This sounds modern. It even sounds American. We are so confident that we are showing the way, we have been told so repeatedly that what we show is the way, that we cannot understand the reluctance of our neighbours to follow it. There is a curious game played by educators, which consists in sending _questionnaires_ to some hundreds, or some thousands, of school-children, and tabulating their replies for the enlightenment of the adult public. The precise purport of this game has never been defined; but its popularity impels us to envy the leisure that educators seem to enjoy. A few years ago twelve hundred and fourteen little Californians were asked if they made collections of any kind, and if so, what did they collect? The answers were such as might have been expected, with one exception. A small and innocently ironic boy wrote that he collected “bits of advice.” His hoard was the only one that piqued curiosity; but, as in the case of Isacke Bucke and the quarrelsome couple of Plymouth, we were left to our own conjectures. The fourth “Spiritual Work of Mercy” is “To comfort the sorrowful.” How gentle and persuasive it sounds after its somewhat contentious predecessors; how sure its appeal; how gracious and reanimating its principle! The sorrowful are, after all, far in excess of the doubtful; they do not have to be assailed; their sad faces are turned toward us, their sad hearts beat responsively to ours. The eddying drifts of counsel are loud with disputation; but the great tides of human emotion ebb and flow in obedience to forces that work in silence. “The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world.” Are Americans a Timid People? As the hare is timid--no! They have made good their fighting record in war. They have proved themselves over and over again to be tranquilly courageous in moments of acute peril. They have faced “their duty and their death” as composedly as Englishmen; and nobler comparison there is none. The sinking of the Titanic offered but one opportunity out of many for the display of a quality which is apt to be described in superlatives; but which is, nevertheless, an inherent principle of manhood. The protective instinct is strong in the native American. He does not prate about the sacredness of human life, because he knows, consciously or unconsciously, that the most sacred thing in life is the will to surrender it unfalteringly.