Goldsmith's biographer tells us that when the poet was taking a stroll one evening, he met a woman with five children, who implored his charity. Her husband was in the hospital, and she was from the country, and had neither food nor shelter for her helpless offspring. Goldsmith's kind heart melted at the story. He was almost as poor as herself, and had no money in his pocket, but he took her to the college gate, and brought out to her the blankets from his bed to cover the children, and part of his clothes to sell for food. In the night he found himself cold, and so he cut open his bed and buried himself among the feathers, where he was found next morning by a college friend, with whom he had promised to breakfast. One boy has a feeling of spite against another, owing to some trivial quarrel. To vent it, he goes to his enemy's room, and, in his absence, slashes the gut of his tennis racket with a knife. That is an example of Malevolence, or evil will, or, as it is commonly called, Malice. The benevolent man is he who calls the whole world kin, and refuses to harbour an evil intention against any one. To have a mind like that requires long practise in patience, charity, fortitude, forgiveness, and self-denial. St. Paul, in one of his most famous letters, says that Benevolence is made up of these very things; so that in this matter we have not only our own experience, but a great authority to corroborate it. Shakespeare, too, says: "Deep malice makes too deep incision; Forget, forgive; conclude, and be agreed." The saying of another poet, "To err is human, to forgive divine," might well read, "To avenge is human, to forgive divine." Every one who gives way to malicious anger usurps the place of God, and says to himself, "Vengeance is mine." But who ever got any lasting satisfaction out of revenge, when wrath has died away, and the injury he has suffered begins to look smaller? Sir John Lubbock well says: "Revenge does us more harm than the injury itself; and no one ever intended to hurt another, but did at the same time a greater harm to himself, 'as the bee shall perish if she stings angrily.' The vulture, we are told, scents nothing but carrion, and the snapping turtle is said to bite before it leaves the egg, and after it is dead." If a little boy is hurt, how kind the big boy becomes in his help and in his words! And yet, when he gets well again, perhaps the same big boy will make his life miserable, through unkindnesses which really amount to bullying.