I don't believe much in this far-away charity idea so many have.

I believe in helping those near where I am rather than sending money to Siam.

It may be a pleasurable sensation for you to contribute fifty dollars to a missionary scheme in Siam, and get the Missionary report of the budget made up from the foreign missionary fund.

I know that a bucket of coal in an empty stove, a basket of bread and liberal hunk of round steak to the starving family around the corner brings the donor a better sensation.

Take a trip to the hospitals, learn about the homes of the suffering patients in the charity ward, and you will resolve it's a better act to send flour to the poor than flowers to the rich.

Little Spencer Nelson had the right idea of charity: definite, immediate help to those he could reach right where he was, rather than sending money to sufferers far, far away.

Let your gifts be princ.i.p.ally flour and beef; they help those who need help. Flowers are all right in their place, but there are more places where flour can be used to better purpose.

I'm keener for filling the coffee can of my suffering neighbor than filling the coffers of the big charity five thousand miles away.

I try to help both ways, but the home help pays the bigger dividends.

What do you think about it?

FRIENDS

A Most Abused, Too Often Used Word

You have found a friend who has been so much help and comfort to you. I have such a friend. Tonight I am in the mood to think of that friend and write him a letter like this:

This is to You. It is for You. It is about You. You I have in mind and the good influence you have had on me. It is a happiness and satisfaction to know you, and to bask in the atmosphere of you.

The world is better because of you. You have helped to raise the average.

You and your goodness, you do not appreciate what that means. You are so modest, so loath to think of yourself, so unselfish in this respect that I must tell you of you and about you.

You have a warm heart that throbs for others' woes and holds sympathy.

The great world is cold, selfish, and cares little for others. But you are different; you are a great pillow of rest on which I and others who love you may lay our tired, weary heads, and you wrap your arms of friendship and goodness about us and feel our very heartbeats.

You with your great goodness, your quiet, sympathetic understanding, you soothe our troubled spirits and make us glad of you and glad we have the precious privilege of knowing you.

Even now as I am telling you how I love you, you are trying to wave me aside and stop me, but I am in the mood and I want to express myself.

You know that there is a great sin of omission, which is the refraining of expressing grat.i.tude for goodness extended to us.

I want to express my grat.i.tude. I do not want to be guilty of the sin of omission.

So here then for you is this little message, to tell you I appreciate you, I love you, and these words will last after you are gone and after I am gone, to tell those of tomorrow about you and what those of today thought about you.

You life, your goodness, is an everlasting plant that will flourish in many hearts. Your influence will last beyond the calendar of time; it is indestructible. You have a great credit in the universal bank of good deeds, where you have deposited worth-while acts, deeds, kindnesses, cheer, help, friendship, sympathy, courage, grat.i.tude, and all the precious jewels worth while.

I am happy the very moment I think of you. I try to express myself but feelings and emotions I would describe have not words or sentences to express them. You understand, you are so big in heart, so sensitive in fabric of feeling, so wise in understanding, that I want you to think and feel all the genuine, n.o.ble, lovable, appreciative thoughts you can gather together about the one you most appreciate.

Think hard, sincerely, deeply, about that one, with all your resources of beautiful thought. Think hard that way and now you will begin to understand what I feel about you, and how I appreciate you.

You, my inspiration, you who are so sensitized to feeling, so delicately adjusted to read heart vibrations, you must feel this within me I am trying to convey to you. Not the love between sweethearts, not the love of kin, not the love of friends, but a great universal love I have for you--a love all who know you have for you.

It is a love you cannot return to me in equal measure, because you have not the object in me that can merit such love. That you should love me in the way I love you, even in the most diminished proportions, is satisfaction supreme.

It is glorious to know you. You water the good impulses I have, you encourage all that is n.o.ble, elevating, and bettering, in me. I shall try to be like you, that is, so far as I can. You are my model, there is but one you. Many may copy you, none equal you. You my comfort, you my joy. A great glorious you, that a little I am trying to paint a picture of.

How futile my efforts. I might as well try to improve the deep beautiful colors of the morning glory, or try to retint the lily with more beautiful white.

And so I bid you good-bye, happy that there is such a you in the world, more happy that I know you, and most happy that I know how to appreciate you.

The sum of all good things I can say, is I love you, and the word "love"

I use in its greatest, broadest sense, which covers all the good adjectives.

This is what I think of YOU.

MAN'S DANGER PERIOD

In the Midday of Your Life, Look Out

There is a time in the business man's life between the age of 48 and 52 when the man undergoes a p.r.o.nounced change in his life.

More big men are cut off at 50 than at any other age between 45 and 60.

At 48 to 52 most men change vitally in their physical and mental make-up.

Many men, hitherto straight, moral men, go to the bad at this time, and per contra many men quit their immoral and health hurting habits and change to moral men.

This danger period is when the newly-rich find fault with their wives who have helped them to their success. They grow tired of their wives and seek the companionship of young women.

The divorce courts give most interesting figures on this point.

At this danger period men who have been high livers, voracious eaters and heavy drinkers find themselves victims of diabetes, Bright's disease or other forms of kidney troubles.

Most every man between 48 and 52 who works indoors, eats too much, exercises too little, sleeps insufficiently.

Here are a few things for the 50-year-old man to do:

Drink two gla.s.ses of warm, not hot, water immediately on arising.

Eat an apple before breakfast; positively you must eat the skins too.

The skins have the phosphorus, phosphates, and brain food. The skins make roughage and keep the alimentary tract active.

Eat for breakfast a little bacon, cooked rare; crisp bacon has all the good fried out, and you simply have ashes left.