I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent, and behavior, read your heart and earnestness, your thought and will, which he cannot buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel fifty miles and dine sparely and sleep hard in order to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread and let the bed be dressed for the traveler; but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the Universe.--_Emerson._ [Illustration: JOHN VANCE CHENEY _The happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast, That found the common daylight sweet And left to heaven the rest._] “The secret of the joy of living is the proper appreciation of what we actually possess.” So then believe that every bird that sings, And every flower that stars the elastic sod, And every thought the happy summer brings To the pure spirit is a word of God.--_Coleridge._ Thrust an Emerson into any Concord, and his pungent presence will penetrate the entire region. Soon all who come within the radius of his life respond to his presence as flowers and trees respond with boughs, brilliant and fragrant, to the sunshine. After a little, each Emerson stands girt about with Hawthornes, Whittiers, Holmeses and Lowells.--_Newell Dwight Hillis._ Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.--_Edward Everett Hale._ The nobler life is just as possible to us all as that which is ignoble. The moment one will assert his freedom from petty cares, perplexities, troubles, and anxieties, that moment they fall off of themselves.--_A Study of Mrs. Browning, Lilian Whiting._ He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even though he knows he is in the right.--_Cato._ Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons-- That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe’er we fail in action. --_Lowell._ We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word.--_Emerson._ When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one reason for letting it alone.--_Sir Walter Scott._ Pure religion as taught by Jesus Christ is a life, a growth, a divine spirit within, coming out in love and sympathy and helpfulness to our fellow-men.--_Dr. H. W. Thomas._