slight hope of winning a prize when starting out in the world, how much happier the world would be! But to most of the average people the world’s prizes are hanging up so distressingly high that only the well prepared have any chance of winning them.