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6 Worth Womans While Grandmother Was Too Old. She was a lovely young girl, -with face like a flow er, cheeks of the soft,-delicate tint sometimes spoken of as shell pink, and a sweet mouth that smiled when she did not even know. She is a lovely girl— we will pu it that way—for it is but a short time since we saw her, and joyed in the beautiful uncon sciousness of her innocent presence, and grieved at the thoughtlessness which wounds as surely as the most wilful intent. That her heart is as lovely as her face we are sure, not only from the guilelessness of her expression, but the utter absence of self-con sciousness in manner, which more than anything in the world attests the absence also of selfishness or vanity that being on the inside we are apt to imag ine hidden. For youth to be unaware of itself is so unusual in this day of its usurpation that such modesty is more than beautiful. We do not know when we have been so attracted to a little girl, and yet—it was what she said of her grandmother that made us sad. “I’m not going to live to be as old as my grand mother—l just won’t do it!” she said. “Why, she’s so funny!” “But, my dear,” remonstrated an older person present, “if we live long enough we will all be just like her, only not so lovely; for old ladies like your dear grandmother are of a kind that will soon be no more. When you and I are old we will have her fun ny ways but not her loveliness—by that time there won’t be any old-fashioned ladies, so we can’t hope to be as sweet as she is. Yet we will surely be old— we must remember that! ’ ’ “Oh, but I won’t be as old as she is—l won’t do it! Now, she’s so economical—all these things that are left here” (we were seated at table) “she would put away, everything on a separate dish. She won’t throw out anything, and you can’t lift a dish cover but there is a biscuit, sometimes so hard you’d have to take a hammer to break it. It makes so many soiled dishes—l wouldn’t do that for anything—if I was very rich I wouldn’t save anything!” “But when you have lived as long as your grand mother,” pursued the friend gently, “and have seen as much of the world as she has, you will feel differently. She remembers the war times, when people who hadn’t been very rich couldn’t get things to eat. And she thinks of the poor, even very near to her, who are actually hungry, and no one remem bering these things could bear to waste even a mor sel. Suppose you can’t send it directly away to the hungry ones, still you cannot bring yourself to throw away—to wilfully waste, when you know there are those who would be grateful of the very things you do not want. Don’t you recall the five hundred thousand persons who died by starvation that Rus kin speaks of in 1 Sesame and Lilies,’ though w> don’t have to go so far away to find suffering and even death from hunger? Your grandmother in her long life has learned things and she thinks of them and of all the wide world, and her individual life is shaped not according to what she can afford do, but with the thought in her mind of the needs that she knows exist—not that she can hope to re lieve them, but her conscience is of too high an or der to let her forget them. You will understand when you are older and have seen more of life, as she has.” “Grandmother is good,” conceded the girl, “and just does everything she can for anybody who comes to the house”—she is a sweet child, and only thoughtless—“but I’m not going to be as old as she is—l just told mamma I wouldn’t do it!” Who could help smiling? ‘She just told mamma she wouldn’t grow old like grandmother! What could it be but thoughtlessness? Yet how heartless it sounded. And old people can be wounded by the most unthinking words of even young children, es pecially the children whose love and filial duty they have a right to expect. The Golden Age for July 5, 1906. By FLORENCE TUCKER We heard the friend say in parting, “Give our love to your grandmother, dear; and remember, she would die if she could—she knows how you feel about it, and it hurts her heart.” The words sounded abrupt, almost harsh; but we realized they were meant to make the child think, and could only hope they would. The poor grand mothers! They were just mothers once, and instead of having a double mothers the double weed of af fection it really seems they have taken away what they had—what love their children once gave them is diverted to their own offspring, and grandmother, from appearances in too many instances, may be described or defined to be or to mean, “She who is not needed any longer, and were better out of the way, because she is funny, but most of all because she is old.” It was such a simple thing that annoyed the girl— “grandmother was so economical”—and her ways were “funny,” so, from her point of view, she had lived too long, and it were high time she left off. God in Heaven! what can mothers be thinking of? Experience the Only Way to Under standing. A little condition of circumstance is, when all is said and done, the only way to an adequate under standing of what another passes through. We are not slow to see fault or error, and scarcely slower to condemn, but it is safe to say that in many instances, if not in most, censure would be far from us could we understand through our own experience the struggle and fall of him we criticise. What appears wilful wrong on the outside is too often weakness that was not able to cope with the circumstances that finally bore it down, or—alas! for the fate that permits it—the force of a stronger and an overpowering personality. What we would have done in his place we can only imagine unless we have actually lived through it ourselves; and imagination is not to be relied on, as we find when our own test conies. It is a question whether we do not most of us mis-estimate ourselves. Where the lines have been favorable to us we fancy that we are different from some whose lot has withheld from them the things which we take it have made for our broader and higher development. Because opportunity has been ours and we have not been called upon to suffer certain deprivations or hardships, we imagine that we are a different order of persons, not considering whether the very advantages we accept as our bet ter portion have made of us the beings we suppose ourselves to be—whether we are in reality what we appear to our own partial fancy. The thing was brought to our consciousness very forcibly a day or two ago in the comment of one woman on another, both of whom have the misfor tune to be married to men addicted to drink. One considers herself ill-used, and imagining that her rights can only be realized in what appears to her the glory of “society,” she turns her back on her husband whom she uses only as a means to forward her purposes, and leaving her children to grow up as best they may, plunges headlong into frivolities and gayeties of a kind that brings upon her the stric tures and condemnation of all who know her and the unhappiness of the home of which she should he the heart and center. She looks with scorn upon this other woman who has clung desperately to duty and hope, while the fortunes of her little home have sunk deeper and deeper, and the fountains of her life been drained to the dregs—faithful to the man who has robbed her of every hope, and even comfort, while she la bored with her hands to support him and their child. This other woman whom burdening care and broken health and spirit have left no time for the cultivation of thought through books and reading and other channels, who is even denied the privilege of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. She whose time and thought have been given to her own person and to social conquest, despises her neighbor with her poor dress and her daily toil and her faithfulness to duty. She fancies herself so far higher in the scale that there can be no points of similarity in their experience, let alone sympathy. Yet this is what the other one said of her: “I can sympathize with her. Nobody can under stand except one who has a drunken husband. I can see how she gradually came to where she is. If you have no God, and haven’t got it in you to set tle down at home and be useful, you are just led into it, further and further before you know. Why, sometimes when I go out, with my husband drunk at home, I am ashamed to hold up my head—even when I meet people who can’t possibly know it, I feel cowed. I can understand—and nobody can un derstand who hasn’t gone through it herself.” Simple, homely words—yet what depth of com prehension, what broad, deep charity! She had her self been true, but she could see how the shallower nature found it impossible to be so. Her trouble bows her head while that of the other woman, empty and giddy, is flaunted shamelessly before a world that estimates her at her real worth. If she is dazzled by the trappings in which she arrays her self, and the small measure of whnt to her is social success, no one else is—even her poorer neighbor pities her, and hers is the better portion, after all, for it has brought wisdom and charity. To think of ourselves as we ought to think, and to strive to learn charity, through what we ourselves would do under like conditions—that is the secret of all proper living. Happily we are not called on all alike to suffer certain things. Yet when it is re membered that experience is so much the same, the difference is more in degree, it seem strange we should so overshoot the mark in self-estimation or the condemnation of another. Physician Prescribed a Hobby. We remember reading once of a physician who had a patient come to him with a malady difficult to locate, and after unsuccessful inquiry and diagno sis, the great man asked this .question: “Have you a hobby? Do you collect anything— china, or anything at all?” “No,” was the answer. “I have no hobby, no collection of any sort, nor anything of the kind. I don’t care for such things.” “Well, ” said the physician, “get you a hobby. It doesn’t matter what it is, but get a hobby col- lect something, just anything, but have a hobby!” And that was all the prescription he gave. What the patient needed was interest, a live, active in terest in something to waken her energies, and the physician prescribed for the member affected—the mind—rather than the stomach or head. We have thought of it often, and the wisdom has become moie and more apparent to us. We become worn om with the humdrum of every-day routine, and the apathy whch ensues cannot be reached by dings. Instead of a tonic, it is a stimulus we need, and it is perfectly immaterial what, so that it be natuial ano wholesome—no artificial excitement, nothing that leaves us with the shadow of mental exhaustion or disappointment. The baneful effects of monotony are as fateful as indisputable, and it is wonderful the power that a little pleasant interest has to dissipate these and rouse us to new life. Hobbies are not for the idle alone, as may sometimes be supposed—to none are they so beneficial and so truly a blessing as to the o\ei woi tied, either in body or mind. Anything to which we can turn for relaxation, for a wholesome recreation from sameness or tax, whether it be a collection, ar Howers, or pets, or fancy work—any thing that we do, and realize that we do, simply for pleasure, is good for us,